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

[Enigmoid]

1080p might be a bridge too far for most Pentium 4's -- although I do know that the later P4's can manage 720p with a good dedicated video card of their era (like a Radeon 9600 Pro). High CPU load, though -- but fairly smooth playback.

Yep but my point was that any heavier usage and an i5 + HDD is easily going to be better than a P4 HT + SSD.

1080p video is extremely common, so is skype. A P4 will not suffice.

 

[Lepton87]

1080p might be a bridge too far for most Pentium 4's -- although I do know that the later P4's can manage 720p with a good dedicated video card of their era (like a Radeon 9600 Pro). High CPU load, though -- but fairly smooth playback.

And 130W of power draw just from the CPU to just play a movie that's more then my entire PC draws when it plays a movie and it has a 1200W PSU and a top-of-the-line MOBO and 5 disks plus CD-ROM and a plethora of fans, it's best to get rid of that old tech just for its atrocious power draw. Replacing them with something similar but even faster is pennies and the power draw will drop by 10x. I know that the electricity is cheap in the US but it's not so in much of the world. Using P4s is just wasting electricity unless you are doing it in winter and augmenting your central heating system.

 

[crashtech]

MOTR's assertion was not just that the P4 could accomplish modern tasks, but that if it was equipped with an SSD it would be indistinguishable from a Haswell with a HDD :

Even that is misleading -- I can probably go grab an ancient Pentium 4 and hook it up to a solid state..... And most users will probably think its faster at a majority of tasks than a Haswell with a hard drive in it...

Not really credible, imo.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

MOTR's assertion was not just that the P4 could accomplish modern tasks, but that if it was equipped with an SSD it would be indistinguishable from a Haswell with a HDD :

Not really credible, imo.

Not really credible? WOW.... You've got blinders on.

80% of the office computers at the non-profit where I volunteer are still Pentium 4 powered. They run modern tasks on a daily basis -- it is how they get donations and survive.

Most office workers don't watch HD videos when they're supposed to be working. Those P4's run the database software and office suites on Windows 7 just fine.

I just can't believe all the elitist crap I hear on this forum. Some of you really sound like snobs -- Look at the hard facts... 25% of the world's computers are still running freakin' XP (and Windows XP actually just increased in share in June).... At least these guys at the non-profit are running Win 7. There are a ton of schools/churches/day care/volunteer groups that are using donated desktops that are around 5 - 10 years old. It's not like a computer suddenly stops running applications the day it turns 2 years old.

The average business uses a desktop for 4 years -- and many donate them to be used at non-profits (or recycled) after that. The catholic school down the street is still running Pentium 3's in its computer lab. Windows XP still suits a lot of people's needs despite Microsoft trying to kill it.

10% of the federal government's desktop computers are about a decade old. There are several government agencies that run servers that are now over 20 years old.

BTW, Tom's Hardware already proved that your opinion is not credible:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-upgrade-hard-drive,2956.html

Read the numbers and weep -- that 2010 PC with a hard drive is considerably
slower than a 2006 PC powered by an SSD. Thus, proving the point I was making.
You can easily take a marginal machine and impress/shock the user by simply
dropping an SSD in -- been there, done it. We're talking about real world usage --
booting to the desktop, opening the office suite or a web browser. I know a
Haswell will be forced to wait for the hard drive to catch up for most things....
But an SSD can push those apps to a creaky old CPU nearly instantaneous.
I guess there isn't a lot of common sense on this forum.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Not really credible? WOW.... You've got blinders on.

80% of the office computers at the non-profit where I volunteer are still Pentium 4 powered. They run modern tasks on a daily basis -- it is how they get donations and survive.

Most office workers don't watch HD videos when they're supposed to be working. Those P4's run the database software and office suites on Windows 7 just fine.

I just can't believe all the elitist crap I hear on this forum. Some of you really sound like snobs -- Look at the hard facts... 25% of the world's computers are still running freakin' XP (and XP actually just increased in share in June).... At least these guys at the non-profit are running Win 7. There are a ton of non-profits that are using donated desktops that are around 5 - 10 years old. It's not like a computer suddenly stops running applications the day it turns 2 years old.

The average business uses a desktop for 4 years -- and many donate them to be used at non-profits (or recycled) after that. The catholic school down the street is running Pentium 3's in its computer lab. Seriously get a grip...... Modern tasks -- lol.

