Building a PC - Let's Talk About Processors

I am in the planning stages of building a PC for gaming. Well, a certain kind of gaming...

I mostly play strategy games like Civ 5, CKII, EUIV, AoW3, Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes, etc.

But I also like a good western-RPG or ARPG from time to time like Skyrim, Dark Souls, Witcher series, Torchlight series. Occasionally a FPS will strike a chord with me (Deus Ex, Borderlands) but it's rare.

That being said, I want a meat-and-potatoes gaming system; think simple but effective. No overclocking, no Crossfire/SLI, no 4K, nothing like that. My budget is $700-750 (USD). I know I won't be setting the world on fire at this budget level but with today's technology I should be able to have an enjoyable experience at this price point.

I have most of it narrowed down pretty well but I am back and forth on the processor. It's really down to a choice of a nice i3 (4150 or 4360) or a lower end i5 (4440 or 4460).

The question is, for the kinds of games I like to play, is the low end of the i5 range going to give me better performance than the top end of the i3 range? If the low-end i5 is better, is it worth the price increase? Will the 4 actual cores of the i5 "future-proof" me any more than the 2 real/2 virtual cores of the i3?

I would appreciate any advice you all can give me. At the moment, I do my PC gaming on a laptop with a dedicated (but crappy) graphics card that is 3 years old so right now, almost ANYTHING looks like a massive upgrade to me. I need a little perspective.

Thanks!

Well, I wouldn't get a 4360, it's not worth the premium over the 4130/4150. Between the 4150 and 4430-4590 range it's a tough call, both the i3 and the i5 range give good performance for the money. The i5 will be better, and will cost appropriately more.

It's worth considering the AMD lineup in that pricerange also, the FX 6350/8320 are both competitive 4-core/8-core chips, and benefit budget builds by having significantly cheaper motherboards than Intel builds.

http://www.logicalincrements.com/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-3.html

marlowe221 said:

The question is, for the kinds of games I like to play, is the low end of the i5 range going to give me better performance than the top end of the i3 range? If the low-end i5 is better, is it worth the price increase? Will the 4 actual cores of the i5 "future-proof" me any more than the 2 real/2 virtual cores of the i3?

I would appreciate any advice you all can give me. At the moment, I do my PC gaming on a laptop with a dedicated (but crappy) graphics card that is 3 years old so right now, almost ANYTHING looks like a massive upgrade to me. I need a little perspective.

Thanks!

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If you are on a tight budget, and want a system that should last for a few years, it would be a good idea to get a good CPU, and a so-so GPU for now.
E.g. a GTX 750 /750 Ti or R7 260X /265, and any i5 45XX or 46XX you can get a good deal on. 44xx would do as well, but those are usually only marginally less expensive.


You can save a bit on the mainboard, an entry-level model is more than sufficient for most users that don't need overclocking, multi-GPU support and oodles of peripherials.


Upgrading a CPU later is usually either impossible, or not very cost effective.
On the other hand upgrading a GPU every two or three years is usually fairly painless and cost effective.

A i3 might be sufficient for now, but it wouldn't be a very good idea for a system that should last a few years.
A new generation of consoles has just entered the market, with 4 cores/8 threats, new games are starting to scale well up to 4 cores or even more, and there are already some cases where a fast i3 is performing abysmally compared to even a slow i5.

AMD CPUs are a bad idea for a gaming desktop, there are a few games where they are competetive, but a lot where they are badly outclassed.

If at all possible, try to squeeze a SSD into the budget.

tokala said:

If you are on a tight budget, and want a system that should last for a few years, it would be a good idea to get a good CPU, and a so-so GPU for now.
E.g. a GTX 750 /750 Ti or R7 260X /265, and any i5 45XX or 46XX you can get a good deal on. 44xx would do as well, but those are usually only marginally less expensive.


You can save a bit on the mainboard, an entry-level model is more than sufficient for most users that don't need overclocking, multi-GPU support and oodles of peripherials.


Upgrading a CPU later is usually either impossible, or not very cost effective.
On the other hand upgrading a GPU every two or three years is usually fairly painless and cost effective.

A i3 might be sufficient for now, but it wouldn't be a very good idea for a system that should last a few years.
A new generation of consoles has just entered the market, with 4 cores/8 threats, new games are starting to scale well up to 4 cores or even more, and there are already some cases where a fast i3 is performing abysmally compared to even a slow i5.

