Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: January 2012 (Archive)

[adamovera]

This month, we talk about new Llano-based APUs with unlocked core and graphics clock multipliers, Intel's upcoming Atom CPU refresh, and a few notable price adjustments. Then, we bid farewell to a few favorite processors that are quickly disappearing.

Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: May 2012 : Read more

 

[adamovera]

Archived comments are found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2459366/gaming-cpus-money-january-2012.html

 

[Grognak]

You cloned the High-End list in page 5 and put the Hierarchy Chart in page 6.

And regarding the chart, if you're gonna put the G3258 as the budget winner, maybe you should rank it higher because right now it's 2 ranks under the Athlon X4 700/800 series.

 

[CaptainTom]

Yeah the G3258 is definitely a great gaming CPU with its complete inability to play modern games. Oh wait....

 

[chaosmassive]

AMD going to bankrupt...

 

[NightAntilli]

I still find it really funny that in the hierarchy chart, something like the Athlon II X4 860K is two tiers higher than the Pentium G3258, and that fact in combination with the modern games starting to require 4 cores, STILL does not even get the ~$80 Athlon 860k an honorable mention.

 

[vertexx]

Still no caveat on the Pentium G? That's a shame, especially after all the feedback you received on that last month.

I'd hate to be the guy using this article as a guide to build a budget build with the G3258 with the hope of playing Dragon Age: Inquisition.

 

[vertexx]

If you don’t have the time to research benchmarks, or if you don’t feel confident enough in your ability to pick the right processor for your next gaming machine, well we don't either. We at Tom’s Hardware have come to confuse your buying decision by rating the below CPUs using benchmarks for 3 outdated games. We recommend a budget gaming CPU that can't even PLAY two of the most popular latest games (guess which ones, because we're not going to tell you). And if you're still a little confused, then head on over to the hierarchy chart, because that is sure to clear things up....

 

[RDTTKA12]

Why is there never any mention of Intel Xeon's on this list? E3-1231 V3's floating around for $235 at times. Essentially an i7 w/o on board graphics at a much cheap price.

 

[g1701gst]

Micro Center has the i7-4790k on sale in-store only for 279.99 plus tax
http://www.microcenter.com/product/434176/Core_i7-4790K_40GHz_LGA_1150_Boxed_Processor

 

[synphul]

Xeon's aren't mentioned because they don't really excel at gaming. Like the one mentioned (e3-1231) it is nothing like an i7 w/o the igpu. It has hyperthreading which makes very little difference in games and it's clocked far slower than the 4790k or 4690k while selling for more than 4690k. It has virtually no benefit other than riding on the xeon name. Not to mention the fact that both k series i5's and i7's can be overclocked even faster yet totally blows the xeon out of the water in a lot of areas including gaming. For the slower locked core speeds someone is better off with the i5 4460 priced much lower than the low end xeons and it was mentioned in the article.

For those who scoff at limitations of budget cpu's (well under $100) and point out their inability to play the most intensive modern games, what exactly did you expect? A ferrari for less than the cost of a ford fusion? If budget chips (intel or amd) could do everything the high end hardware could do, there wouldn't be any point in high end hardware would there? I would think common sense would enter the equation that with extremely low budgets (by comparison) performance and capabilities would reflect this and there would be some sort of tradeoff.

The game itself costs as much as the g3258. If someone has the money for a $60 game, they have the money for a better processor and put the cart before the horse. Kind of like rocking a ford festiva with $10,000 rims, lack of priorities and balance.

If someone truly wants to play da inquisition on a low budget, ps4's are a great solution. Plays the game nice and smooth for $400.

 

[NightAntilli]

For those who scoff at limitations of budget cpu's (well under $100) and point out their inability to play the most intensive modern games, what exactly did you expect? A ferrari for less than the cost of a ford fusion? If budget chips (intel or amd) could do everything the high end hardware could do, there wouldn't be any point in high end hardware would there? I would think common sense would enter the equation that with extremely low budgets (by comparison) performance and capabilities would reflect this and there would be some sort of tradeoff.

The game itself costs as much as the g3258. If someone has the money for a $60 game, they have the money for a better processor and put the cart before the horse. Kind of like rocking a ford festiva with $10,000 rims, lack of priorities and balance.

