Core i5 + Radeon 7770 vs Core i3 + Radeon 7850

[triculious]

I'm building a gaming computer for a friend with a low budget and this last step is burning my mind.

The target of this build will be gaming on 1920x1080. He tends to play FPS games like Black Ops and Modern Warfare, TF2, L4D, some console ports like Mass Effect, Skyrim, Assasin's Creed and some LoL.

I really want him to get the best experience out of the box.

Had to limit myself to stock settings, so I'm considering a Core i5 3350P set with a Radeon 7770 1GB.

Now, if I remember correctly, we can actually notch down the CPU a bit and get a more powerful GPU, and for gaming purposes that is actually better. So I'm pondering a Core i3 2120 with a Radeon 7850 1GB.

I would welcome any piece of advice and/or suggestions you might have.

Thank you.

 

[stickmansam]

What is the exact budget?

You could consider getting an FX6300 ($10 more, better in newer games that support more cores [crysis 3 etc]) and a 7850

 

[dudewitbow]

in most situations, the i3-2120 + 7850 will recieve better framerate than the former choice, the only time where it would be the oppisite would be if the game is so CPU bound, that the cpu hits 100% and starts to sap performance heavily or if the gpu scalling is horrible and the cpu scaling is normal.

the advantage in the i5 setup is that selling a gpu is much more easier in my opinion than selling a non k series cpu, so if you wanted to do a slight upgrade, option one would get rid of gpu quicker than option 2 would get rid of cpu for upgrade.


albeit slightly biased as i run a i3+7850 build myself.

i would recommend aboves option just on a whim. Albeit for current games, it may not score as well as the intel counterpart, but 6300's can overclock, and as the nextgen consoles arive, 4 cores may not be the standard anymore and will be multi threaded, takign advantage of multiple cpu cores(crysis 3 is a great example of optimized FX threaded use). with the ps4 APU being 8 cores, game ports will in my opinion start to be more multithreaded now.

 

[stickmansam]

Yep the extra threads of the FX6300 will finally get more usage

Also current games tend to be an overall wash when you consider i3 vs FX6300 but the FX6300 is more future proof and steamroller (next gen arch) is coming out late 2013

I would peg the FX at 8150 level of perf in games

 

[triculious]

The budget is something around $550, all pieces from amazon. Not the best in tech but the only one who will take an international credit card to my knowledge.

I hadn't considered the AMD option which is a good call, actually. I'll look around and see what I can come up with but again, any advice is more than welcome ^_^.

Thanks a lot guys.