My friend has been telling me to get the i5 instead of the FX-6300, even though has less cores (4 vs 6) and is slower (3.2GHz vs 3.5GHz)

Plus I'll save $90 with the FX-6300. He's a Intel fanboi, but are there factors other than the amount of cores and how fast it is?

You probably wont see much of a difference in the two especially in GTA 5, but if you play games like the ArmA series or any game that isn't very optimized CPU wise you will probably want the i5 over the AMD

For games that use a maximum of four cores, which is most games, the Intel will be far better than any FX-series CPU. Intel's single-core performance is far superior compared to that of the FX-series. The FX-series has fantastic performance if the program utilizes anything more than 4 cores. However, the FX-series processors will completely suck, and I mean it, when it comes to four or less cores being utilized.

Grand Theft Auto V will spread the performance across each core, so there will be little difference compared to the 4460 and the 6300. If GTA is the only game you play, then it is up to your preference.

So, the core count does matter between the two, because Intel has stronger single-core performance, and AMD's FX-series has far weaker single-core performance, but if all cores are being utilized, it will be on par with Intel's processor.

Now, onto the speed. The supposed speed of each processor will not entirely matter right off the bat. As I mentioned above, the actual speed is based on the program and the cores of the CPU. The hertz (GHz) only really matters when you are comparing two very, very similar processors, or when extremely overclocked. For example, a vanilla, untouched i5-3570 vs an i5-3570k, overclocked to a higher speed than it is originally boxed. The speeds will not be noticeable in gaming until you overclock it to an extreme variable, anyways.
However, if you get a phenomenal cooler and overclock the heck out of that 6300, you will achieve i5 performance in the 4-core-or-under games and programs.

I'm personally using an FX-6300 on my rig, and it runs pretty fine on GTA V. So if that's the game you're going to play most of the time, it's worth thinking about it.

The main games I play are GTA V, Cities: Skylines (very heavy on the CPU), and World of Warships.

Edited October 5, 201510 yr by fatfluffycat