Looking to build a new gaming PC. Did some research on both of these. The Haswell has hyperthreading and the Kaveri has Mantle API. The build would either consist of the i3 with a GTX 780 or the A10 with an R9 280X. Also looking to do a bit of light video editing on the side with Adobe aftereffects and such. Which is the better CPU for the job?
In that price range, the FX-8350 (or FX-8320, cheaper than the 7850k). Or the i5. I am fairly certain that both CPUs that you are considering will bottleneck the respective video cards.
Others more knowledgeable than me will probably chime in with benchmarks and such.
This is a serious misallocation of funds. You should always produce a balanced build. An i3 with a GTX 780, or an A10 with a 280x is unbalanced. But these parts indicate that you have a suitable budget, with which you could build a pretty decent machine. The 8320 or i5 mentioned above would be good choice, and I am sure you could still afford a GTX 760 or something in that ball park.
Give us your budget, desired games, your location, what you need included; you'll get a build configured.
I was under the impression that the i3 and A10 could not be bottlenecked due to their architecture. HSA and Mantle on the A10 would ensure smooth running even with an extreme GPU like the R9 290X (example: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj0_6RbCHA4 ) . The i3-4340 possesses hyper threading and improvement of core processing that would allow for it to easily handle the load on any particular game I need to play. I just was wondering out of the two, which would be best?
Honestly, I do not think you should consider either. If I had to choose, I would pick an FM2 CPU over the i3. But this idea of yours is horrendous. In Battlefield 4, a game that utilises Mantle, the CPU usage of an i3 is reportedly at 100% usage. I can't fathom why you would want to produce such an unbalanced build, because not all games are going to support the introduction of this new API. Horrible, horrible idea.
You can buy an 8320 for almost an identical price to the i3, or an FX6300 at the very least. Again, no idea why you want to target these CPUs in particular. They are beaten at that very price point.
I don't play any Battlefield games past Bad Company 2. Most of the games I play are less CPU demanding, such as the Bioshock franchise, Dark Souls franchise, Elder Scrolls franchise, and source engine games like Half Life/L4D/Portal. Those don't rely on heavy computation. As I said, I'd likely pair up the i3 with a GTX 780 if that's the better option, while the A10 would get paired with an R9 280X, so Mantle utilizing games would only really be a factor on the AMD APU. Mainly targeting these for the lower cost hyperthreading on the i3, the HSA and mantle utilization of the A10. Just trying to decide between the two. Bottlenecking isn't a factor it looks like. Here's a link to some gaming benchmarks of the i3-4340: www.hardcoreware.net/intel-core-i3-4340-review/1/
Hyper-threading doesn't really have an impact in gaming performance. Yes, these CPUs are gaming capable, but don't buy them because all this tech sounds really cool. HT is used in multi-threaded workloads, which most games don't have any measure of.
You will be bottlenecking the GPUs if you run them on these CPUs. So if you do wish to use these CPUs, buy a middle-tier GPU, or you're simply wasting money on a GPU that you're not utilising.
If you play a lot of source engine games, less demanding games like Bioshock, just buy a 750k and a 7870. You'll be running those games on ultra at 1080p. Or an i3 and a 7870 if you play games that rely on per core performance. I see no need to grab a GTX 780 for the games you have listed.
A GPU like the 780 is geared towards very demanding games at 1440p.
Apologies if I sound a little too harsh or something. Grab an i3 and 780 if that's what you think you'll be satisfied with. I forget that I am only giving advice, sometimes. I think you should consider a better CPU, which is similarly priced. I mean, the 8320 has a lot of editing and streaming capability. It ticks more boxes and ought to give you much more enjoyment. That's my suggestion.
Thanks for the insight. Yeah hyper threading and mantle API both sound "cool." However, that is only part of the reasoning behind looking at these two. I got this quote from the following link:
"This is a huge result – it wasn’t until we used a Haswell core CPU that the R9 280X was able to deliver consistent frame times and a 60 FPS frame rate in Assassin’s Creed IV. All three AMD CPUs we used – even the FX 8350 – and the Ivy Bridge Core i3 would deliver a sub 60 FPS frame rate, with frame spikes throughout the benchmark run.
In this case, the Core i3 4340 allows the R9 280X GPU to run at maximum potential, just like the Core i5 (and Core i7 would)."
Here's where the quote comes from. Bottom of page: www.hardcoreware.net/intel-core-i3-4340-review/2/ The R9 280X is on par with 780 in terms of sheer power and performance. So it wouldn't exactly be wasting the GPU's computational and graphical capabilities to have the CPU be this new i3.
No problem! It's all good :) I just enjoy talking about stuff like this and figured I'd pose what I considered to be an interesting question.
I disagree entirely. The 780 is certainly a step up from the 280x, and I can find you many contradicting benchmarks. Which is why all this information that your placing under my nose is a hard pill to swallow.
None of the games you have listed as desirable have support for the technologies that you're supporting with these articles.
Mantle can give substantial performance increases with the i3, but let's imagine for one second that the game you wish to play doesn't have a new API. Then you're getting a much lower frame rate relative to the price you've paid. I think you're wasting money this way, because it isn't widely applicable.
