Athlon 5150 for Lego PC games

[cbn]

Well, I am looking at Pentium 3220 and the AMD 5350.

I would definitely get this Pentium G3258 for $55 (after coupon) with free shipping---> http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2399287 over the G3220.

Nice thing about the G3258 is that it is unlocked processor and unlike the locked G3220 it also comes with an extra beefy copper bottom 95 watt cooler from Intel's quad core line-up:

http://www.legitreviews.com/intel-pentium-g3258-processor-review-quest-5ghz_145874

This rather than the aluminum base cooler that comes with Pentiums G3220:

http://extremespec.net/intel-pentium-g3220-review-testing-performance/

Pair G3258 with a Non-Z MINI-ITX motherboard capable of overclocking like Asrock H81M-ITX or Asrock H81M-ITX/Wifi and you can increase clocks well beyond the stock setting of 3.2 GHz if you want to.

My choice is leaning toward the 5350 because the heat sink is nearly noiseless, less power, and it is a APU which is supposed to handle better than the Pentium.

G3258's stock heatsink is extremely quiet at stock speeds, and even overclocked too.

As far as graphics go, I'm pretty sure G3258 is better than Athlon 5350. But this is sort of a moot point because the CPU of G3258 is vastly superior.

 

[cbn]

Also my wife picked the Elite 130 case due to its look, so the motherboard has to be mini-itx.

That case has good airflow and there is no reason to be limited to a 25 watt TDP processor.

 

[Seba]

Integrated graphics (Intel GT1) from a Celeron or Pentium Haswell may not be supported/god enough for Lego games. Check before you buy. For instance, Intel HD 3000 (from some Core i3/i5/i7 Sandy Bridge CPUs) is specifically mentioned as not supported for Lego Marvel.

 

[Blue_Max]

LEGO Movie, Marvel Heroes and Hobbit are all quite new and the graphics may be a bit much for Intel IGP... you may want to consider an AMD APU in this case.

 

[cbn]

Integrated graphics (Intel GT1) from a Celeron or Pentium Haswell may not be supported/god enough for Lego games. Check before you buy. For instance, Intel HD 3000 (from some Core i3/i5/i7 Sandy Bridge CPUs) is specifically mentioned as not supported for Lego Marvel.

That is only for Apple MacIntosh (along with some Nvidia and ATI GPUs).

Here is a HD3000 Running Lego Marvel Superheros on a Windows Laptop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQIjLWoycVc

 

[Seba]

That is only for Apple MacIntosh (along with some Nvidia and ATI GPUs).

I see that now.

Sorry about the confusion, but Intel HD Graphics GT1 remains a garbage iGPU, not suitable for games.

 

[Loser Gamer]

I dunno, this seems like another of those threads where the OP had his mind made up even before posting. I still think FM2 would be a much better platform for light gaming, but no point in continuing to argue about it.

Maybe they should add a listing to the stencil of questions to ask yourself before posting: Is your mind made up what you already want? Then move along?

 

[Madpacket]

Pair G3258 with a Non-Z MINI-ITX motherboard capable of overclocking like Asrock H81M-ITX or Asrock H81M-ITX/Wifi and you can increase clocks well beyond the stock setting of 3.2 GHz if you want to.

If the OP goes this route no doubt will this be much much faster but it'll also cost him a quite a bit more money after factoring in a 1150 ITX board + CPU.

OP - AM1 ITX boards are approx half the price of 1150 ITX boards, and if paired up with one that overclocks you could potentially drop down to a 5150 to save another few bucks and then bump it pretty safely to 2Ghz. Also for the HDD please try to pair it up with a cheap SSD if you can, makes everything so much faster.

 

[Madpacket]

The DC input converter would not stand overclockings so they prefered to not allow such practices with the AM1H ITX but the ATX supplied only AM1B ITX has such capabilities implemented.

I had no idea, that's great to know. I believe the cheaper MSI ITX has some basic overclocking settings as well.

 

[Madpacket]

Maybe they should add a listing to the stencil of questions to ask yourself before posting: Is your mind made up what you already want? Then move along?

Some people have preconceived notions of what they think they need or want and as a sanity check lay it out for others' to assess and criticize to ensure they are making an informed decision.

I don't think these types of questions should go unasked, even with bias involved.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

If the OP goes this route no doubt will this be much much faster but it'll also cost him a quite a bit more money after factoring in a 1150 ITX board + CPU.

Hmmm. The G3258 is $55.- at Amazon right now. Same price as Athlon 5150.

ASRock AM1H for Athlon is $59.- vs. ASRock H81M for Pentium is $59.-

Really not seeing the big price savings.

When the 7 year old becomes a 9 year old and wants the computer to play more demanding games a dedicated GPU added to the Pentium rig is going to provide MUCH better perfromance.

There is virtually no scenario involving games where the Athlon is a better choice than the Pentium.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

The G3258 is a great CPU option -- but you're going to want to buy a dedicated video card if you are planning to play games with it.

 

[Blue_Max]

Here is a HD3000 Running Lego Marvel Superheros on a Windows Laptop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQIjLWoycVc

At 1024x768 and low detail settings. Bleh.

At least it played.


On the plus side, the money saved on the Intel 2-core CPU, can go toward getting a nice video card so you can bump up the res and quality settings.

 

[Blue_Max]

There is virtually no scenario involving games where the Athlon is a better choice than the Pentium.

Agreed... though in his case, an APU with decent graphics is an interesting option... though the Intel route is so much cheaper, a video card can be grabbed that will outclass the AMD APU anyway.

 

[SPBHM]

my guess is that lego might not scale well with 4 cores, so the low per core performance can be trouble, also it's only 128sps, hardly good enough for gaming...

g3220 is better, but I would get a g1820 + VGA, even something like a r7 240, or look for a good deal on Richland or something (like the 6600K)

 

[cbn]

The G3258 is a great CPU option -- but you're going to want to buy a dedicated video card if you are planning to play games with it.

