Buying a used core i3 540 or new Pentium G G3220 haswell?

[BSim500]

I change my vote to i3. I think the features are worth the slight loss in clock, but only if you can overclock the nehalem

The i3-540 is OCable. They only started locking down the i3's on Sandy Bridge's (by tying core frequency to other stuff like PCI-E bus). You OC Clarkdale's "old-school" style, ie, the multiplier is locked, but you OC the FSB / BCLK and simply adjust the memory multiplier to match. They were superb OC-ers too. I got 2.93GHz -> 3.9GHz on stock voltage. At that speed they run games like Dishonored, Bioshock Infinite, etc, just fine.

If OP has access to one cheaply, he may as well go for that and OC it if he intends to run some other games beyond listed ones. For 1-2T, it's probably same OC'd as a Haswell pentium, but for games with 3-4 threads, the +10-30% boost of Hyper-Threading makes an i3 a great choice.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Haswell ~ 1.25x Nehalem. Discounting the HT difference between the i3 and Pentium, an i3 540 @ 4GHz only ~= 3.2GHz Haswell i3.
I'd say get the Haswell Pentium for a no-overclock, hassle-free experience. The newer platform and reduced power usage are bonuses.
Saying this as a Nehalem lover too - the old gals are still purring fine over at the folks' (2x i7 920 D0 @ 4GHz).

 

[Headfoot]

I agree the calculus changes once you introduce additional, better threaded games.

On your budget though OP, given that you know for certain that SC2 and D3 will be primary games, I still say you get the best Haswell dual-core Pentium you can for now in budget. In the future, if you need a better CPU you will be able to upgrade within the socket. For now, this will hold you over for those two games admirably

 

[john5220]

^ hey yeah thanks just waiting to see if the prices changes back to $50 on Amazon for the 3GHZ haswell right now it went back to $66 it fluctuates.

Newegg dont accept credit cards from the Caribbean here for some reason. Meh this is the reason I buy my stuff from Amazon never have any problems with them.

Going with a $54 Gigabyte mainboard and 4GB of RAm also.

I already have samsung 128GB SSD and cooler master tower HAF with cooler master power supply and my trust HD 4870

so all I really need is a board cpu and ram I think I can consider myself lucky that these 2 games are the only thing I ever play and will be playing for the next 8 years. My SSD is sata 3 so I wanna get the haswell pentium to experience the updated speed.

I bet an intel flies on these SSD.

doubt I will have to worry about DDR 4. By the time I have to change PC again it might ave DDR 5 by then.

 

[OCGuy]

Any reason you have 2 of the same thread going?

 

[john5220]

ok guys so I finally placed my order today well its a good thing I waited I got a super great discount on a motherboard for $40 here is what I bought

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

These are what I purchased I already have the Cooler master HAF tower with Cooler Master 450 Watts Power supply and a 128GB SSD and 500GB HDD along with my old trusty power hungry electric bill hater Radeon HD 4870 512MB card the only thing this mainboard I won't be able to use back my old Asus Xonar DG sound card PCI but thats ok I will just sell it. Not like I used headphones anymore anyways.

I will just sell my old board and cpu plus RAM. Its a ECS Black board with AM2+ Athlon II X2 and 4GB DDR 2.

I believe I could probably get back like atleast $66 US for the entire thing. Or $400 TTD~

And I will be cool with that. It would essentially cover at bare minimum the cost of the Pentium Haswell. If I put it in a old tower and slap on a HDD well then seems like would be even better. Plus my Asus Xonar DG should reclaim some cash for that aswell.

All in all I think I made a fine upgrade here, at most I will be playing Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 for the next 6 years.

And who knows I am sure this pentium would be able to play DayZ standalone aswell yeah? plus should be slightly futureproof since I could always buy a used i5 in the future if I ever need a quad core and then over clock it.

 

[Arkaign]

(1)- You can't overclock anything on an H81 chipset board.

