i3 6100 or i5 6400 ? (GTX 960)

[ganudvd]

Current PC Specs:
CX430
8GB DDR4
ASUS GTX960
1TB Blue
120 SSD

should i get an i5 6400 for GTX 960 ? or i3 6100 will be Sufficient?

 

[cdrkf]

It depends on the games you want to play. The i3 6100 is actually pretty capable at gaming and in a lot of cases comes in close to the i5. The advantage you get with the i5 vs the i3 is it is a true quad core (i3 is 2 cores with Hyper Threading, i5 is 4 cores no Hyper Threading, however as the cores are so wide the i3 is *almost* as fast), and it has turbo which the i3 lacks.

If anything, the i5 is a better longer term bet, but the i3 will probably do the job for now.

Edit: As I said though depends on the game. If you mainly wan to play lighter stuff like MOBAs then the i3 would be plenty. If you are wanting to get into the latest things the CPU can be more of an issue (e.g. Star Citizen is actually more CPU limited than GPU, for that you'd really want the i5)...

 

[Gingerbread]

Well if you can afford it, definitely the i5, however i5-6400 is terrible, get an i5-6500, costs $10-20 more and gives you something like 500MHz more.

 

[Alan Caldwell]

Get an i5 6500 or 6600 with a H110 mobo. The i3 has hyper-threading that not all games benefit from, so better a 4 core proccy.

 

[unreal9400]

Go for the i3 since most games like stronger core performance and it is already proven in benchmark that the i3 6100 with the high clock speed can easily perform very close to an i5.