[TBG] The Best Gaming CPUs: Pentium vs. Core i3 vs. Core i5 vs. Core i7

[burninatortech4]

I can't wait to see how the 860k matches up against the new pentium.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I can't wait to see how the 860k matches up against the new pentium.

I would like to see the 860k, period. So far it's been a total paper launch. You can find a few shops offering tray processors with availability being "out of stock - 1 to 2 week wait time" or some such.

Also, with the A8-7600 dropping to $99 MSRP after Sept. 1st, where does that leave the 860k? Okay, it's easier to overclock. Is it going to be a $40-$50 part or something?

 

[sm625]

I can speak for BF4 MP and tell you that the game with dual core CPUs is unplayable even if you play at low settings 720p at 60fps.

What about with sound disabled?

 

[NTMBK]

What about with sound disabled?

Broken sound qualifies as "unplayable"...

 

[jacktesterson]

I'm pushing a R9 280 with a 750K and I've been very pleased. I haven't played any games where CPU has been a problem, but I play mostly single player console ports on my PC.

 

[crashtech]

BF4 MP is totally playable with a G3258 at 1080 and Ultra quality, as long as have a good GPU and you can accept momentary dips below 60fps.

 

[wand3r3r]

BF4 MP is totally playable with a G3258 at 1080 and Ultra quality, as long as have a good GPU and you can accept momentary dips below 60fps.

Couldn't that also be said as handles reduced settings?

 

[crashtech]

Couldn't that also be said as handles reduced settings?

Not sure what you mean, I think gamers that spend less than $70 on the CPU would think 1080 and Ultra quality are totally acceptable.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

BF4 MP is totally playable with a G3258 at 1080 and Ultra quality, as long as have a good GPU and you can accept momentary dips below 60fps.

What you consider playable and what the average person considers playable are clearly out of whack. A G3258 is awful on BF4 along with every other dual core out there. That game chokes anything that is only running 2 threads. It's well documented.

My friend just ditched a G3258 (he got bad advice on a forum as well) and quickly upgraded to an i5 -- it's pretty lousy advice to tell people to waste their time/money on the Pentium when we both know 50-75% of the people will be disappointed with the performance. The G3258 can manage on single player BF4, but is a poor performer in multiplayer regardless of video card. People really need a minimum of an i3 for a satisfactory BF4 experience (and that's still below what EA recommends) -- let's try to be honest. Just because you're happy with bad performance doesn't mean it's a wise purchase.

I will mention this: The G3258 is awesome at playing classic PC games -- but it just isn't a good option if you want to play modern games -- many of which are now optimized to push 4 or 8 threads (like BF4 does).

Let me quote the Recommended System Requirements from EA (because barely meeting the minimums really diminishes the game experience):
Notice how I bolded how EA recommends a Quad Core........

OS
WINDOWS 8 64-BIT

PROCESSOR
AMD SIX-CORE CPU
INTEL QUAD-CORE CPU

MEMORY
8 GB

GRAPHICS CARD
AMD RADEON HD 7870
NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 660

GRAPHICS MEMORY
3 GB

HARD DRIVE
30 GB

 

[Deders]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2014/06/05/scan-overclocks-pentium-g3258-to-4-5ghz/1

I bet they just tested single player.

 

[cbn]

Let me quote the Recommended System Requirements from EA (because barely meeting the minimums really diminishes the game experience):
Notice how I bolded how EA recommends a Quad Core........

OS
WINDOWS 8 64-BIT

PROCESSOR
AMD SIX-CORE CPU
INTEL QUAD-CORE CPU

MEMORY
8 GB

GRAPHICS CARD
AMD RADEON HD 7870
NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 660

GRAPHICS MEMORY
3 GB

HARD DRIVE
30 GB

Minimum requirements for BF4 (according to the official site here--> http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield-4/pc) is either a AMD Athlon X2 2.8 GHz or Intel Core 2 Dou 2.4 GHz.