(2)- DEFINITELY start an upgrade fund. Put something trivial in there a couple of times a week, or do odd jobs for small fees to add to it. Before you know it, you'll have the $$ to buy an i5. The Pentium Dual Core is okay for SC2/Skyrim/Diablo 3 for sure. For BF3/BF4/etc, basically anything coming out in the future, it is going to be bad to completely awful. (NOTE : Because you have an H81, just get the non-K i5 4570 for example)

(3)- Once you get that i5 taken care of, put the sale of the Pentium and other raised $$ into a modest GPU upgrade. Even a 750ti would be utterly mind-blowing compared to the 4870, and the lowered heat/power will be extremely welcome.

It's a step by step process. You don't have to aim for CF 290X, etc, but you will certainly want to upgrade CPU/GPU unless you TRULY never want to play anything other than SC2/D3.

 

[Headfoot]

Also if you only got 4GB of RAM that is going to start to limit you in a lot of new games going forward. BF4 stutters like mad on anything less than 6 GB

 

[john5220]

Also if you only got 4GB of RAM that is going to start to limit you in a lot of new games going forward. BF4 stutters like mad on anything less than 6 GB

Hi thanks for your concern but I am not worried about battlefield games the last bf game I bought was Battlefield 3 for $7 lol

Its way better than say call of duty or counter strike however I limit myself to blizzard games well those other than world of Warcraft.

I have trained myself to rely solely on Valve and Blizzard for my games. I like games with deep calculation and gameplay this will include RTS and ARPG and also MOBA like say DOTA 2. I like immense gameplay, builds and strategy. Almost infinite variables.

It must come with excellent artwork I am not too concerned with realistic graphics.

I am happy Blizzard releases a game once every 10 years. I get my moneies worth I have been playing StarCraft 1 since 1998 lol and just imagine it has a bigger online player base than Battlefield 3 right now lol

 

[CuriousMike]

All in all I think I made a fine upgrade here, at most I will be playing Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 for the next 6 years.

I put a G3230 in our spare computer last month and it's plenty fast compared to the old Core2Duo that it replaced.

And depending on the resolution you'll game at, it could actually last you 6 years.

 

[john5220]

I wonder how the g3230 performs in 2 threaded games like diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 compared to a sandy bridge i7

I also need the Intel chip for dolphin emulator to play GameCube and Wii games compared to 2600k i7. I know Intel is king here

Guess the real question here is how the haswell Pentium g performs in single threaded benchmarks compared to 2600k i7

 

[blackened23]

It won't be a core i7 but it will perform awesome with a dGPU @1080p. My main desktop rig is a 4770k, but I put a 3220 in my HTPC and was pretty stunned at how well it performs in games; needless to say it's VERY snappy in casual use and performs extremely well in games with a dGPU. PCPer has some benchmarks with dGPU that you may find helpful. Quite frankly, I wasn't expecting to like the 3220 so much but I do love it. Quite a great chip and performs well too.

I think you will be pleased. Get a good dGPU and you will be good to go. I wouldn't rely on the iGPU or anything, but as long as you get a great discrete card, you will be happy.

 

[john5220]

My friend says I am at a significant disadvantage since this main board I bought is PCIE 2.0 gen

That I should of bought 3.0 can someone elaborate on this?

 

[blackened23]

Which motherboard is that. I'm not aware of any 8 series chipset board that is PCIE 2.

All H81, B85, H87, and Z87 boards are PCIE 3.0. Even in the event of pcie2, it doesn't make a difference really. You'd be fine. But all 8 series haswell boards should be supporting pcie3.0, what board do you have?

 

[john5220]

So my friend said this Pentium g misses the vector instructions etc needed for math and super pi and hence this CPU is a bad buy for sc2 and d3 and other games

I think its time I cancel this order.

 

[Yuriman]

So my friend said this Pentium g misses the vector instructions etc needed for math and super pi and hence this CPU is a bad buy for sc2 and d3 and other games

I think its time I cancel this order.

AVX isn't used by Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3. Your friend is wrong on both counts.

