3-4 year Office PC, dual vs quad core

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MrTeal

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Dec 7, 2003
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My wife's been bugging me for a desktop for awhile now, so I'm looking to put her together one from some old parts along with a new MB/CPU. I have the case, cooler, PSU, maybe a GPU (HD5770), SSD, and a 4GB stick of DDR3-1600.
Her usage basically consists of running quickbooks and messing around on Facebook, and I don't foresee that changing any time soon. It'll probably get upgraded to Win10.

I'll be ordering in Canada, so the prices are Canadian.

My general options as I see it are
G3258 (@ 4.X GHz) + H81 + 4GB (total 8GB) = $171 all in, plus $5MIR
i3-4170 + H81 + 4GB (total 8GB) = $234 all in, plus $5MIR
i5-4460 + H81 + 4GB (total 8GB) = $325 all in, plus $5MIR
i5-6500 + Z170 + 8GB DDR4 = $440 all in, plus $40 MIR
A8-7650k + A68H MB + 4GB (total 8GB) = $217 all in, plus $15 MIR

Today given it's just being used for office and internet usage, the $60+ price increase of the hyperthreaded 3.7GHz i3 doesn't seem worth the extra cost vs an overclocked G3258.
Moving to a true quad-core seems even more questionable, although the AMD chip overclocked would be a reasonable compromise despite it's lower single threaded performance. The much better iGPU is a plus as well.

Looking forward a few years though, does anyone envision that having those extra couple threads on a lower clocked i3 will be worthwhile for such a low demand application? My gut it telling me to just grab the G3258 and toss it in there.
 
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dave_the_nerd

dave_the_nerd

Lifer
Feb 25, 2011
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Office and internet use is still "multitasking" and still benefits from a 2C/4T or 4C/4T CPU. I'd get her at least an i3.

Anandtech's review of the 3258 showed that even heavily overclocked, it had trouble keeping up with an i3 in a lot of situations. G3258 at half the price might be the best performance per dollar, but it's still pretty weak performance-wise.
 
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MrTeal

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2003
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dave_the_nerd said:
Office and internet use is still "multitasking" and still benefits from a 2C/4T or 4C/4T CPU. I'd get her at least an i3.

Anandtech's review of the 3258 showed that even heavily overclocked, it had trouble keeping up with an i3 in a lot of situations. G3258 at half the price might be the best performance per dollar, but it's still pretty weak performance-wise.
Click to expand...

In that review it lagged the i3 in a lot of things (esp Trucrypt), but in Kraken, Sunspider and Octane it was well ahead of the 4360 (which would be the same as the 4170). Given those are the primary loads this would be doing, even if it were running at 4.2-4.5GHz vs the 4.7GHz Ian got, it would seem to be as effective as an i3.

Is there any reason to think that things like browsers will become heavily threaded in the future, or that it would feel snappier in a situation where there isn't any real multitasking going on?
 
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MrTeal

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Dec 7, 2003
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LTC8K6 said:
i3-6100 now, then you can drop an i5 or i7 in down the road if/when you need a boost.

I'm not so sure there is a large difference between the A8-7650K and Skylake HD530 graphics.

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-i3-6100-Processor-FC-LGA14C-BX80662I36100/dp/B015VPX2EO

But, Skylake chips are getting hard to find again...
Click to expand...

I thought about it, but the 6100 didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me unless a deal comes up. Looking at availability, with taxes and shipping a 6100, 8GB of DDR4-2400 and a GA-H110M-S2H GSM motherboard would set me back $348 after shipping and taxes. At that price it would seem to make a lot more sense to spend the extra $100 for the Tigerdirect i5-6500/Z170 bundle and hope they come though on the $40 rebate.
 
VirtualLarry

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,570
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dave_the_nerd said:
G3258 at half the price might be the best performance per dollar, but it's still pretty weak performance-wise.
Click to expand...

It's still quite powerful, especially in ST performance, which is more important with Firefox than Chrome.

@4Ghz, the G3258 kicks some serious ***.
 
dave_the_nerd

dave_the_nerd

Lifer
Feb 25, 2011
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MrTeal said:
In that review it lagged the i3 in a lot of things (esp Trucrypt), but in Kraken, Sunspider and Octane it was well ahead of the 4360 (which would be the same as the 4170). Given those are the primary loads this would be doing, even if it were running at 4.2-4.5GHz vs the 4.7GHz Ian got, it would seem to be as effective as an i3.

Is there any reason to think that things like browsers will become heavily threaded in the future, or that it would feel snappier in a situation where there isn't any real multitasking going on?
Click to expand...

Check your task manager. :D For IE and Chrome, anyway, every tab spawns one or more processes, each of which is one or more threads - those will get distributed across cores automatically.

A single-threaded benchmark like Kraken tells you one side of the story - the other side of the story is juggling a half dozen tasks that use 10-20% of the available CPU power - hyperthreading will help a lot with that.

Historical article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1152222,00.asp

Also, since it's a computer being used by a non-technical person, you should be running eleventy-four virus scanners and malware blockers anyway. Those also take up cycles. And IO. Get an SSD.