Because they are still functional and plentiful, people still use Pentium 4s. This fact is not in dispute. But to say that a Haswell and Pentium 4 would be indistinguishable from one another if the P4 had an SSD (and, presumably, at least a SATA 2 interface to host it) is difficult to swallow.

There are a lot of P4s out there. If you are stuck on an early Willamette, for example, then yes, you are going to feel the pain even if you somehow get past the harddrive bottleneck. A 3.4 ghz P4c would be much snappier, and I'm sure one of those with an SSD would be tolerable, especially if it also had 2 or more gigs of RAM.

I have used some old P4 workhorses recently. Most of them were hardly top-of-the-line when they were first sold. Yes, the harddrives on those machines certainly seem to hold them back, but there are scenarios where the machines clearly struggle for other reasons. One of those reasons is that the amount of RAM is too small (which exacerbates the harddrive problem). There are other I/O problems related to the chipset (memory controller is off-die, the system is limited by FSB throughput, blah blah blah). Isolating problems specific to the CPU being old and slow is difficult when there is so much else wrong.

Nobody is trying to suggest that a bunch of schools, churches, and charities should go out and buy Haswell quads (or hex/octocores!) for email and web browsing.

But please, don't tell me that some random Dell workhorse from 2002-2004 with an SSD shoehorned in there (somehow) is going to trade blows with a Haswell quad with a WD Black or . . . something along those lines. That Haswell machine will probably have 8 gigs of RAM and won't swap as aggressively. Even with an SSD, the P4 is going to be swap city if it's running Win7 or XP, especially if it's loaded down with as many background apps as the last P4 I saw was. Two different virus scanners/monitors. Ugh.

Sure, that P4 CAN run "modern tasks", but you'll feel the pain, especially once you hit some site full of Flash nonsense.

edit: OS load times don't tell the entire story. Also, how many of those donated P4s are 775 machines? 478 (or older) is going to be much more common in the cheap-as-in-free bin.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

And 130W of power draw just from the CPU to just play a movie that's more then my entire PC draws when it plays a movie and it has a 1200W PSU and a top-of-the-line MOBO and 5 disks plus CD-ROM and a plethora of fans, it's best to get rid of that old tech just for its atrocious power draw. Replacing them with something similar but even faster is pennies and the power draw will drop by 10x. I know that the electricity is cheap in the US but it's not so in much of the world. Using P4s is just wasting electricity unless you are doing it in winter and augmenting your central heating system.

Yeah, because non-profits get to pick what type of desktops are donated to them. You do realize that some people don't get to decide the hardware.

 

[crashtech]

Conroe was released in '06, so aside from the fact that boot times aren't at all analogous with "most tasks" as you stated earlier, that graph doesn't say anything about P4s.

Most PC builders know that boot times can vary significantly depending on drivers and software. Fast boot up times are nice, and I put SSDs in every build I can, but this has really nothing to do with the argument of which CPU is the best bang for the buck in a low-end gaming system.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Because they are still functional and plentiful, people still use Pentium 4s. This fact is not in dispute. But to say that a Haswell and Pentium 4 would be indistinguishable from one another if the P4 had an SSD (and, presumably, at least a SATA 2 interface to host it) is difficult to swallow.

Actually, it was in dispute. Several posts in this thread asserted that modern tasks can't be run on a Pentium 4. It was easy to point out that there are many organizations that run these tired machines every day.

And yes, for real world tasks -- booting to the desktop, opening Microsoft Office or a web browser -- that represents what about 90% of office computers do on a daily basis. Slapping in a SSD can make a 5 year old desktop perform faster than a modern PC running a hard drive. Tom's benchmarks already prove that is true.

Office workers don't run 3DMark -- they run spreadsheets. As I mentioned in a previous post, most of my co-workers prefer to use the AMD FX powered PC at work over the much faster i7 -- simply because the SSD in the AMD machine gives it the appearance of being much, much faster.

 

[Abwx]

Sure, that P4 CAN run "modern tasks", but you'll feel the pain, especially once you hit some site full of Flash nonsense.

With an IGP that s for sure but with a dedicated GPU that has some acceleration it s really not a problem, i have a 1.6 P4M/Radeon 32mb laptop that still work quite well for surfing , i couldnt do the same with another laptop that has an Athlon XP 1.66Ghz due to the crappy Via S3 IGP, my pentium 2C T4400 2.2 is not that impressive for surfing despite having a dGPU compared to its ancestor.

