[TechSpot] i3 vs i5 vs i7

[TurtleCrusher]

Anecdotally, I see my nephew playing BF4 MP with a 4.0GHz G3258 fairly well as long as the connection is good and the server is not too full. Playing with 10-15 players is not a real problem for him, my unofficial FRAPS observations has him falling into the low 40s, but then again he also has a GTX770 and plays at 1600x900, which might be helping out some.

FWIW that's one of the games that loves cores, cores and more cores in multiplayer. I'll get 85% peak utilization on 64 player matches without FPS dips below my refresh rate, and it typically hangs around 55-65%. It's cool he's fine playing with 10-15 people but the maps play so much better with more participants.

I'd only recommend an i5/i7/FX63xx/FX-83xx from here on out for gaming unless they only play Starcraft 2/WOW.

I was just playing flight simulator X (steam edition, a game from 2006) and CPU load hits 90%+ often for rendering. This is on medium draw settings and all. Even in an old game like that more threads available are imperative for high settings and a good experience.