If someone truly wants to play da inquisition on a low budget, ps4's are a great solution. Plays the game nice and smooth for $400.

Well yes. Cheap hardware has its limits. Obviously neither the G3258 nor the 860k will have the performance of an i5 4690K. But there's a difference between limits in performance and not being able to run something in the first place. You can not recommend a dual core CPU as a current day gaming CPU, when there are multiple games requiring 4 threads/cores. Especially when there's a 4 core alternative at a similar price.

If you're on a budget, what would you prefer? Being able to run some games with very good performance and being unable to run some of them at all, or be able to run all games with good enough performance?

If you see the performance of an 860k in general gaming, you can't honestly say it does not deserve to be at least in the same gaming class as the G3258, even without taking into account its ability to run ALL games unlike the pentium;
http://benchmarks-tests.com/reviews/processors/amd_athlon_x4_860k/gaming_benchmarks.php

 

[synphul]

Why can't you? If you want to play all games and all games well, then you gotta pay to play. Do you know how many games I can't play because I still have an hd 7850? What about the new released budget video cards that aren't enough, just shove those in the dumpster and offer nothing but $500 gtx 980's? There are plenty of recent video cards that won't handle all games, but they handle most. Just because a cpu doesn't handle all games doesn't mean it's not viable for the realm of budget.

Again, if the budget is that tight then there are consoles which will play all the new releases flawlessly for $350-400 depending on the console. You can't touch that performance for $400 worth of pc parts.

Not sure why it didn't get mentioned, maybe because it's close enough in price that people go with the fx 4/6xxx? I noticed those got mentioned in that price bracket. Maybe because for the value, going with an fx 4/6xxx leaves the option to upgrade to something else like the fx 8xxx/9xxx and the pentium g3258 on the z97 platform offers an upgrade path to i3/i5/i7 - is there any upgrade path from fm2? I don't know for sure, just speculating as to what is considered 'value'.

Honestly I'd rather play games that played well and forgo the others rather than play them all mediocre. That's purely personal preference though. I've played pc games at less than optimal settings and it's not very fun. It's the digital version of playing a board game with half the pieces missing or chewed up. Maybe it's a result of growing up with console games that functioned properly. It never occurred to me to have a game that skipped and jittered around like a cd skipping playing music. I would have considered it defective and returned it. Like I said before, if gaming was that important to me and I wanted to play the newer titles on such a restrictive budget, I'd go with a console since it offers much better performance for the cost. I'd be skeptical as to whether or not a pc could be built for $400 that would play da inquisition or similar titles flawlessly and yet a console can.

 

[ralanahm]

I hope this is a 7th page because the i5 page is double.

 

[littleleo]

For those who scoff at limitations of budget cpu's (well under $100) and point out their inability to play the most intensive modern games, what exactly did you expect? A ferrari for less than the cost of a ford fusion? If budget chips (intel or amd) could do everything the high end hardware could do, there wouldn't be any point in high end hardware would there? I would think common sense would enter the equation that with extremely low budgets (by comparison) performance and capabilities would reflect this and there would be some sort of tradeoff.

The game itself costs as much as the g3258. If someone has the money for a $60 game, they have the money for a better processor and put the cart before the horse. Kind of like rocking a ford festiva with $10,000 rims, lack of priorities and balance.

If someone truly wants to play da inquisition on a low budget, ps4's are a great solution. Plays the game nice and smooth for $400.

Well yes. Cheap hardware has its limits. Obviously neither the G3258 nor the 860k will have the performance of an i5 4690K. But there's a difference between limits in performance and not being able to run something in the first place. You can not recommend a dual core CPU as a current day gaming CPU, when there are multiple games requiring 4 threads/cores. Especially when there's a 4 core alternative at a similar price.

If you're on a budget, what would you prefer? Being able to run some games with very good performance and being unable to run some of them at all, or be able to run all games with good enough performance?

If you see the performance of an 860k in general gaming, you can't honestly say it does not deserve to be at least in the same gaming class as the G3258, even without taking into account its ability to run ALL games unlike the pentium;
http://benchmarks-tests.com/reviews/processors/amd_athlon_x4_860k/gaming_benchmarks.php

The nice thing about desktops is the ability to upgrade them in the future. You and upgrade your CPU, RAM, Video Card, Case, Keyboard, mouse, and O/S.