Some people think the i3 is favourable for gaming. However, there are many people who would pick the FX6300, and there are benchmarks where the FX6300 beats the i3 comfortably. Benchmarks should be taken with a grain of salt, because you can always find some contradiction. A dual core processor is not a serious consideration for next gen gaming. I mean, dual cores used to be appropriate in the last-generation, but now games are beginning to use more than 2 cores on a wide basis. I'm not sure why you insist on handicapping yourself?
All of these benchmarks were taken on a test bed with a GTX 780. Take a look: www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-4340-4330-4130_5.html#sect0
Here's the system specs they're running it at, and you can see the GPU is a 780: www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-4340-4330-4130_3.html Benchmarks are always iffy to completely rely on, but it really does seem like the new Haswell dual cores have really been kicked up a notch and are more than adequate for current and next gen gaming. Plus, the GTX 780 would be handling most of the graphical load anyway. If there was a bottleneck, it would be so minor as to be unnoticeable.
I would have to disagree. I decided to research it, and I am surprised by some of the results!
However, the i3 does shit itself in some games. Metro LL in the benchmark that you supplied has a 15FPS performance difference. In other benchmarks supplied by Austin Evans, with the exact same parts, the i3 loses by as much as 20FPS (that is very noticeable) in Metro LL. The benchmarks that I see the i3 give comparable performance happens to be in games that are not really next-gen titles. They are running on old engines! Your benchmarks are not definitive at all.
If you're going to buy such as expensive card, you should take care to ensure that you're always getting the full performance - or you're wasting money, in my view. While the i3 does appear to be comparable in many games, it loses by a considerable margin in at least some. That's something that I cannot recommend. Unless you're intention is to play those specific games that the i3 does particularly well in. By the time you've loaded your HDD full of porn, you're running background tasks, trying to multi-task; I would highly doubt that the i3 could accommodate all that.
For the sake of longevity, I would want you to purchase an i5 and a 770, or similar performing card. The 770 is actually much more of a direct comparison to the 280x. but the 280x is heavily inflated in price due to mining. You've got a considerable budget, I would take care to make that quadcore investment. Newer games are starting to demand more cores. One of the few truly next-gen games that have emerged happens to be BF4, with the updated Frostbite engine. Before Mantle was implemented, the i3 ran at 100% usage. Now, Mantle will not be introduced to all games, so do you really want to take the risk? Because there are not enough newer games to determine the i3s suitability. Without that Mantle implementation in a next-gen game, the i3 was unsuitable in that particular circumstance.
Go 8320. Its cheaper than both and can really compete with a low end I7.
No porn man, that's just uncool. Anyway, the i3-4340 can handle multitasking with ease, as it does implement hyperthreading and a better, more efficient architecture. I plan on using an couple 240GB SSDs for most of the more recent game storage and an HDD for most of the older, not as used games. I've seen benchmarks stating that the i3 we are discussing will easily handle every task given to it with no problems whatsoever. Not to mention it will have the capacity to easily run GSYNC from Nvidia when that is fully released (if paired with Nvidia GPUs). In tests by xbitlabs, it got above 40FPS with SSAA HQ at 1080p when paired with a GTX 780, not to mention Arkham Origins, which employs Phys-X, got above 70FPS on average at 1080p when paired with a GTX 780 while run on the i3-4340. Not to mention the high performance on Battlefield 4 when paired with an R9 280X I showed in some of the other sources I previously linked. It was under a 30% load with that game running and well under 60% CPU load with other games not utilizing Mantle. Just seems like this dual core shouldn't be underestimated and actually could be a very viable option in regards to a next gen gaming build.
Note: Hyperthreading takes care of much of the so called "utilization of extra cores."
Seriously, not going with the 8320 in that processor price range is a mistake. It can compete with I7s but costs as much as a I3.
Note: Hyperthreading takes care of much of the so called "utilization of extra cores."
That strikes me as an absolute falsehood. HT is in no way a stand-in for physical cores. All it happens to be is efficient scheduling in multithreaded workloads, and games are single threaded. I know you've probably picked that from the article itself, I'm not trying to call you an idiot.
You still haven't addressed the huge performance differences in some of the benchmarks that you supplied, indicating a rather horrible inbalance. Metro LL being the best example, because it is an intensive game. Other benchmarks for the i3 4340, which I aforementioned, show an even larger performance difference. Batman AO is in no way an example of next-gen gaming.
I still do not think you're spending money in the right way. Especially if you're purchasing SSDs over a quadcore. You're using old game engines to prove a point, and I have point you towards newer engines before the implementation of Mantle where the CPU usage on the i3 was 100%, and that will carry across to other games that do not implement new APIs. Seriously, crazy guy. That's not meant as an insult. I really think it's a nuts proposition, it's got no future in gaming. I think the i3 prices itself out of the market against any other given option. e.g the 8320
I have to say again, if you go with the i3, you should probably drop the GPU down to a mid-range. The games your listing as desirable do not require a 780 to run on ultra settings. It's complete overkill.
I have an i7 and a 780, and even this configuration shits itself in some games. I don't think you should block yourself in a corner. It's better to get a suitable CPU now rather than later. These benchmarks that you've provided are far from definitive, but you are treating it as such. If my rig can't handle some games, the i3 is not a serious option for this level.
Exactly!
+1 if hyperthreading worked like it doubled the core count, why would people buy I5's over I3's? Because look at the 4670k vs. 4340. Who wins? the actual physical quad core or the dual core imposter quad. If hyperthreading worked like it doubled the cores they'd perform identically. But the I5 kicks the I3's ass in modern games.