G3258 will play games games on the iGPU.

Of course, I wish the iGPU were faster, but if I had Athlon 5350's 128 GCN stream processors at only 600 MHz (with only single channel memory) I'd probably wish that were faster as well.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

G3258 will play games games on the iGPU.

And the G3258 iGPU will certainly play them better than an Athlon 5150.

 

[Madpacket]

Hmmm. The G3258 is $55.- at Amazon right now. Same price as Athlon 5150.

ASRock AM1H for Athlon is $59.- vs. ASRock H81M for Pentium is $59.-

Really not seeing the big price savings.

When the 7 year old becomes a 9 year old and wants the computer to play more demanding games a dedicated GPU added to the Pentium rig is going to provide MUCH better perfromance.

There is virtually no scenario involving games where the Athlon is a better choice than the Pentium.

I didn't want to get into a cherry picking contest over hardware costs but as stated earlier AM1 motherboards are much cheaper and they start at the low $30 dollar range. For example the MSI AM1I is only $33 at Newegg.com, where the ASRock AM1B-ITX is only $39 if overclocking is important. Also Tigerdirect has the 5150 on for $49 and 5350 on for $56.

Yes the Pentium blows away the AM1 chips and is clearly a better value if speed is of concern however keep in mind the OP's requirements. This system is for a 7 year old boy who wants to play Lego games and watch Netflix. As demonstrated the AM1 system easily meets these requirements and can save the OP a little money (up front out of pocket and long term power savings) in the process.

Keep in mind you can always add a video card to the AM1 platform down the road as well. My testing has shown (PCPer guys did similar testing) that pairing a 5350 up with a AMD 7750 or Geforce 750 shows huge gains in *most* games that aren't severely CPU limited. I was even able to play very demanding games like Crysis 3 comfortably on the 5350 when adding a Geforce 750 Ti.

Hopefully as games engines become better multithreaded the 4 cores on the AM1 chips are better taken advantage which appears to be the trend because of the adoption of the newest game consoles.

 

[cbn]

And the G3258 iGPU will certainly play them better than an Athlon 5150.

I'm sure it would too.

 

[Madpacket]

And the G3258 iGPU will certainly play them better than an Athlon 5150.

A little better yes (compared to the 5350 anyway) but not as much as you would expect considering the CPU speed differences.

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/70977-intel-pentium-anniversary-edition-g3258/?page=6
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/70977-intel-pentium-anniversary-edition-g3258/?page=7

And the performance per watt is much worse where 3258 consumes almost twice the power

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/70977-intel-pentium-anniversary-edition-g3258/?page=8

It would also be interesting to look at the frame time variance between them. I have a spare G3258 on my desk (just needs a mobo) so this is something I could compare to the 5350 in the near future, Hmm..

 

[cbn]

3258 consumes almost twice the power

But see that is totally fine because the OP has a Coolermaster Elite 130 case.

....and the G3258 has a great stock cooler.

 

[cbn]

A little better yes (compared to the 5350 anyway) but not as much as you would expect considering the CPU speed differences.

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/70977-intel-pentium-anniversary-edition-g3258/?page=6
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/70977-intel-pentium-anniversary-edition-g3258/?page=7

Here are the results (which according to the article's text are 1280 x 720 resolution):

I would say both G3258 and Athlon 5350 are unplayable (with the exception of G3258 in Rome II, because high FPS is less of a benefit in that type of strategy game).

So what happens if we lower resolution down to make the games playable? My guess is that the gap between G3258 and Athlon 5350 would increase further.

 

[Abwx]

Here are the results (which according to the article's text are 1280 x 720 resolution):

I would say both G3258 and Athlon 5350 are unplayable (with the exception of G3258 in Rome II, because high FPS is less of a benefit in that type of strategy game).

So what happens if we lower resolution down to make the games playable? My guess is that the gap between G3258 and Athlon 5350 would increase further.

You should had added comsumption for more a accurate picture.

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/70977-intel-pentium-anniversary-edition-g3258/?page=8

 

[monkeydelmagico]

I would say both G3258 and Athlon 5350 are unplayable (with the exception of G3258 in Rome II, because high FPS is less of a benefit in that type of strategy game).

So what happens if we lower resolution down to make the games playable? My guess is that the gap between G3258 and Athlon 5350 would increase further.

Good guess. It would. The higher frequency and larger thoroughput of the G3258 would increase it's lead the lower the resolution goes.

I think the OP would be better served with a dedicated GPU. A GT 640 or R7 250 will run circles around any integrated graphics for well under $100.-

 

[frozentundra123456]

Here are the results (which according to the article's text are 1280 x 720 resolution):

I would say both G3258 and Athlon 5350 are unplayable (with the exception of G3258 in Rome II, because high FPS is less of a benefit in that type of strategy game).

So what happens if we lower resolution down to make the games playable? My guess is that the gap between G3258 and Athlon 5350 would increase further.

Reinforces the point in my first post made a long time ago that the 5150/5350 is very weak for gaming on the igpu. Granted Lego games may be less demanding than the ones tested here, but then again, these tests are low resolution, low quality and only about half the frame rate of what is considered playable. I have already stated a stronger FM2 APU is a better/safer choice to ensure pleasurably playable framerates, and this reinforces it. A cheap cpu plus discrete is even better, but since it is a SFF case and the op's son will not likely play demanding games soon, an FM2 APU seems like the best choice.

Edit: Sorry, but the igp on a Pentium is almost universally reviled, and rightly so for gaming. But now somehow a chip that performs worse is being made out to be adequate for gaming. I just dont get it.