The way I see it you can upgrade from a G3258 up to a i7-4690K later what can you upgrade to from a 860k that is as good? Nothing, the upgrade path for the Intel 1150 Socket over the AMD FM2+ is so much better for gamers it's not even close. APUs are not gaming CPUs they are not what Gamers and Enthusiast should use for their gaming rigs, AMD has basically abandoned this segment. Recommending a FM2+ system to a gamer is a disservice unless they understand upfront the very limited ability to upgrade the rig in the future.

 

[synphul]

True and I like the fact a pc can be upgraded as I need especially since I use it for more than gaming. For those who use it solely for gaming, it could quickly become more expensive in terms of upgrades. For instance I just upgraded my cpu, mobo and ram. I think it ran me around $400 with sales during black fri. I didn't have enough in my budget around the holidays to also upgrade the gpu so I kept my old one which is limiting in some of the newer games. For a good mid-upper performing gpu I'm looking at another $200-300 easy, if going with what I'd really prefer it would be more like $350-500 for just the gpu.

When it comes time for new game releases on a new console platform, a console upgrade is only $400 or so. Roughly the same as having to turn around and upgrade the video card every so often. Aside from being able to use my pc for other things I need it for, the ability to upgrade even incrementally doesn't make it any easier on the budget than replacing the gaming system outright with a console. They're about the same. The one advantage pc has at least to some degree is backward compatibility. Although just like ps4 won't play ps2 games, since I upgraded to win7 there are some games (like the original far cry) that I can't play even with a 64bit patch. Full backward compatibility would be really nice.

 

[vertexx]

The whole point on criticizing the G3258 recommendation is the fact that TH makes NO MENTION that you simply cannot play two of the most popular titles with this CPU.

This is completely different than a low-end GPU recommendation. These two titles (Dragon Age Inquisition & Far Cry 4) will scale well to lower GPUs using lower quality settings. And that is the tradeoff with a low-end GPU. You can still play at playable frame-rates; it will just be at lower quality.

With the G3258, you can not play these games, period, without a hack. There absolutely should be warning signs and disclaimers all over the G3258 recommendation.

 

[NightAntilli]

The way I see it you can upgrade from a G3258 up to a i7-4690K later what can you upgrade to from a 860k that is as good? Nothing, the upgrade path for the Intel 1150 Socket over the AMD FM2+ is so much better for gamers it's not even close. APUs are not gaming CPUs they are not what Gamers and Enthusiast should use for their gaming rigs, AMD has basically abandoned this segment. Recommending a FM2+ system to a gamer is a disservice unless they understand upfront the very limited ability to upgrade the rig in the future.

It's fine to see it that way. Indeed the 1150 socket has an upgrade path while the FM2+ socket doesn't have anything better than the 860k. I personally don't agree with this line of thinking, and I'll explain why. It's for everyone to take or leave.

First of all, let me explain what kinds of people will be looking at this article, and especially the budget part. Experienced gamers are not easily going to waste money getting a 'budget' gaming rig. They already have something, and they are probably looking to upgrade something. In this case it's the CPU, and the budget part is definitely irrelevant in most cases. Generally, it's the people that want to enter the gaming space that are going to be looking at the budget CPUs.

Now... Say you're one of these people and you want a budget gaming PC to play recent games, and the first one you want to play happens to be Dragon Age: Inquisition. You played the prior two Dragon Age games on your consoles, but you've decided to switch to PC for the first time. You can simply use the keep to create the Dragon Age world status that you want, and you stumble upon this article. You see the Intel G3258 recommendation. Ok great, that's within your budget. You get that CPU and buy the game, and then find out the game doesn't run. What now? The person goes online to find out what went wrong, and he finds out he bought the wrong CPU, because the game requires 4 threads/cores to run.

