Introduction

Many gamers on a budget choose AMD FX processors for their builds because they provide the best price/performance ratio. The stock cooler that ships with a processor is often thrown away because they are loud and don't provide acceptable cooling performance and that's why AMD designed the Wraith cooler which can handle TDPs of up to 125 watts. In terms of price, the direct competitor of the FX-6350 is the Core i3-6100 which is the processor that I will be comparing the FX-6350 to in this review.

AMD initially announced the Wraith with the FX-8370 and A10-7890K processors but the FX-8350 and FX-6350 are also shipping with the Wraith. The Wraith comes bundled only with these processors and it's not available as a standalone cooler. The Wraith Cooler has the same 125W cooling rating as its predecessor but it has more surface area and an improved fan that cools better while being much quieter. AMD has done a great job designing the Wraith and you can read my Wraith review here.

The packaging is secure and it has a see through side showing the CPU. It sports a black and orange color scheme which makes the box stand out. The label at the top lists the specifications of the processor and the items that you will find inside the box. The rear of the packaging has some marketing information. Once open, you’ll see the CPU, FX sticker and the Wraith cooler that is in a cardboard box.

Comparison

CPUs Tested In This Review Model: AMD FX-6350 Intel Core i3-6100 Price: $130 $120 Core Name: Vishera Skylake Manufacturing Tech: 32nm 14nm Cores / Threads: 6/6 2/4 Base Freq: 3.9 Ghz 3.7 GHz Boost Clock: 4.2 Ghz N/A L2 Cache: 3 x 2 MB 2 x 256 KB L3 Cache: 8MB 3MB TDP: 125W 65W Socket: AM3+ LGA 1151 Unlocked: Yes No

The FX-6350 processor has six cores based on the 32nm process and is clocked at 3.9 GHz with a boost clock of 4.2 GHz. The chip comes with 6 MB of L2 cache and 8 MB of L3 cache and it is compatible with the AM3+ platform. The Intel Core i3-6100 is a hyperthreaded dual-core that is based on the 14nm Skylake CPU architecture. It is clocked at 3.7 GHz and doesn’t feature any Turbo Boost clock. It comes with just 3 MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 65W.

Test Setup & Power Consumption

Test Setup Processor: AMD FX-6350

Intel Core i3-6100 Motherboard: MSI 970 GAMING

MSI H110M Pro-VD RAM: Kingston HyperX 8GB DDR3 1866Mhz

G.SKILL Ripjaws 8GB DDR4 2133Mhz Graphics Card: Sapphire R9 390X Storage: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB Power Supply: Antec HCP 850W Case: Corsair 750D OS: Windows 8.1 64Bit Thermal Compound: Noctua NT-H1 Heatsinks: AMD Stock Cooler

Intel Stock Cooler

I have prepared a number of different synthetic benchmarks and game benchmarks for the FX-6350 processor. Testing will be conducted by comparing the FX-6350 against Intel's Core i3-6100. I'm comparing the FX-6350 against the i3-6100 because both retail for around the same amount of money and both offer good performance to PC gamers. I will be using the Sapphire R9 390X for benchmarking the processors in games.

Idle power consumption of the entire computer will be measured after leaving the computer idle for 20 minutes. Load power consumption of the entire computer will be measured after playing Witcher 3 on high settings at 1080P for 20 minutes. I want to make it clear that the power consumption measurements will differ per computer and components from my measurements if you add optical drives, HDDs etc.

All of the testing is done with an ambient temperature of ~19C. CPU-Z will be used to verify the CPU speed and the voltage being used in Windows 8.1. Also, the CPUs are tested with the default settings (Turbo, C1E etc) enabled in the BIOS.



The Intel Core i3-6100 is built on a 14nm fabrication node while the FX-6350 is built on a 32nm fabrication node so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the i3-6100 uses less more power. The R9 390X alone consumes anywhere from 150W to 250W in gaming so you can use that to get an idea of how much power the CPUs consume without the GPU.

CPU Performance Results



Cinebench R15 is the perfect benchmarking tool for comparing CPU performance across various systems and platforms. Looking at the chart above, we can see that the FX-6350 wins in multi core performance but loses in single-core performance against the i3-6100.





The FX-6350 was able to finish this test in 7 minutes due to having more cores than the i3-6100.





Geekbench 3 shows a similar result as Cinebench. The FX-6350 wins in multi-core performance but loses in single-core performance.





Once again, we see the FX-6350 winning this test with 6735 points and the i3-6100 with 6391 points.

AMD FX-6350 In Gaming



Both CPUs delivered playable fps in GTA V but the i3-6100 was a little bit faster.





In Metro Last Light, I recorded an average of 67 FPS with the FX-6350 and 61 FPS with i3-6100. The game was smooth on both CPUs but the FX-6350 achieved higher FPS overall.





Battlefield 4 is a game that is well optimized and we can see that both CPUs did very well with the i3-6100 doing a little better.





The i3-6100 struggled with Witcher 3 but the FX-6350 offered great performance and had no trouble maintaining above 50 FPS.

Value & Conclusion

Both chips retail for around the same and both are aimed at budget users. With that being said, the FX-6350 is hard to beat and having an unlocked multiplier makes the FX-6350 a much better product than the i3-6100 CPU. Not only did the Wraith cool much better than Intel's stock cooler but it was much quieter. With Wraith, you can squeeze a lot of performance out of the FX-6350 without breaking the bank. I measured 39 dBA under full load and 33 dBA in idle for Wraith while Intel's stock cooler was 46 dBA under full load and 38 dBA in idle. So that gives an idea of how much quieter the Wraith is compared to Intel's stock cooler. At stock settings, I never saw the temperature go above 46c so you can easily push the FX-6350 to 4.4Ghz+ while still keeping the temperature low.

Intel CPUs have fewer cores but the performance of each individual core is stronger compared to an AMD CPU. Most games nowadays are optimized for multi-cores and those games tend to run better on AMD CPUs. As you saw on the previous page, the FX-6350 performed much better than the i3-6100 in Witcher 3. I recorded an average FPS of 58 for the FX-6350 and 49 for the i3-6100 in Witcher 3 and the game was much smoother on the FX-6350 and the fps was consistent while the fps kept dropping on the i3-6100.



Pros:

+ Compatible With AM3+ Socket

+ Cheap Platform Price

+ Good Multi-Core Performance

+ Silent Stock Cooler



Cons:

- Weak Single-Core Performance

- High Power Consumption



The AM3+ platform is affordable and is great for users who are on a tight budget that just want to build a nice cheap gaming machine but with Zen on the horizon, you might want to wait. Power consumption is an area where Intel has always been better than than AMD. At idle, the Intel chip draws 42W while the AMD CPU draws 68W. When playing Witcher 3, the i3-6100 tops out at 218W, while AMD's FX-6350 pulls 263W. Overall, the FX-6350 is a decent chip for users who want a midrange CPU for multi-tasking and gaming.

Final Score 9.0