For general home use, will my wife tell the difference between an i3 and a pentium?

[mcveigh]

Looking at finally upgrading from an AMD AM3+ 4 core processor.
I have an SSD. I'm looking at a cheaper older i3 or more recent Pentium G4400 Skylake or better.

Are the Pentium's decent?

 

[UsandThem]

Possibly with some Pentium versions.

Buy a G4560. 2 cores, 4 threads. $75 @ BH Photo. You're welcome

https://www.techspot.com/review/1325-intel-pentium-g4560/

With that CPU, you can just ignore the i3 line, and if you want better performance, you need to move up to i5 CPUs.

You can also look at Ryzen 5 CPUs, but I don't think you will be anywhere near the G4560 in price/performance (even right now where it sells for about $15 over Intel MSRP).

 

[mcveigh]

Thanks, that does look pretty nice.

 

[cbn]

Pentium G4560 is the one to get.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I suggest going with a Ryzen 5 series CPU. They are (relatively) inexpensive, and while the G4560 is probably slightly faster, at "most things", than an AM3+ quad-core, I would still hate to suggest going from a quad-core to a dual-core, even one with HT.

Then again, the G4560 is a little power-house of a CPU, and punches far above its weight class.

Still, a Ryzen 5 1600(X) is a much better all-rounder, especially when clocked at 3.7Ghz or above. (You'll probably want an AIO CLC with a 240mm or bigger rad.)

 

[crashtech]

She won't likely know if you are regularly maintaining the machine to pare down unnecessary drains on resources. A dual core with a fresh and/or well maintained OS can still operate a browsing machine with limited numbers of tabs, usually quite well. It's when other things get tacked on (freeware, malware) or usage patterns get more complex that things go to hell.

 

[bbhaag]

The 4560 sounds like it will fit her needs rather well and comes with a budget friendly price. Just to be sure what does she use her pc for? Netflix, Office, Outlook, general surfing like FB, maybe even some light gaming? Or is she a more heavy user like video encoding, archiving files, streaming content to devices?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Seriously, if you do end up going with a G4560, consider a G4600 with HD 630 rather than HD 610, and an ASRock DeskMini mini-STX PC. (Though, I've been having intermittent reliability problems with one of mine, that has an Adata SX8000 PCI-E M.2 SSD.)

 

[crashtech]

The G4560 is the new baseline for a Facebook machine today, imo. If a more intensive use case is envisioned, simply make sure the chassis, PSU, and motherboard can handle the addition of a dGPU.

Although, Larry has a point about the step up in iGPU performance. I just never take Intel's graphics seriously, except maybe Iris Pro.

 

[Torn Mind]

I say get an i5 and and 32 gigs of RAM and then you'll certainly never upgrade it in 7 years.

There will be stuff running in the background and browsers are deceptively demanding if one opens many script-laden sites. The browsers themselves are pigs, with Firefox being laggy while Chrome eats memory.

 

[bbhaag]

Are you guys sure about your recommendations? Six core cpus and 32 gig of ram seem rather intense...I mean not to talk down to you guys but my wife and I just picked out a Lenovo i5 lappy and it does everything she needs it to do.

 

[UsandThem]

Are you guys sure about your recommendations? Six core cpus and 32 gig of ram seem rather intense...I mean not to talk down to you guys but my wife and I just picked out a Lenovo i5 lappy and it does everything she needs it to do.

I personally believe he should hold out for the AMD Threadripper

But seriously, it comes down to what she does with the PC. If it's anything like my wife, the i3 is plenty. She plays the newest Sims game, email, Microsoft Office, browses the web, and the i3 is plenty. If she is more of an advanced user and does stuff like video editing, then move her on up the CPU ladder.

My 15 year old still is happily gaming/coding/programming on his PC I built him in 2013, and it has an i3-4330, which doesn't even have hyper-threading (correction, it does have HT). It has an 850 EVO as his OS drive, and 12 GB of RAM (left-over sticks from older builds). Honestly, I even asked him yesterday if his PC was able to still do all of his stuff without slowing down, and he is still happy with it. I think everyone is just excited about all the new high-end CPUs that recently launched. Sure things will move towards 'moar cores!' at some point, I just don't think it will be as fast as some people think (remember how long it took most developers to really use more than two cores?). Nothing wrong if you need/want one, but heck there was a user here who got rid of his 6700k build because he was "afraid" it would be too slow in the near future (seriously) because it only had four cores.

 

[crashtech]

Just for the record, all desktop i3 CPUs have HT, afaik.

 

[UsandThem]

Just for the record, all desktop i3 CPUs have HT, afaik.

Yup, you're right. I was thinking about the previous Pentiums, and had a momentary brain fart.

 

[Torn Mind]

Are you guys sure about your recommendations? Six core cpus and 32 gig of ram seem rather intense...I mean not to talk down to you guys but my wife and I just picked out a Lenovo i5 lappy and it does everything she needs it to do.

i5s are not hexacores.

Windows loves to randomly gobble up a CPU core from time-to-time.

Assuming that the OP's AM3+ was built with the Bulldozer family of CPUs that precipitated its release, meaning an FX-4100 or FX-4300, had they chosen a Sandy Bridge i5, they wouldn't be needing to upgrade now.

 

[bruceb]

My old Dell Demension 8200 has a P4 at 1.8Ghz and 2GB RAM (most it can hold and address) It runs XP PRO SP3 with all updates and Firefox 52.2.0 ESR (FF53 and later say won't install on XP) .. Runs fairly decent for a 16 year old computer (uses Avast Free Antivirus) .. On my Toshiba Laptop C855-S5347 it has a Celeron B830 at 1.8Ghz and 4GB of RAM, same version of Firefox and Antivirus .. it runs Windows 10 Home 64 Version 1703 Build 15063.413 .. For just about all my needs, very fast

 

[VirtualLarry]

BruceB, just ask, I'll send you new PC. Srsly.

