Best CPUs (Archive)

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Nice to see an update!

Very disappointing not to see an updated CPU Hierarchy Chart, though.

FWIW, I recently went from a Sandy Bridge I5-2500K @ 4.3 Ghz on a Z68 platform with 8 GB DD3-1600 memory, to a Skylake I5-6600K @ 4.4 Ghz on a Z170 platform with 8 GB DDR4-3000 memory. I kept my video card for now (Radeon R7 265) and storage the same. I also went from Win 7 to Win 10 in the move.

My real world benchmarks, using the in-game benchmarking in Resident Evil 6, Dragon Age Inquisition, and Tomb Raider, only increased one to three frames per second. It really is ALL about the video card.
 
It would be great to see the new Pentium G4500 reviewed, it should run similar to the i3-4170 for $30 cheaper and it has a much newer integrated GPU.
 


it's still a dual core cpu with 2 threads. so for the same reason the anniversary pentium left the list, this one would not make it either. newer AAA games are simply leaving the dual core behind. if you only play older games, then sure the dual core is fine. that is probably a pretty small % of the Tom's population, however, so overall, the dual core is losing it's appeal for gamer playing newer games.
 


The IPC improvements from Haswell to Skylake are approximately equivalent to the gains you see from the artificial 3rd and 4th cores in hyperthreading. Even in heavily multithreaded games the old i3 and the new pentium should perform the same. It's a different comparison against the AMD Athlon x4 860k where you have 4 physical cores and you will see much larger per-app differences due to the much better single thread performance on the g4500 and much worse multi thread peformance.
 
The IPC improvements from Haswell to Skylake are approximately equivalent to the gains you see from the artificial 3rd and 4th cores in hyperthreading. Even in heavily multithreaded games the old i3 and the new pentium should perform the same. It's a different comparison against the AMD Athlon x4 860k where you have 4 physical cores and you will see much larger per-app differences due to the much better single thread performance on the g4500 and much worse multi thread peformance.
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Hyper-Threading often helps by as much as 20% to 30% when it is well-utilized, as is often the case in modern games for i3 CPUs. The performance per clock improvements from Haswell to Skylake are nowhere near that.
 
Struggling to find a reason to upgrade from 4 year old rig. Passmark single thread performance:
i5 2500K -- 1897
i5 6600K -- 2085
Nothing to see in CPU world, move on.
 
The IPC improvements from Haswell to Skylake are approximately equivalent to the gains you see from the artificial 3rd and 4th cores in hyperthreading. Even in heavily multithreaded games the old i3 and the new pentium should perform the same. It's a different comparison against the AMD Athlon x4 860k where you have 4 physical cores and you will see much larger per-app differences due to the much better single thread performance on the g4500 and much worse multi thread peformance.
Click to expand...

Hyper-Threading often helps by as much as 20% to 30% when it is well-utilized, as is often the case in modern games for i3 CPUs. The performance per clock improvements from Haswell to Skylake are nowhere near that.
Click to expand...
The IPC improvements from Haswell to Skylake are approximately equivalent to the gains you see from the artificial 3rd and 4th cores in hyperthreading. Even in heavily multithreaded games the old i3 and the new pentium should perform the same. It's a different comparison against the AMD Athlon x4 860k where you have 4 physical cores and you will see much larger per-app differences due to the much better single thread performance on the g4500 and much worse multi thread peformance.
Click to expand...

Hyper-Threading often helps by as much as 20% to 30% when it is well-utilized, as is often the case in modern games for i3 CPUs. The performance per clock improvements from Haswell to Skylake are nowhere near that.
Click to expand...
Hyper-Threading often helps by as much as 20% to 30% when it is well-utilized, as is often the case in modern games for i3 CPUs. The performance per clock improvements from Haswell to Skylake are nowhere near that.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I was about to ask this guy where he's seeing a 30% increase in IPC from Haswell to Skylake. This article puts the IPC increase somewhere south of 10%:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/9
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As far as I was aware, single thread performance is generally more useful than multi-thread performance, and you rarely see gains beyond 10% for hyper threading.

If we're only talking about cpus for brand new games, then anything below $170 is irrelevant anyway.
 
As far as I was aware, single thread performance is generally more useful than multi-thread performance, and you rarely see gains beyond 10% for hyper threading.

If we're only talking about cpus for brand new games, then anything below $170 is irrelevant anyway.
Click to expand...

The i3 has always kicked the crap out of the Pentium at equivalent speeds. Gains of 30% aren't uncommon; hyperthreading makes almost zero difference when you're comparing an i5 versus an i7, but it clearly does help, massively, at lower core counts.

Granted, higher core speed is generally more useful than Hyperthreading, and if you can overclock the hell out of the Pentium then you're probably going to end up with equal or better performance overall. Unfortunately, the cost of overlock-friendly cooling will seriously eat into whatever money you save by buying the Pentium instead of an i3.

All of that said, the only point I made is that Skylake has a negligible instructions-per-clock advantage over Haswell. The architectural difference is very nearly irrelevant for the purpose of this discussion.
 