Now, after this happens, what does this person have to do? Not only is he mad/disappointed/confused, he loses confidence in Toms Hardware, has to magically pump out more money than he was planning to, to buy a CPU that can actually run 4 threads, and he has to waste time trying to figure out what to buy and to sell his current CPU to get money to buy something better. Either that, or he has to spend time looking up how to hack the game to run on his processor, which probably will turn him away from PC gaming in the first place. All of which could've been avoided with a simple mention of the 860k

That is the disservice in this case. The people here who are experienced PC builders know these details. People out there looking for recommendations regarding a budget PC probably are building one of their first gaming PCs ever, or building one for someone they know. Chances are that they don't know the ins and outs, and that's why they come to articles like this. What are the chances that such a person is looking to upgrade within a few months? And if they wish to upgrade in a year, there are betters paths to follow. It's their first experiences and they want to test the waters. That's not the first experience of PC gaming that we wish to give people.

And really. I really really do wonder where this 'backlash' is coming from. What is the problem with mentioning both processors? We can easily mention that the G3258 is faster, but limited to two cores, which means some games won't run. At the same time, mention the 860k, saying it has 4 cores and can perform similarly and doesn't have the same limitation as that pentium. Problem is, there's no upgrade path. You actually give people choice. Right now, it's like we're trying to force people to go down the Intel path because everyone MUST agree that Intel is the ONLY way to game. And that is simply FALSE. And I'm getting tired of that bias. I can not respect any 'opinion' that argues for only the G3258.

 

[NightAntilli]

True and I like the fact a pc can be upgraded as I need especially since I use it for more than gaming. For those who use it solely for gaming, it could quickly become more expensive in terms of upgrades. For instance I just upgraded my cpu, mobo and ram. I think it ran me around $400 with sales during black fri. I didn't have enough in my budget around the holidays to also upgrade the gpu so I kept my old one which is limiting in some of the newer games. For a good mid-upper performing gpu I'm looking at another $200-300 easy, if going with what I'd really prefer it would be more like $350-500 for just the gpu.

When it comes time for new game releases on a new console platform, a console upgrade is only $400 or so. Roughly the same as having to turn around and upgrade the video card every so often. Aside from being able to use my pc for other things I need it for, the ability to upgrade even incrementally doesn't make it any easier on the budget than replacing the gaming system outright with a console. They're about the same. The one advantage pc has at least to some degree is backward compatibility. Although just like ps4 won't play ps2 games, since I upgraded to win7 there are some games (like the original far cry) that I can't play even with a 64bit patch. Full backward compatibility would be really nice.

There are more advantages than you mention. On PC you don't have to pay a subscription to play online. Indeed backwards compatibility is a big one. There's also steam sales that actually cut the cost to be a LOT lower over say 5 years (the lifetime of a console, give or take). On the long run the PC is cheaper, for superior performance and graphics... So yeah, the initial investment is smaller on the console, but the overall cost always turns out to be larger.

As for the upgrade part... Yes. It's very awesome that PCs can be upgraded as you want. However, CPU upgrading on itself (as in without swapping motherboard), well, I find it to be generally useless.

The CPU upgrade culture is overrated. If you want to buy a budget CPU now to upgrade in a few months (as in short term), you might as well wait a few months and get what you want in one go. It's cheaper because you don't have to spend money twice, and less time consuming because you don't have to spent time trying to sell the other CPU. And if you want to go a few years with the CPU (upgrading after long-term), by the time you wish to upgrade it, you have to buy a 2nd hand CPU to get a sort of respectable price without knowing what the owner did with it, or pay a lot to upgrade with a new one. Might as overclock it, and if that's not possible, well, upgrade mobo + CPU again in one go.

 

[littleleo]

The way I see it you can upgrade from a G3258 up to a i7-4690K later what can you upgrade to from a 860k that is as good? Nothing, the upgrade path for the Intel 1150 Socket over the AMD FM2+ is so much better for gamers it's not even close. APUs are not gaming CPUs they are not what Gamers and Enthusiast should use for their gaming rigs, AMD has basically abandoned this segment. Recommending a FM2+ system to a gamer is a disservice unless they understand upfront the very limited ability to upgrade the rig in the future.

It's fine to see it that way. Indeed the 1150 socket has an upgrade path while the FM2+ socket doesn't have anything better than the 860k. I personally don't agree with this line of thinking, and I'll explain why. It's for everyone to take or leave.