Otherwise the biggest improvement i witnessed were when using a SSD, it s really night and day, heck , i mounted a Kabini for my wife using such a drive, she told me that it s the first time that she happen to power on her PC a few moments the morning before going to work, as with a HDD it took too much time to boot to even bother doing so.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Conroe was released in '06, so aside from the fact that boot times aren't at all analogous with "most tasks" as you stated earlier, that graph doesn't say anything about P4s.

Most PC builders know that boot times can vary significantly depending on drivers and software. Fast boot up times are nice, and I put SSDs in every build I can, but this has really nothing to do with the argument of which CPU is the best bang for the buck in a low-end gaming system.

Zero common sense. I randomly picked the P4 because it is universally hated like the Bulldozer.... It was hyperbole, not freakin' literal.

Most tasks, scratch that --
The majority of tasks performed on a business desktop such as opening a word processor, opening a spreadsheet, booting to the desktop, opening a web browser, logging into a database....

Are faster with an older PC running a solid state than a newer one powered by the hard drive. It's a general rule of thumb -- I'm sure you can find exception to every rule.Give it a rest, man. Tom's has a plethora of benchmarks showing this is generally true.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Actually, it was in dispute. Several posts in this thread asserted that modern tasks can't be run on a Pentium 4. It was easy to point out that there are many organizations that run these tired machines every day.

What is being said here is: I/we wouldn't want to run modern, everday tasks that I/we do with a P4, even with an SSD. A machine with 1 gig of RAM that is constantly swapping is still going to be a headache, albeit slightly less of one with an SSD.

People still do it. Nobody is saying that they don't. But who really wants to run a P4 today?

And yes, for real world tasks -- booting to the desktop, opening Microsoft Office or a web browser -- that represents what about 90% of office computers do on a daily basis. Slapping in a SSD can make a 5 year old desktop perform faster than a modern PC running a hard drive. Tom's benchmarks already prove that is true.

Two sites I can think of that would be painful with or without an SSD on a P4: slashdot.org and overclock.net. The flash ads are ruinous, ruinous I tell you! That 3.6 ghz Prescott might do okay, but a 1.8 ghz Willamette would die horribly. The P4 I used most recently was some 2.4 ghz Northwood (I think) and it was not fun to use, even when the harddrive was not thrashing.

Office workers don't run 3DMark -- they run spreadsheets.

Nobody is saying that Firestrike or Icestorm are "everday tasks". But, for me, browsing Slashdot is an everyday task (for example). So is overclock.net.

Sometimes I am stuck doing so from an AMD E1-2500 (4 gigs RAM, 7200rpm harddrive, Win8.1). If I open up Task Manager while overclock.net is locking the browser (again), what do you think is showing the most activity in the Performance tab? Or, a slightly less-contentious scenario: let's say I pop open two tabs and load up the AMD CPU and Intel CPU forums (overclock.net/f/10 and overclock.net/f/5 respectively) simultaneously. Then I look at task manager while the little green swirly indicator is going in Firefox and while I can barely type in this text window. Where is the most activity on the Performance tab?

As I type this, the CPU is pegged at 80-95%. This disc is sitting mostly idle. An SSD would do nothing for this everyday browsing scenario. RAM is sitting at 37% utilization with no notable hard faults. The slow-arsed CPU is thrashing. A Pentium 4 with a lot of RAM and an SSD with the same OS and the same broswer would have the same problem, especially one without hyperthreading on a 400 or 533 mhz FSB, of which there are many out there, still in use. It isn't all the harddrive!

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

With an IGP that s for sure but with a dedicated GPU that has some acceleration it s really not a problem, i have a 1.6 P4M/Radeon 32mb laptop that still work quite well for surfing , i couldnt do the same with another laptop that has an Athlon XP 1.66Ghz due to the crappy Via S3 IGP, my pentium 2C T4400 2.2 is not that impressive for surfing despite having a dGPU compared to its ancestor.

Otherwise the biggest improvement i witnessed were when using a SSD, it s really night and day, heck , i mounted a Kabini for my wife using such a drive, she told me that it s the first time that she happen to power on her PC a few moments the morning before going to work, as with a HDD it took too much time to boot to even bother doing so.