I really think this is a HUGE improvement over the last few best-cpu articles. I especially like the fx 4350 (though I would go for the fx 4300 for the same reason as fx 8320 over the 8350). Removing the pentium is a good call. I have one, and I have a lot of fun overclocking it, but its just not a gaming CPU.

Well done TH. I was worried you all were just not caring anymore, but this article shows some real investment.
 
I have to disagree with statement of lack of Skylake i3/Pentium. I have retail i3 6300 and G4400, bought them two weeks ago without problems. The i3 is very interesting thanks to higher single thread performance, up to 25% in synthetic benchmarks.
And they are locked at 103 :) at least I observed that on Asrock Z170 OC Formula :)
 


Interesting; This was Best CPUs not Best Gaming CPUs, so they should both be on the list. Unless this really is the Best Gaming CPUs if that is the case where is the chart?
 
Hey everyone,

If you're looking for the Hierarchy charts, that's been separated into a different article. You can find the charts at this page: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html

-Kevin

Assistant Community Manager
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Thanks for the link Kevin. it seems i dont have to do a damn thing as my i7 4770 is on par with the latest CPU's . that's good news for me as i don't really have to upgrade any thing in my rig atm. if anyone wondering what's my setup is its a i7 4770, GTX 970, 8GB RAM and 90GB SSD for the win7 system drive and another 250GB SSD for gaming. there is 1TB HD for all other stuff.
 
I am so sick and tired of hearing people saying that quad core is the only way to go when it has been PROVEN (at least on the low end) that a well executed dual core will trump a quad every time. The pentium g3258 blows away the athlon 860 in gaming. Let's be honest your not buying a low end CPU for number crunching or video editing. Give the chip its due and stop being such AMD fan boi's.

Proof

http://www.techspot.com/review/1017-best-budget-gaming-cpu/page7.html

For the record I used to use nothing but AMD since the mid 90's before I came to the realization that they just can't compete anymore.

Tom's, put the G3258 back into its rightful place.
 
I am so sick and tired of hearing people saying that quad core is the only way to go when it has been PROVEN (at least on the low end) that a well executed dual core will trump a quad every time. The pentium g3258 blows away the athlon 860 in gaming. Let's be honest your not buying a low end CPU for number crunching or video editing. Give the chip its due and stop being such AMD fan boi's.

Proof

http://www.techspot.com/review/1017-best-budget-gaming-cpu/page7.html

For the record I used to use nothing but AMD since the mid 90's before I came to the realization that they just can't compete anymore.

Tom's, put the G3258 back into its rightful place.
Click to expand...

its fantastic, till you hit a game that just will not run because it needs 4 threads.
if you are getting a cpu just to get by, the amd cpu would probably be the best overall, because you are not pairing that weak a cpu with a gpu that's capable of showing off how weak it is.
 


Well, we weren't wondering since you have it posted at the end of your comments, however I think the RAM may be off in your tag.
 
It would be nice if the new AMD ZEN CPUs coming out next year make some noisy at the top of this list. It is was interesting seeing Tom's calling the FX-6300 a Tri-Core and the FX-8xxx quad cores. Once again no APUs make the list so I guess they are not a good choice for gaming. I don't consider the X4 860K an APU since it has no Graphic core.
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Well APU's are for a very specific market segment which this list isn't addressing. The budget AIO / low profile / SFF computing device. Those simply don't have room for a dGPU much less budget space for one. The 7850K would be the worst choice as it's too expensive. Instead the A8-7650 / 7700, which are around $100 USD, are more then powerful enough for such a setup when coupled with 8GB of DDR3-2133 memory, which is now pretty cheap. You end up with a very small $350 ~ $400 USD box that can easily be hidden and does everything you'd need it to. Basically integrated solutions which nearly no enthusiast or gamer will think about.
 
I am so sick and tired of hearing people saying that quad core is the only way to go when it has been PROVEN (at least on the low end) that a well executed dual core will trump a quad every time. The pentium g3258 blows away the athlon 860 in gaming. Let's be honest your not buying a low end CPU for number crunching or video editing. Give the chip its due and stop being such AMD fan boi's.

Proof

http://www.techspot.com/review/1017-best-budget-gaming-...

For the record I used to use nothing but AMD since the mid 90's before I came to the realization that they just can't compete anymore.

Tom's, put the G3258 back into its rightful place.
Click to expand...

Your assuming 100% of all resource consumption is going to be by your intended game, which is a false assumption. Your system does many things in the background, many management tasks, possible voice chat program, web browser and so for that. Now many of those things individually don't take up that much CPU time, but they do require a time slice in order to check for any event that would wake them up. And that's without getting into any firewall program, security program or Anti-Virus program, you do have those right? This creates a situation where you need some spare CPU performance headway to do these things while your intended program, the game, is going full blast without interruption. This makes a 3~4 thread CPU the lowest you can reasonably go and still have that smooth consistent performance.

This is why the Pentium G isn't a particularly good CPU. Intel made it for the sole purpose of "winning" benchmarks in the low budget arena that AMD was targeting. They removed the HT from it in order to prevent it from competing with their own more expensive i3's.

If you wish we can go into the technical reasons why will never see 100% utilization of the resources available to a single Haswell+ CPU core.
 
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