AMD CPUs are a bad idea for a gaming desktop, there are a few games where they are competetive, but a lot where they are badly outclassed.

If at all possible, try to squeeze a SSD into the budget.

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OK, I am going to do what I can do get an i5-45xx in the build. I thought that I read that the GTX 750 Ti doesn't do as well as it might in Civ 5 though...

Built a rig with the AMD FX6350 last year and that six core processor is pretty nice. The motherboards are cheaper, so you can spend more and get an SSD, highly recommended.

Here is a chart of relative CPU performance that you might find interesting.

The AMD processors look really cool but I've read plenty of accounts of people still getting a lot of mileage out of their Intel processors in current games.

I think an i5 (of some kind) is for me. I won't be able to buy quite as much GPU as I would like to but the processor definitely seems like a good long(ish) term investment.

How does Civ 5 do on the GTX 750 Ti? Is the GTX 660 worth the extra cash?

I like some of AMD's newer offerings in the GPU world but I am sorely tempted to make this a Linux box and nvidia GPUs have always been a better fit with Linux in the past due to driver issues.

marlowe221 said:

How does Civ 5 do on the GTX 750 Ti? Is the GTX 660 worth the extra cash?

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Both are fine price/performance wise, and even the 750 ti will efffortlessly run Civ5 at max settings.


( it's performance is close to the 650 ti boost)

A point in favor of the 750 ti is that its exceptionally energy efficient, and pretty much any model should run cool and quiet.
And if you want to try overclocking after all, its a really good overclocker, too.
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tokala said:

Both are fine price/performance wise, and even the 750 ti will efffortlessly run Civ5 at max settings.

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I'd contend that civ5 is coded poorly enough that no video card can run it acceptably with a min fps of 60.

leif erikson said:

Built a rig with the AMD FX6350 last year and that six core processor is pretty nice. The motherboards are cheaper, so you can spend more and get an SSD, highly recommended.

Here is a chart of relative CPU performance that you might find interesting.

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You know what? I'm being close-minded about this and I shouldn't do that.

I am going to take another look at AMD processors.

@Zelig - there's probably a lot of truth to that.

marlowe221 said:

You know what? I'm being close-minded about this and I shouldn't do that.

I am going to take another look at AMD processors.

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There isn't really much point in considering a FX.
On average a i5-4670 is about 30% faster than a FX-8350 in CPU-heavy gaming benchmarks, according to an overview of several reviews by our most tech-savy hardware site here in Germany.

What's worse, the difference for the most critical situations is even larger, i.e. in a situation where the FX gets choppy for a second or two, the i5 with still deliver smooth gameplay.

Add to that those numerous games that are not well optimized for multi-core CPUs, where the FXs tend to trail far behind, too.
Think the Civ5 AI turns here.

It's not that you cannot play games on a FX, but in the context of a completely new $750 system, the additional $50-100 you have to spend for a i5+board will get you a quite significant increase in performance, and very likely longevity.

FX-6300, 6350 or 8320 vs i3 looks a bit more friendly for the AMD CPUs, but again, the i5 delivers just that much more, and consistently good, gaming performance for a reasonably price premium.

tokala said:

On average a i5-4670 is about 30% faster than a FX-8350 in CPU-heavy gaming benchmarks, according to an overview of several reviews by our most tech-savy hardware site here in Germany.

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And on average an i5-4670 costs about 30% more than an FX-8350, so they're pretty much equal in terms of price : performance.

tokala said:

What's worse, the difference for the most critical situations is even larger, i.e. in a situation where the FX gets choppy for a second or two, the i5 with still deliver smooth gameplay.

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This is pretty situational, and not something I'd really consider separately from the overall performance:

Civ5 lags to 0 fps regardless of processor:


Battlefield 3 is about even:


AMD gets lower min fps in, F1 2011 but doesn't really matter because it's still high enough:

tokala said:

It's not that you cannot play games on a FX, but in the context of a completely new $750 system, the additional $50-100 you have to spend for a i5+board will get you a quite significant increase in performance, and very likely longevity.

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Well, the problem here is that if you're talking about purely gaming performance on a set budget, you'll probably get the best performance with the cheapest CPU you can get away with (probably an i3) and all the money saved dumped into the GPU.

Here's a couple of questions that this discussion brings to my mind.

1) I know the clock speeds are different but what is the practical difference between the lower end and the upper end of the i5 product line?