People do exaggerate the pain. My classic gaming PC -- a Pentium II 450 with a 3DFX Voodoo3 can happily surf with the latest Firefox/Chrome version running Zorin OS Lite. Do I try to watch HD 1080p Youtube videos on it? Nope. It can do 360p, although 240p is its sweet spot. That CPU was built during the VCR era, so one can expect it to play VCR quality video. It plays 3dfx glide games like a monster.

 

[crashtech]

Back to something at least slightly related to the OP, I just bought a second $75 G3258 combo pointed out by monkeydelmagico:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36659098&postcount=53

It expires today, so if you are thinking of getting a cheap toy, here's your chance.

Pretty hard to resist a $75 combo. I might do some testing of my own, but don't plan to post the results.

 

[richierich1212]

Why not go for the B85 that's only slightly more after rebate?

 

[Enigmoid]

Zero common sense. I randomly picked the P4 because it is universally hated like the Bulldozer.... It was hyperbole, not freakin' literal.

Most tasks, scratch that --
The majority of tasks performed on a business desktop such as opening a word processor, opening a spreadsheet, booting to the desktop, opening a web browser, logging into a database....

Are faster with an older PC running a solid state than a newer one powered by the hard drive. It's a general rule of thumb -- I'm sure you can find exception to every rule.Give it a rest, man. Tom's has a plethora of benchmarks showing that.

Running win XP or 7 which is what business will have.

Except your benchmarks show a four year difference between the two models. Today you would be looking at nearly a 9 year difference. I/O has improved massively, any kind of sequential task and the modern PC with HDD will be just as fast. P4 will also limit RAM.

The thing is all those tasks you mentioned simply affect the amount of time the task takes. It doesn't affect whether the PC can even execute other tasks. Launching a program like word 2003 (about right for a P4 era PC) takes about 3-4 seconds. With an SSD its maybe 1-2 seconds. Big deal. Disregarding the fact that you boot into the computer once per day, and will open a spreadsheet, web browser, or database maybe a dozen times during that day.

The thing is if the P4 has the horsepower for other tasks. Encrypting anything is a pain. Skype, HD video, database calculations, etc. will take forever. Flash heavy websites can bring even modern CPUs to a crawl.

The point is that the P4 will be very hit and miss. Want to open excel? Fine, it will be 2 seconds faster. Want to run a calculation on the sheet? It may be something like 1 hr vs 5 minutes on an i5 machine. Oh, and the modern machine doesn't lock up or lag tremendously either.

Putting a SSD in my computer sped up boot times and loading and made using the computer nicer but it never changed what I could or couldn't do.

I have a lot of old computers in the lab I work it including a P4 era 1.1 ghz celeron (don't even try the internet) and a P3 running Win 98 (core 2 PCs as well). With a fresh install and going beyond no major tasks the computers are surprisingly snappy, even with a HDD. I have a P4 laptop (3.2 ghz) and I can say that no matter how fast a SSD I put in that thing will be dog slow. Partly because 1 GB of RAM sucks and partly because the CPU is an absolute dog.

I also have another notebook with a core 2 T5200 (its core 2 but pretty much the slowest core 2 mobile model out there). Idling on the desktop in XP runs around 15% CPU usage and any kind of surfing will easily saturate the CPU. Adding a SSD will not improve its CPU power.

IMO I would easily take an i5 + HDD over a P4 + SSD any day of the week. The difference between the two is easily observable.

 

[crashtech]

Why not go for the B85 that's only slightly more after rebate?

I didn't know that was a live deal, but I detest mail-in rebates in any case.

EDIT: What is the advantage of that B85, anyway?

 

[richierich1212]

I didn't know that was a live deal, but I detest mail-in rebates in any case.

EDIT: What is the advantage of that B85, anyway?

4 DIMM Slots, has HDMI, 6 SATA ports vs 4, probably also has a slightly better phase design.

 

[crashtech]

4 DIMM Slots, has HDMI, 6 SATA ports vs 4, probably also has a slightly better phase design.

Oh, and it has a USB 3.0 front panel header, too. damn.

 

[cbn]

Back to something at least slightly related to the OP, I just bought a second $75 G3258 combo pointed out by monkeydelmagico:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36659098&postcount=53

It expires today, so if you are thinking of getting a cheap toy, here's your chance.

Pretty hard to resist a $75 combo. I might do some testing of my own, but don't plan to post the results.

Sweet deal.