That is a really low requirement (and surpassed by a OC G3258 by a quite large margin)

Now the recommended specs do list Intel Quad core and AMD hexcore, but that is a very general recommendation (Intel Quad core could mean Core 2 quad, a processor which is also surpassed by an OC Pentium G3258).

 

[crashtech]

What you consider playable and what the average person considers playable are clearly out of whack. A G3258 is awful on BF4 along with every other dual core out there. That game chokes anything that is only running 2 threads. It's well documented.

I'll work on providing proof, until then I absolutely stand behind what I say, based on actual experience with the CPU in question.

Frankly I did not expect as good a result as we achieved, in fact I kept encouraging my nephew to find more crowded servers to verify our anomalous results. Therein lies part of the problem, unless the server can be managed to produce replicable results, and everyone always has the same ping and bandwidth, objective benchmarking is well nigh impossible.

It could be that we achieved a better than average result due to the fact that my old GTX 770 was in use, having replaced it with an R9 290x. That is not what most budget gamers will be using.

 

[cbn]

WA G3258 is awful on BF4 along with every other dual core out there. That game chokes anything that is only running 2 threads. It's well documented.

I'm sorry but what you are writing here is just too general.

Just because Pentium G3258 has only 2 cores/2 threads does not mean it should be lumped together with every other 2 core/2 thread processor out there.

 

[crashtech]

Well it is tough to see Intel horn in on one of AMD's last remaining strong points, the low-end gaming system.

 

[wand3r3r]

Not sure what you mean, I think gamers that spend less than $70 on the CPU would think 1080 and Ultra quality are totally acceptable.

It was just another way to state it's capabilities, I would say that if it drops in FPS it could be considered capable of running at e.g. high settings (without fps drops) vs ultra (with occasional dips).

 

[crashtech]

It was just another way to state it's capabilities, I would say that if it drops in FPS it could be considered capable of running at e.g. high settings (without fps drops) vs ultra (with occasional dips).

Yes, for sure, though I wasn't able to convince him to try the lower image quality settings; he didn't feel the need.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Minimum requirements for BF4 (according to the official site here--> http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield-4/pc) is either a AMD Athlon X2 2.8 GHz or Intel Core 2 Dou 2.4 GHz.

That is a really low requirement (and surpassed by a OC G3258 by a quite large margin)

Now the recommended specs do list Intel Quad core and AMD hexcore, but that is a very general recommendation (Intel Quad core could mean Core 2 quad, a processor which is also surpassed by an OC Pentium G3258).

A really low requirement produces a really lousy experience.

Seriously, who spends $60 on a game to run it on low quality settings? I could probably get Crysis to run on a Pentium 4 if I really worked at it, too. But it isn't worth the effort.

So your advice is to build a game machine that meets the minimum requirements and not the recommended ones? That's pretty bad advice and I seriously hope no one wastes their money doing it. It's worth the extra money for a cpu with 4 threads.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

I'm sorry but what you are writing here is just too general.

Just because Pentium G3258 has only 2 cores/2 threads does not mean it should be lumped together with every other 2 core/2 thread processor out there.

If you're planning to play a modern game, yes it can -- game developers are now optimizing for quad cores. It's just a fact of life now. The G3258 would have been amazing if this was still 2012 -- but developers have moved on beyond dual cores. It you are playing old PC games the G3258 remains an excellent choice -- but if the game was released by about mid-2013 or newer, forget it..... You're going to need an i3 for a quality experience. I could probably get BF4 to run on my dual core Atom, too -- that doesn't mean I should do it.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Well it is tough to see Intel horn in on one of AMD's last remaining strong points, the low-end gaming system.

All Intel really needs to do is sell an unlocked i3.

 

[crashtech]

All Intel really needs to do is sell an unlocked i3.

That would be nice, but from the looks of things, they don't need to, since their lowly 2C/2T CPU nips at the heels of AMD quad cores, has WAY better ST performance, and is a cheap entry into LGA 1150.

Besides, an unlocked 2C/4T Haswell would make the low-end i5s look bad.