2) When talking about frames per second, what are the physical limits imposed by the human eye? I mean, I get why I want to build a PC that runs current games at a fairly high FPS - to give my machine a bit of a cushion as time goes on and games become more demanding. But am I really going to be able to tell a difference between 90 FPS and 120 FPS, for example?

Here's the problem I have - I have to buy EVERYTHING for this build. I don't have a desktop now of any kind; I have a laptop. So I have to buy a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers... and don't get me started on Windows... I mean, just a decent 1080p monitor and Windows are going to cost me over $200 USD by themselves!

So, I'm trying to figure out how to maximize the practical effectiveness of the parts inside the case with the cost of the parts outside and the OS.

(Hopefully, this post will not come across as angry - I'm not at all, just a bit frustrated).

Zelig said:

And on average an i5-4670 costs about 30% more than an FX-8350, so they're pretty much equal in terms of price/erformance.

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Unfortunately you cannot play a game on a cpu alone, considering a $750 PC those 30% shrink to something like 10% (including board).

This is pretty situational, and not something I'd really consider separately from the overall performance:

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Those are exactly the situations that are important. You don't care if a game runs with 80 or 150 fps on average, you do care very much if it drops to either 15 or 30 fps in critical situations.
I still remember that one damn door in Far Cry (the original) where after opening it dropped into single digit fps for a few seconds, resulting in my protagonist invariably getting killed by the bad guys

Battlefield 3 is about even:

AMD gets lower min fps in, F1 2011 but doesn't really matter because it's still high enough:

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"High enough, but markedly lower" tells you that in another game down the road it will be "markedly lower, and not high enough anymore".

For worst case scenarios for the FXs under heavily CPU dependent games, you might have a look here (sorry german, but the diagrams should be self explanatory, and yes its a first-generation FX, but Vishera isn't THAT much better)):

Well, the problem here is that if you're talking about purely gaming performance on a set budget, you'll probably get the best performance with the cheapest CPU you can get away with (probably an i3) and all the money saved dumped into the GPU.

Click to expand...

This is correct as long as you use average fps as a benchmark.
Problem is, very high fps in some games/situations cannot make up for unplayably low fps in other games/situations.

A better GPU tends to give you more fps in situations where you already have lots of fps.
A better CPU either gives you nothing (if already GPU limited), or increases your fps in situations where you have low fps.

If your game is choppy and GPU bound, you can get into "playable" by lowering the settings.
If your game is choppy and CPU bound, in most cases you cannot do much about it, apart from getting a better CPU.
If you wait for the AI turn in Civ or Total War games, a better GPU does nothing.

1. So, Turbo bins are given per core, so 1/2/3/4 means 4-core turbo is 100 MHz, 1-core turbo is 400 MHz, etc.

Each line below represents a single price-tier of cpu - get the latest one unless a store is clearing stock and offering a deal on an older one.

4430/4440/4460 - 3.0/3.1/3.2 GHz - Turbo bins are only 0/1/2/2.
4570/4590 - 3.2/3.3 GHz - 2/3/4/4 Turbo
4670/4690 - 3.4/3.5 GHz - 2/3/4/4 Turbo
4670K/4690K - 3.4 Ghz - 2/3/4/4 Turbo - unlocked multiplier

K-series is useless if you're not overclocking, bottom series gives up 200 MHz of turbo boost. 4570/4590 generally end up being the best bang-for-buck. Other than the K-series, the only effective difference is clock-speed - performance scales fairly well with clockspeed, so between the 4430 and the 4690 you're looking at about a 20% performance increase.

2. Physical limits imposed by the human eye are subject to a lot of debate. Lots of people are fine with 30 fps minimums, some people prefer 120 Hz monitors so they can see >60fps. If you're buying a regular monitor, it only refreshes at 60 Hz so anything above 60 fps is wasted. (Not taking into account G-Sync and such, which you also need a special monitor for anyway.)

tokala said:

This is correct as long as you use average fps as a benchmark.
Problem is, very high fps in some games/situations cannot make up for unplayably low fps in other games/situations.

A better GPU tends to give you more fps in situations where you already have lots of fps.
A better CPU either gives you nothing (if already GPU limited), or increases your fps in situations where you have low fps.

Click to expand...

This is only the case if all you're doing is looking at benchmarks.

In practice, you'll turn GPU settings up high enough until you have the minimum acceptable fps. Games are nearly always GPU limited.

Also can't view your image, it whines about deeplinking.

marlowe221 said:

Here's a couple of questions that this discussion brings to my mind.