First of all, let me explain what kinds of people will be looking at this article, and especially the budget part. Experienced gamers are not easily going to waste money getting a 'budget' gaming rig. They already have something, and they are probably looking to upgrade something. In this case it's the CPU, and the budget part is definitely irrelevant in most cases. Generally, it's the people that want to enter the gaming space that are going to be looking at the budget CPUs.

Now... Say you're one of these people and you want a budget gaming PC to play recent games, and the first one you want to play happens to be Dragon Age: Inquisition. You played the prior two Dragon Age games on your consoles, but you've decided to switch to PC for the first time. You can simply use the keep to create the Dragon Age world status that you want, and you stumble upon this article. You see the Intel G3258 recommendation. Ok great, that's within your budget. You get that CPU and buy the game, and then find out the game doesn't run. What now? The person goes online to find out what went wrong, and he finds out he bought the wrong CPU, because the game requires 4 threads/cores to run.

Now, after this happens, what does this person have to do? Not only is he mad/disappointed/confused, he loses confidence in Toms Hardware, has to magically pump out more money than he was planning to, to buy a CPU that can actually run 4 threads, and he has to waste time trying to figure out what to buy and to sell his current CPU to get money to buy something better. Either that, or he has to spend time looking up how to hack the game to run on his processor, which probably will turn him away from PC gaming in the first place. All of which could've been avoided with a simple mention of the 860k

That is the disservice in this case. The people here who are experienced PC builders know these details. People out there looking for recommendations regarding a budget PC probably are building one of their first gaming PCs ever, or building one for someone they know. Chances are that they don't know the ins and outs, and that's why they come to articles like this. What are the chances that such a person is looking to upgrade within a few months? And if they wish to upgrade in a year, there are betters paths to follow. It's their first experiences and they want to test the waters. That's not the first experience of PC gaming that we wish to give people.

And really. I really really do wonder where this 'backlash' is coming from. What is the problem with mentioning both processors? We can easily mention that the G3258 is faster, but limited to two cores, which means some games won't run. At the same time, mention the 860k, saying it has 4 cores and can perform similarly and doesn't have the same limitation as that pentium. Problem is, there's no upgrade path. You actually give people choice. Right now, it's like we're trying to force people to go down the Intel path because everyone MUST agree that Intel is the ONLY way to game. And that is simply FALSE. And I'm getting tired of that bias. I can not respect any 'opinion' that argues for only the G3258.

So you are saying the newbie will research the CPU, Motherboard, Power supply, case, O/S, Keyboard, mouse, and the video card. BUT he won't check the system requirements on the games he is buying the parts for and building the RIG for? I find that far fetched and very hard to agree with. A 1st time computer buyer would surely check the game requirements of the game he is going through all the trouble for 1st. Or he would ask his friends that he plays with that are using computers what their builds are and try to copy them. I get calls for newbies and the 1st thing out of their mouths is I want to play DA or I want to play WoW or what ever and I need this CPU and GPU. They are very conscious that there are requirements and all I've dealt with make sure they cover them.

I have seen post on here where someone will say what is the best build I can do for $500 and generally the 1st question they are asked is what games are you going to play on it. For around that price range and a 1st time builder I usually recommend they stay with a console. After all someone has to buy them and it sure ain't going to be me.

 

[elbert]

I would suggest the $115 oem fx-8310. Just add a cheap $10 hsf for $125. I would pick this of the i3 and with a better hsf your looking at a nice overclock.

 

[dgingeri]

You guys STILL haven't fixed the memory listing for the Core i7 5930k. It still says DDR3, when it should list DDR4. How unprofessional that you would keep making this mistake so many times in a row. How many times has it been? 5, 6?

 

[VIPChristian]

This article is why I do not buy anything, PC, or console gaming. When did the Industry become, cutthroat? I have fun gaming, but crap like this ruins it, so to all the component manufactures, keep it, I will find something else to do.

 

[Karpet360]

I'm really tired of this focus on mobile CPUs, have broadwell i5s been announced for desktops yet?

 

[Fr33Th1nk3r]

Why is Tom's so biased to Intel. Granted I own a 4770k and a 4790k system. I built an 8320 system for my in law and he plays sniper elite no problem. My neice has an 28 7600 system and plays games and does classwork with NO problem and NO lag.
Seriously. How much does intell pay you for reviews?