 

[cbn]

If you're planning to play a modern game, yes it can -- game developers are now optimizing for quad cores. It's just a fact of life now. The G3258 would have been amazing if this was still 2012 -- but developers have moved on beyond dual cores. It you are playing old PC games the G3258 remains an excellent choice -- but if the game was released by about mid-2013 or newer, forget it..... You're going to need an i3 for a quality experience.

Logic tells me AAA Developers optimize for whatever allows them to have the most sales. I'm guessing that would include the most common of cpus out there.

For example, I happen to be playing Call of Duty Ghosts (released late 2013) right now on the free steam weekend with my OC G3258 and R7 250X.

According to the COD website the minimum spec for Ghosts is a E8200 dual core and recommended spec for the game is a Core i5-680 (3.6 GHz Clarkdale dual core with hyperthreading):

https://community.callofduty.com/co...23/call-of-duty-ghosts-pc-system-requirements

Clarkdale was not a very fast chip and I would expect the fast i5-680 variant to be somewhat slower than a 3.1 GHz Core i3-2100 based on these benchmarks--> http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/20

So I am not sure what level of chip you mean by Core i3? If you mean a Sandy Bridge i3-2100 (at 3.1 GHz) then certainly a OC G3258 should be sufficient to meet that requirement by almost anyone's standards.

P.S. I'm finding gameplay on Call of Duty Ghosts multiplayer to be butter smooth (with no hitching whatsoever) with my OC G3258. I do have to lower resolution down, but I only have a R7 250X so that is expected.

 

[cbn]

Minimum requirements for BF4 (according to the official site here--> http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield-4/pc) is either a AMD Athlon X2 2.8 GHz or Intel Core 2 Dou 2.4 GHz.

That is a really low requirement (and surpassed by a OC G3258 by a quite large margin)

Now the recommended specs do list Intel Quad core and AMD hexcore, but that is a very general recommendation (Intel Quad core could mean Core 2 quad, a processor which is also surpassed by an OC Pentium G3258).

A really low requirement produces a really lousy experience.

Seriously, who spends $60 on a game to run it on low quality settings? I could probably get Crysis to run on a Pentium 4 if I really worked at it, too. But it isn't worth the effort.

So your advice is to build a game machine that meets the minimum requirements and not the recommended ones? That's pretty bad advice and I seriously hope no one wastes their money doing it. It's worth the extra money for a cpu with 4 threads.

You missed my point.

My point was the recommended specs for the game are "Intel Quad core". This can mean anything including a stock clocked Q6600 or even worse a Q8200 quad core.

So even though an OC Pentium G3258 is only a 2C/2T processor it still exceeds the multithreading capacity of those older Intel quad cores and thus functionally meets the recommendation for "Intel Quad core".

 

[crashtech]

There seems to be a persistence of belief that quad cores are always better, even if their individual cores are little faster than half the speed than those of a brand new dual core.

 

[AtenRa]

There seems to be a persistence of belief that quad cores are always better, even if their individual cores are little faster than half the speed than those of a brand new dual core.

In 2014 yes Quad cores are most of the time much better both for applications and gaming.

Just have a look at AT Pentium G3258 review and see how the Pentium is doing against the 65W A8-7600 or the Core i3. Even OCed to 4.7GHz and most of the time it is slower than the Core i3 4330 and in some cases the A8-7600.
It is fun to play with but not something to recommend for you main 2014 System.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8232/...y-edition-review-the-intel-pentium-g3258-ae/2

 

[cbn]

Even OCed to 4.7GHz and most of the time it is slower than the Core i3 4330

But that is OK because that is a comparison of a $72 processor to a $147 one going by Intel Ark Box prices. (Current street prices using Newegg are $69.99 for G3258 and $139.99 for i3-4330)

The question (in my mind) is does the overclocked $72 processor meet "recommended specs" (in a functional sense, if not literally) for the latest games. I think it does for BF4 and COD Ghosts.