Conclusion
Conclusion
Vishera represents a new hope for AMD and their lineup’s flagship part, the FX-8350, can be considered a game changer. However, success on one front doesn’t necessarily mean the FX-series’ remaining offerings will receive such a warm reception. Unlike the $200 FX-8350, lower level CPUs like the FX-6300 and FX-4300 have a daunting hill to climb since they tend to fall within a cluttered market segment. AMD’s goal here was truly multi faceted as they had to offer adequate alternatives to strong Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge competition while also differentiating these lower end FX-series processors from Trinity APUs. For the most part the FX-6300 and FX-4300 are well positioned, inexpensive and (almost) perfectly executed but the separation between products isn’t quite
as clearly defined as before.
The FX-6300 is the current darling of AMD’s Vishera lineup since it retains a good portion of the FX-8350’s multi threaded performance while allowing purchasers to save over $60. Due to a significantly lower Base Clock, there is still a good amount of daylight between this six-thread variant and more expensive octo-core models so the FX-8350 certainly won’t lose any market share. Intel on the other hand does have something to worry about since the FX-6300 demolishes the similarly priced i3 3225 / 3220 in every test except our gaming benchmarks. Granted, the 32nm architecture used in the FX-6300 isn’t particularly efficient when compared against Intel’s 22nm technology but from a value standpoint, AMD is light years ahead.
Our opinion of the FX-4300 differs somewhat from that of its sibling. Synthetic benchmarks show it competing well against the $8 more expensive i3 3220 (its performance is identical to the i3 3225 in our charts) but like every Piledriver-based CPU it falls behind a bit in gaming tests. All in all, we’d call that a great result, so where does our apprehension come into the equation? There’s just too much of a performance difference between the four and six core Vishera products to justify the mere $10 price difference. Either the FX-4300 is too expensive or the FX-6300 is too affordable and as you may have expected, we come down on the former side of that equation. Simply put, the FX-4300’s $122 price smells of protectionism in an effort to insulate the A10-5800K’s sales from internal competition. AMD may have been worried that a lower cost would have cut into their APU sales and shuffled things around accordingly. This “robbing from Peter to pay Paul” mentality means the FX-series’ quad core lines up very close to the excellent $132 FX-6300 and that’s a fight it will never win.
While these new processors can’t compete against Intel in every domain and lag far behind in the performance per watt category, from a features perspective they’re a step ahead. The inclusion of hardware-based AES acceleration is something the i3-series lacks and AMD’s FX-series tends to offer more processing threads at a given price point. More importantly for enthusiasts and even novices, the FX-6300 and FX-4300 offer an amount of clock speed overhead that just can’t be found on any sub-$230 Intel CPUs. Being able to hit nearly 5GHz with little effort or experience adds a massive amount of residual value to both processors. Naturally, Intel could rain on AMD’s one-man parade by introducing unlocked K-series SKUs at lower prices but we don’t see that happening just yet.
This conclusion has boiled down to a study in contrasts. While the FX-6300 is a phenomenal value, performs well against Intel’s closest Ivy Bridge competitors and represents a great upgrade solution for most AM3+ users, we’d be hard pressed to recommend the FX-4300 in its present condition. In most respects it is a highly capable processor which –more often than not- beats the i3-series processors clean. However, its price is unjustifiable considering the FX-6300 is only $10 more.
For the time being, AMD is done with the Vishera CPU lineup and everyone should be happy with the results. They’ve increased performance across the board, are competing with or beat Intel's similarly priced solutions on many fronts and have proven that affordability doesn’t have to come with a reduced feature set. While the FX-4300 didn’t quite meet our expectations due to its desperate need for a price reduction, the six-core FX-6300 is currently one of the best bang-for-buck CPUs on the market and it is poised to blaze a new trail for Vishera.