 

[bruceb]

Larry, No need at this time as everything works and does what I need. And if I need a program like, TurboTax which only runs on Win 7 and newer, I do have my laptop to use it on. I just don't want to go to all the hassle of reinstalling all the programs that were on the XP box. Most of them can run under Win 10 but it is a long job to reinstall and then get all the quirky options set so it looks and works like I want. Eventually, it will get replaced, just not now.

 

[mcveigh]

This has gotten pretty funny! Thanks everyone for the input.
This is just a basic gmail, tons of youtube for the kids, some word and excel docs machine.
I have either 12 or 16GB ram, Ram was cheap and I rolled some over from my HTPC in to this.
My wife loves to have a hundred tabs open in Chrome. I think that will probably be the biggest hog.

I may not even up grade. I think most of the issues are from an Intel AC-7260 wifi card. I found a lot of people having issues on Intel's forums.
But I do want to move to a smaller case....

 

[Charlie98]

Although my opinion is a bit dated... in a general use machine the Pentium is a decent CPU. My experience is with Sandy and Ivy Bridge, mind you... nothing newer.

I originally had a little G620 in my HTPC, just for giggles I swapped in the i3 2100 and I really couldn't tell any difference. I do not transcode on it.

I also built a GP PC for my inlaws with a G3220 in 2013... a glorified browser and light media player... and it's rock solid even 4 years later. When I use it, I can't really tell a difference between it and my OC'ed 2500K in general use, nothing, anyway, that makes me say... cripes! I need to build them a new computer! This thing is a boat anchor!

I would think the newer Pentiums are just as good or better.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I also built a GP PC for my inlaws with a G3220 in 2013... a glorified browser and light media player... and it's rock solid even 4 years later. When I use it, I can't really tell a difference between it and my OC'ed 2500K in general use, nothing, anyway, that makes me say... cripes! I need to build them a new computer! This thing is a boat anchor!

Does that PC have an SSD?

I would think the newer Pentiums are just as good or better.

Easily, if you're talking about a HyperThreaded Pentium.

 

[Torn Mind]

This has gotten pretty funny! Thanks everyone for the input.
This is just a basic gmail, tons of youtube for the kids, some word and excel docs machine.
I have either 12 or 16GB ram, Ram was cheap and I rolled some over from my HTPC in to this.
My wife loves to have a hundred tabs open in Chrome. I think that will probably be the biggest hog.

I may not even up grade. I think most of the issues are from an Intel AC-7260 wifi card. I found a lot of people having issues on Intel's forums.
But I do want to move to a smaller case....

I have pushed Chrome tabs into the 100+ range easily myself. So often that I know that Gmail is a pig of a website. So is Yahoo and most other email providers. Facebook is also script heavy. When Chome is freshly opened, an i3 or G4560 will go through the websites with the greatest of ease. But throw in a whole bunch of tabs, and annoying background processes like Windows svchost pegging a core to 100 percent again, and then one appreciates having two extra real cores.

I have used Sandy Bridge Celerons and i7-3770s and Ks on the same system(I sold off the i7s for coin). When Chrome is "empty", there is a difference in lag between the i7 and Celeron, which I suspect is due to clockspeed. An i3 would be indistinguishable from an i7 when the system is barely loaded. But when the session ballons from whatever web browsing adventures the user comes a across, the real quad core will start showing itself.


A hundred tabs in Chrome will gobble up most of the RAM present in a 16 GB RAM system and start hitting the pagefile. An SSD will mitigate the thrashing if budgets limits the buyer from getting more RAM, but those who can afford it would be well advised to get both the SSD and more RAM.

I have too much time on my hands and close my Chrome tabs one-by-one, with a screenshot before killing the page. Needless to say, the process lets me see how the memory and CPU usage goes down as tabs get closed.

Ivy Bridge or Haswell i5 prebuilts with RAM expandable to 32GBs should be considered a purchase option.

Doing something like having a ton of Redfin tabs open will make anyone realize that some websites are truly resource boat anchors.

Your wife might want to try out Vivaldi as a Chrome alternative.

Oh, and I also disabled Chrome "auto-closing" of tabs cheat they employ to reduce RAM usage. I do not like my tabs being reset.

 

[Charlie98]

Does that PC have an SSD?.

Of course it does...

I actually have a backup image of the OS on a storage HDD, I go into it once in a while to update it... that DOES make me say "Good heavens! I need to replace this dog!" I guess I should have clarified... a Pentium with at least an OS SSD makes a good general purpose PC.

 

[Charlie98]

A hundred tabs in Chrome will gobble up most of the RAM present in a 16 GB RAM system and start hitting the pagefile. An SSD will mitigate the thrashing if budgets limits the buyer from getting more RAM, but those who can afford it would be well advised to get both the SSD and more RAM.

I've noticed the past year or so that web pages (I use IE and Firefox) are really starting to use the RAM; I updated all my machines to 16GB (when DDR3 was available and cheap) so it's a non-issue now... but if I was still at 8GB (4GB for the HTPC!) I'd be looking for a solution.

 

[piasabird]

I built a computer a while back with an i3 6100 and I put 16gb of DDR4 RAM in it. I have often purchased a computer and wished I had more RAM. Often when you want more RAM the old RAM is hard to get. I don't like general statements like 4 gigs of RAM is good enough for an HTPC. It might work now, but will it work well 2 years from now? It fact, will it work well now? My wife likes to watch stuff on YouTube and other websites. Once you add a virus scanner, etc., it might slow down a bit.