1) I know the clock speeds are different but what is the practical difference between the lower end and the upper end of the i5 product line?

Click to expand...

Unnoticable in most cases, barely noticable in some cases, unless its borderline choppy, here every little bit helps;
in very rare cases with an exceptionally high baseload it might be clearly noticable.
For games like Civ5 that go hours and hours, it will accumulate some measurable savings on AI turn times (some 10-20%)
I would simply argue that if a $10 difference on a $750 system gives you 10% more performance, it's worth it.

2) When talking about frames per second, what are the physical limits imposed by the human eye? I mean, I get why I want to build a PC that runs current games at a fairly high FPS - to give my machine a bit of a cushion as time goes on and games become more demanding.

Click to expand...

It differs from person to person, but above about 60 fps at minimum, most people cannot tell the difference, and on a display with 60 Hz and Vsync enabled (the usual setting), you cannot even measure a difference.

But am I really going to be able to tell a difference between 90 FPS and 120 FPS, for example?

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Almost certainly not.

Here's the problem I have - I have to buy EVERYTHING for this build. I don't have a desktop now of any kind; I have a laptop. So I have to buy a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers... and don't get me started on Windows... I mean, just a decent 1080p monitor and Windows are going to cost me over $200 USD by themselves!

So, I'm trying to figure out how to maximize the practical effectiveness of the parts inside the case with the cost of the parts outside and the OS.

(Hopefully, this post will not come across as angry - I'm not at all, just a bit frustrated).

Click to expand...

Okay, that's making it a bit of a problem to go for an i5 and SSD

Zelig said:

Also can't view your image, it whines about deeplinking.

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Its down the page here:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Core-...i7-4790-Core-i5-4690-Haswell-Refresh-1120392/

OK then, let's say my budget is more like $600 for hardware - and we will exclude the monitor and OS for now (though I am sorely tempted to run Linux...).

What would you all recommend?

Probably look at the $602 tier on logicalincrements. (They've also got a section for monitors.)

marlowe221 said:

OK then, let's say my budget is more like $600 for hardware - and we will exclude the monitor and OS for now (though I am sorely tempted to run Linux...).

What would you all recommend?

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Loosely based on the logical increments list, all parts getting decent user ratings, everything from newegg:

$200 i5-4590
$140 MSI N750TI-2GD5/OC GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB
$ 65 ASRock H81M LGA 1150 Intel H81 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX
$ 76 Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
$ 45 SILVERSTONE SST-ST40F-ES 400W ATX 12V 2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply
$ 35 COUGAR Spike Black Steel / Plastic MicroATX Mini Tower Gaming Case with USB 3.0 and 12CM Cougar Fan
$ 66 DVD Writer and 1TB HDD Combo
$ 35 Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - CPU Cooler with 120 mm PWM Fan (might not fit into the case)
$ 20 Cooler Master Hyper TX3

$647 Total

Almost there ...

If you do not care for a silent PC, you do not need the additional CPU heatsink/fan, but all other components should be pretty quiet, so with that 3rd-party heatsink you should get a fairly powerful yet reasonably low-noise system.

Another possibility to shave off a few $ would be the memory, one could get by for the moment with 2x2GB, saving some $30.
But a year or two down the road it's likely that you will need 8GB, and would need to toss out those 2x2GB again. (A 4 memory slot board and 2x2GB will be almost as expensive as a 2 memory slot board and 2x4GB)

If you do not need an optical drive, thats another $15 saved.

Board and case are µ-ATX, but should provide plenty of ports and expansion options for your needs and are well matched to each other. Only thing really missing is another pair of memory slots, but I'm confident that 8GB will be enough for many years to come.

The PSU might appear a bit puny, but it's more than enough, and I prefer a lower-rated model from a reliable brand over a nominally higher rated low-quality model.
It is also well matched to case and board, is Haswell certified, reasonably efficient and powerful enough even for a video card in the 150W class, twice of what the 750 ti will draw. (for a non-overclocked system, at least)

SSD is out of reach unfortunately, but I would recommend to add one at the earliest opportunity and than clone your primary partition from the HDD to the SSD, and keep the HDD as a pure data dump.

Thank you both very much!

I didn't realize just how much there is to building a PC when I started this process. But I am learning a lot and enjoying it (mostly). It seems like there are a lot of hard decisions to make at my price point but, on the other hand, there are probably hard choices to make at EVERY price point short of building a multi-thousand dollar machine.