Any excellent cpus around $150?

I know a thing or two about Intel cpu's but when it comes to AMD, I know nothing. Is there a price point where AMD becomes better for gaming than Intel? As the title says around $150.

To be honest not really. The AMD is slightly cheaper but a lot of it depends on the games you are playing. If the game is multithreaded then AMD will do you fine if not then you would likely be better off with some type of Intel offering.

I'd go used Intel i5 at that price point.

An Fx-6300 can be had for ~$115 these days. All you'd need for gaming really.

I commonly see FX-6300s for $109.

ninjacore said:

I'd go used Intel i5 at that price point.

Click to expand...

I am with Ninjacore:

Intel CPU's (box) have a 3 years warranty based on serial number. Fetch either a 3570k or a 4670k and you'll be settled for a couple of years gaming wise (and everything wise actually!).

I got a FX 6350 (6 core) that runs at 4400 MHz 24/7 , for $130 from newegg. The Fx 8320 is $ 149.99 there , too. Folks can used i5 all they want , but that's a pretty good price for a brand new processor at that level. There is also the A10 7700K ($ 130) , which can be crossfired with R7 graphics cards. Lots of capable AMD products in that price range.

And yes , a used i5 is a damn good CPU , but I'd go for the warranty over no gaming shortcomings I'll ever notice.

manu2b said:

I am with Ninjacore:

Intel CPU's (box) have a 3 years warranty based on serial number. Fetch either a 3570k or a 4670k and you'll be settled for a couple of years gaming wise (and everything wise actually!).

Click to expand...

Alaric said:

And yes , a used i5 is a damn good CPU , but I'd go for the warranty over no gaming shortcomings I'll ever notice.

Click to expand...

Why not have both?

I was not aware the Intel warranty was based on serial number. I stand happily corrected ! That makes it a pretty good deal. I would personally still go for a new AMD , but not for any objective performance , or cost reasons. A very good argument can be made for the i5 based on "just the facts".
I went AMD for other reasons and if I took a performance hit , I'll never see it with the things I do with my rig.

I was playing on A8 [email protected] and experience was similar to i3 [email protected] ( so stock ). In some online games i3 was even better and price of both is similar. I'm not saying that you can't play on something like 4 threaded APU but I saw random performance drops on every AMD that I had and I was always moving back to Intel.

It's really not worth to buy AMD for gaming. Actually right now it's not worth to buy any AMD except Kabini. While deciding on AMD you have to pick good board and good cooling to avoid any issues what makes total price higher than expected ... and it's hard to pick a board as most are simply bad and worse designed than Intels.

Better is to look for 1-2 year old series on auctions like 3570K and good board that should still have some warranty or just save some more money and go for new series that will last for longer.

I got the used MoBo/CPU combo in sig (3470) for €100 6 months ago.

Just to say you can get real good deals if you're not too much in a hurry.

It plays everything (except Crysis 3 of course!) maxed out@1080p with a couple of 280X's.

And the CPU still has a 1.5 year waranty!

OP, I know my local microcenter has fx-6300's brand new going for $90. With a $40 discount on any am3+ compatible motherboard. I've been 3 computers for customers already using the fx-6300 and gigabyte matx am3+ board that I can get for $10 after bundle deals. All money saved can be funnled into something else. Gpu, maybe squeeze a 120gb boot ssd into the build, etc. Every single person I built for can't stop raving how much of a jump in performance the computer is over their old pentium/celeron dual core pre-builts. I usd an fx-6300 for gaming for some time before grabbing an fx-9370 I got for cheap. ($180). That said, your common fx-6300 can usually hit 4.2-4.3 ghz on a cheaper cooler (hyper 212 EVO $30, NIC C4 cooler $40). I had no difference in gaming performance compared to my friend running an i5 3570k Oc'ed as well. None that I can see at least. We both run 60 hz monitors, so any fps over that 60 mark is really unoticable to me anyhow. If you're pushing for that 144hz monitor, then sure go for the intel chip. All in all, the fx-6300 paired with even a modest motherboard such as the gigabyte 990fx ud3 can give great performace for less money than any intel alternative. Also keep in mind from a gaming perspective, many more games are making their applications multi-threaded allowing the use of more and more cores. If the games you play don't really take advantage of the multiple cores, you can always turn off some of the cores and overclock the hell out of the remaining ones. Very versatile chip.