See that is a good example of what I am talking about when I mention those almost non-stop combo deals we have been seeing for the Pentium G3258 since the processor was released.

I can't find these kind of deals for Core i3, Celeron or any of the locked Pentiums.

P.S. I do have some bad news of sorts for my Pentium G3258 experience. Late last night I was noticed some random stuttering and hitching several times per game while playing COD Ghosts during the steam free gameplay weekend. This happened exclusively on the large maps with 16 players. (The game was always butter smooth during the 8 player free for all modes though). A major caveat though is I only have 4GB of RAM and the game minimum calls for 6GB and the recommended is 8GB. At some point I will have to revisit the game with 8GB of RAM to see if the stuttering and hitching still persists.

In contrast, Battlefield 4 was completely smooth even on Large maps with 64 players game after game. I only noticed two episodes of stuttering/hitching in over 7 hours of gameplay and that might have been because I had the 13.1 drivers installed for part of that gameplay (long story on why that happened. Long story)

 

[Fox5]

Zero common sense. I randomly picked the P4 because it is universally hated like the Bulldozer.... It was hyperbole, not freakin' literal.

Most tasks, scratch that --
The majority of tasks performed on a business desktop such as opening a word processor, opening a spreadsheet, booting to the desktop, opening a web browser, logging into a database....

Are faster with an older PC running a solid state than a newer one powered by the hard drive. It's a general rule of thumb -- I'm sure you can find exception to every rule.Give it a rest, man. Tom's has a plethora of benchmarks showing that.

Most of those P4 machines won't have enough memory to effectively handle modern workloads. You might see 2GB, but 1GB or less is more likely. Still, a P4 is in the same ballpark as the cheapie systems running Atom or Brazos, so cpu power is sufficient, but it also lacks the video acceleration of those platforms.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

IMO I would easily take an i5 + HDD over a P4 + SSD any day of the week. The difference between the two is easily observable.

Well, obviously. Only an idiot wouldn't. You can easily pop an SSD in the i5 later on to have the best of both worlds.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

S

P.S. I do have some bad news of sorts for my Pentium G3258 experience. Late last night I was noticed some random stuttering and hitching several times per game while playing COD Ghosts during the steam free gameplay weekend. This happened exclusively on the large maps with 16 players. (The game was always butter smooth during the 8 player free for all modes though). A major caveat though is I only have 4GB of RAM and the game minimum calls for 6GB and the recommended is 8GB. At some point I will have to revisit the game with 8GB of RAM to see if the stuttering and hitching still persists.

This is exactly the same problem my friend experienced with his G3258 -- which is why he yanked it after only 2 months (His new i5 hasn't stuttered on any game, just a much more smooth experience). Although he had really awful stuttering in BF4 multiplayer with the Pentium. I don't know if he tested COD.

 

[Enigmoid]

Well, obviously. Only an idiot wouldn't. You can easily pop an SSD in the i5 later on to have the best of both worlds.

Yep and almost every consumer would notice a big difference too.

Edit: SSD makes a difference but for the average consumer the ability to play video, skype, open 10 flash heavy tabs on the internet is going to be far superior to launching applications faster.

 

[Deders]

P.S. I do have some bad news of sorts for my Pentium G3258 experience. Late last night I was noticed some random stuttering and hitching several times per game while playing COD Ghosts during the steam free gameplay weekend. This happened exclusively on the large maps with 16 players. (The game was always butter smooth during the 8 player free for all modes though). A major caveat though is I only have 4GB of RAM and the game minimum calls for 6GB and the recommended is 8GB. At some point I will have to revisit the game with 8GB of RAM to see if the stuttering and hitching still persists.

8GB will definitely help, even though it was found that a large proportion of the memory data is actually just 0's in either an attempt to leave no room in the memory for hacking on the consoles or to make the game seem more demanding than it actually was.

For a while it also suffered from jerkyness despite having the right amount of memory.

 

[cbn]

THis new i5 hasn't stuttered on any game

I think that is great, but look at how much my hardware costs:

2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 ($20): http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2319905
Pentium G3258 + MSI Z97 U3 Plus mobo ($100): http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2389911
Powercoler R7 250X plus free Bronze game ($60 AR): http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2391710

My CPU, mobo, RAM, GPU plus free game (total cost $180) probably cost less than that i5 processor alone and it has been capable of playing BF 3 and 4 64 player with a very satisfactory experience on 1080p low.