Actually, that brings up another point. SSDs. If it's a budget thing, I'd rather have the G3258 and an SSD than an i3 and an HDD. Just saying.
 
dave_the_nerd

dave_the_nerd

Lifer
Feb 25, 2011
16,991
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Oh, and just to be contrary - I wouldn't buy a CPU assuming I could overclock it to X GHz. No guarantees with this stuff, and half the time a CPU's overclockable-ness fades with time anyway.
 
OlyAR15

OlyAR15

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Oct 23, 2014
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I have an '11 Macbook Air, and an i5 Surface Book. Both using ultrabook CPUs (dual core). Both are absolutely fine for office work/web surfing. Given that G3258 is probably more powerful than either of the mobile CPUs, I don't think you will have any issues with it. It is more important to get adequate RAM and an SSD. I would rather get the cheap CPU and get 8GB RAM and a decent size SSD than a faster CPU in your (or your wife's) usage scenario.
 
Charlie98

Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
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OlyAR15 said:
Given that G3258 is probably more powerful than either of the mobile CPUs, I don't think you will have any issues with it. It is more important to get adequate RAM and an SSD. I would rather get the cheap CPU and get 8GB RAM and a decent size SSD than a faster CPU in your (or your wife's) usage scenario.
Click to expand...

I agree... I wasn't real impressed with my G3258, even OC'd, but it worked well in general use. I'd take it with 8GB RAM and an SSD over an i3 with no SSD.

QuickBooks is fairly single threaded, the Pentium should fare well enough. My i5 doesn't even get off the couch running QB... :D
 
Zodiark1593

Zodiark1593

Platinum Member
Oct 21, 2012
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Just drop the pentium in there, even at stock speed, it should more than suffice for office tasks, facebook, etc even with a scanner running. Just be sure to go for that 8 GB RAM and SSD. The RAM being so some rogue program doesn't grind her pc to a standstill, and ssd for obvious reasons.
 
frozentundra123456

frozentundra123456

Lifer
Aug 11, 2008
10,451
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I would just go with an i3. Only what 40.00 or so more than the pentium and faster stock clocks. Something no one has mentioned, I dont think you would want to overclock an office PC. But spread out over 3 or 4 years, the extra for an i3 over a pentium in peanuts anyway.
 
dave_the_nerd

dave_the_nerd

Lifer
Feb 25, 2011
16,991
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frozentundra123456 said:
I would just go with an i3. Only what 40.00 or so more than the pentium and faster stock clocks. Something no one has mentioned, I dont think you would want to overclock an office PC. But spread out over 3 or 4 years, the extra for an i3 over a pentium in peanuts anyway.
Click to expand...

How safe of you. ():)

Passionate people, hobbies. Never underestimate it. Some people would overclock their refrigerator or coffee maker if they thought it would get breakfast made 2 seconds quicker.
 
Zodiark1593

Zodiark1593

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Oct 21, 2012
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dave_the_nerd said:
How safe of you. ():)

Passionate people, hobbies. Never underestimate it. Some people would overclock their refrigerator or coffee maker if they thought it would get breakfast made 2 seconds quicker.
Click to expand...
Can we overclock our brains? I'd be curious to see how high I can clock it up to before visual artifacts occur.
 
M

MrTeal

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Dec 7, 2003
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dave_the_nerd said:
How safe of you. ():)

Passionate people, hobbies. Never underestimate it. Some people would overclock their refrigerator or coffee maker if they thought it would get breakfast made 2 seconds quicker.
Click to expand...

Heh, that is a bit of a subconscious sticking point, I guess. Even though it's not mine, I don't like not being able to turn the nobs like I'd want. :)

I'm not too worried about overclocking a G3258. The system will have automated backups, and it wouldn't be pushed to the absolute point of stability.

Edit: And you're right on that. I'm a guy who "overclocked" the LED lights on my Christmas tree.
 
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Charlie98

Charlie98

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Nov 6, 2011
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MrTeal said:
I'm not too worried about overclocking a G3258.
Click to expand...

Some of the G3258 OC's have been very stable (if I'm to believe the thread,) but I'm wondering if the OC'able boards are a thing of the past. Isn't there an issue with some mobo BIOS updates doing away with OC'ability?
 
A

ArisVer

Golden Member
Mar 6, 2011
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I am quite happy with my notebook running with a HDD. I can only guess that a G3528 will be roughly twice as fast. Add an SSD and you are good to go.
 
M

MrTeal

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2003
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Alright, after going back and forth over an overclocked G3258 vs an i3 vs a quad, I'm probably just going to take the lazy way out and do none of it.

My file/plex server isn't getting any closer to getting built than it was a month ago, so I think I'll just grab the 2500k that I had dedicated to that and stick it in a new computer for her. I might just grab that 3258 and spring a few extra buck for the cheapest Z97 MB for the plex server. If in the future I find I really do need a quad core for running multiple streams, dropping in a new CPU is a 5 minute upgrade.

Poor 2500k, relegated to Facebook and light office work. It deserves better.
 
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