EDIT: It's true that Pentiums and Celerons don't have AVX. A lot of people on these forums have given Intel a lot of flak about that, but it will have absolutely zero impact on your gaming experience. The closest thing I can think of is emulation - things like Dolphin (gamecube emulator) get a boost from these instructions. I don't think any actual games, and definitely not Diablo and Starcraft, have any use for these instructions.

If you're concerned about the future, get an i3, they support all of Intel's current instructions and the addition of hyperthreading makes them very solid chips for every game. If you are considering going with something like an Athlon 750K instead, you're going to have considerably worse performance in those two games than with the Pentium.

 

[blackened23]

So my friend said this Pentium g misses the vector instructions etc needed for math and super pi and hence this CPU is a bad buy for sc2 and d3 and other games

I think its time I cancel this order.

edit: I see now from your above post. PCIe2 vs PCIe3 are really no different. Although that wouldn't be my first choice for an H81 board, I quite like the Asus H81K-M board. Also, your friend is being silly. None of these games use AVX. You're buying a 60$ processor so you won't get the latest instruction sets, but AVX matters none for gaming. As long as you get a good dGPU you will be fine. Of course if you want to spend more on an i3 or i5 you can do that as well. If you really care. 750ti, GTX 660, or AMD 270, any of those should do you well for gaming. If you're budget limited as you seem to be, i'd go with the G3220 and apply that difference towards a great dGPU. Trust me, a 3220 with a good dGPU will do very well in games. AVX is a non issue.

 

[john5220]

Hey thanks man I went ahead and re ordered the setup. My friend gave me a scare he said this haswell was not better than the i3 clarkdale he was selling me because it was missing the instructions etc

But come to think of it I don't need pcie 3 cause all I want to do is play sc2 and D3 reaper of souls.

Also I never ever play without a discrete GPU

I wanna sell my HD 4870 later down the road and get a gtx 750 or something like that to maybe run DAYZ standalone I am sure this setup will do the trick.

Dayz is a big if because I wanna get heart of the swarm for my next game purchase

I am assuming the fancy instructions in the i3 and 5 dealing with games is not needed for the games I am into plus it probably is only useful for igpu which I will never use.

 

[john5220]

Hey guys BTW

Since my Athlon II X2 250 @ 3GHZ gets 8 FPS in Diablo 3 reaper of souls in massive elite fights when there are like 3 elite packs with a full 4 players online in your screen it dips to 8 fps.

How much would you all say this pentium that I ordered will now get? my old board was also DDR 667 MHZ.

I do have my amazing plextor 128GB SSD with latest SATA tech that I am gonna use back for my intel system

I bet this SSD is gonna scream with this haswell. So excited can't wait for it to arrive.

I know most people with i5 sandy bridge and ivy with GTX 660 etc tend to get 40 FPS in these fights and its mostly cause D3 is clogged with the 2 threads alone that it supports.

If Blizzard made these games to support quad cores man we would have had sooo much more options.

I can't even say ok I would just buy a old used Phenom II X6 or something and just swap it because at the end of the day even a Ivy Bridge celeron wipes the floor with these Phenon II X6 etc when it comes to single and dual threaded apps.

 

[john5220]

Ok so I finally got the CPU today with the MB and RAM

Must say its a blast very snappy compared to my old AMD. I checked with some friends who play Diablo 3 and one guy who has the best 8 core AMD dips to 15 FPS in huge fights.

My Pentium hovers around 23 FPS and up. Few people with i5 did a test and they have been reported to get 28 FPS with Ivy Bridge i5. One guy with a Hasswell i7 got no less than 35 FPS in the biggest fight.

My old Athlon II X2 at the same 3GHZ would get 8 fps in these fight scenes. So its a massive bump up for me I am quite satisfied knowing this $60 intel beats a $180 AMD.
I even tested it in Battlefield 3 with 64 player metro map and it handles it way better than my AMD

I used to get 14 fps wit my AMD now I get 30 FPS and up. Quite pleased if I do say so myself.

All great for $140 USD combo kit. Later on I will slap in a i5 broadwell but thats going to be in like 5 years from now who knows I might just change everything by then.