For that price, that's a killer CPU.

For gaming purpose i3-6100 would be alot better option. Idk about the pricing on Intel chop though.

For gaming purpose i3-6100 would be alot better option. Idk about the pricing on Intel chop though.

For gaming purpose i3-6100 would be alot better option. Idk about the pricing on Intel chop though.

I disagree - people have way too much faith in HT. It isn't anywhere near as good as people make it out to be (for gaming purposes), especially on a dual core. If the game wasn't optimized for HT, which does happen, then you don't get any performance gain. Then again, the vast majority of software doesn't knowingly take advantage of both cores in an AMD module either. So then, it really comes down to these worst-case scenarios: A. Get a dual core with decent power efficiency or B. Get a triple core with poor power efficiency Personally, I'd choose option B. For modern games (especially ones ported from consoles), AMD's module design works fine.

A lot of games benefit from higher IPC (or single core performance) which Intel excels in compared to AMD. That's why in quite a few games, a recent i3 will outperform a FX-8350.

That was true maybe 2 or 3 years ago. I don't know of any modern single-threaded games that the average CPU can't handle.

It's getting worse... Games are becoming more intensive, more drawcalls, etc. CPU IPC is getting more important. That's why we have Mantle/DX12/Vulkan. I'm not saying AMD CPU's can't handle games, but Intel handle them better.

True, but really if you are just playing games do you need a cpu that can play a game you would normally only play at say 30-60 fps at 200 fps? The good thing about that though, the cpu that can hit 200 fps over say 150 fps will be more future proof. Now what I will say about AMD CPUs, they do last. Intel's do too, but price for performance is still pretty nice. I had my Athlon II X3 435 since it was released, and up until about a year ago it was running 3.8 ghz non stop no problem and still could handle titles I threw at it with no issues. For a $70 cpu, that was awesome. Only reason it's not in service anymore is I wanted to downsize and got an Alpha for $300.

Overhead has a serious impact on lowest/avg FPS. If the driver thread gets bottlenecked during an intensive scene or a poorly optimized game, FPS will drop from a steady 60FPS. Sometimes it's inevitable (streaming problems, etc) but a higher IPC can reduce it. That's the problem AMD users are having now with AMD GPU's. NVIDIA has 70% or so less CPU overhead, in the overhead test anyway.

Generally speaking, the GPU is the bottleneck, not the CPU. The only game I play where the CPU is the bottleneck is Starcraft 2, and that's just simply because that game's engine was very poorly designed. My system doesn't really lag any more or less than others who are Intel+Nvidia users.

If that was the case, surely overclocking the FX-9590 wouldn't increase FPS, or if it did, not so much?

I said "generally speaking", meaning, not always. Also as pointed out before, if you only intend to get to 60FPS, then getting higher than that doesn't matter. If you intend to get beyond 60FPS, then what's the point of wasting time and money considering a mediocre CPU? If you're an average gamer, a mildly overclocked FX-6330 will suffice.

CPU overhead doesn't just effect max FPS.

I said "generally speaking", meaning, not always. Also as pointed out before, if you only intend to get to 60FPS, then getting higher than that doesn't matter. If you intend to get beyond 60FPS, then what's the point of wasting time and money considering a mediocre CPU? If you're an average gamer, a mildly overclocked FX-6330 will suffice.

Yeah, and the sky is blue... As I said before, in most cases, the GPU is the bottleneck. So what's your point? Just seems like petty nit-picking to me.