i5 4460 vs i3/i5 6xxx Value-For-Money and absolute performance

[myusernamesucks]

I know that this has been asked before, but I have found already existing answers to be less than satisfactory. Anyway. My CPU budget is 200EUR, absolute max being 220EUR. Will be using the PC mostly for ArmA 3 and GTA V (hope to play A3 with good/great settings and not drop below 30fps unless there's a good reason). I do not plan on upgrading, I want to build a PC that will last about 5 years and be able to play releases of the near future with decent settings and framerates. I have narrowed my choices down to the following:

-i3 6100 (125EUR),
-i5 4460 (200EUR),
-i5 6402p (200EUR),
-i5 6500 (220EUR).

I am mostly concerned about A3, as GTA V seems to run great on all of these. I saw a video where the 6300 outperformed the 4460 in A3 by ~5fps. However the 6300 is dual-core, which might mean it's a no-go. As for Skylake 4-cores, it seems most people focus on upgradeability (which I don't care for) and general consensus appears to be that they're only marginally faster than Haswell. So I would like to know the following (answer in the same format please, if possible):

1. Am I exaggerating the disadvantages of the 2-core? It certainly has best value-for-money, but for me performance is the top goal, so is the 6100 (def. not getting the 6300, price difference is too big) a good option, or should I forget it and go quad?

2. How do the i5s compare with each other? 3. How much better is each CPU than the other? 4. How does 6402p/DDR4 stack up against 4460/DDR3 (6402p lower clock kind of bugs me)? 5. Just how much better is the 6500 compared to both individually? Is it really "marginally faster"/unnecessary?

Overall, which one would you pick?

 

[Vincent_Jonathan]

what's your gpu? i3 6100 with hyper thread is enough for most of games, but i5 will be better to prevent bottlenecka dn for future proofing, i would go for i5 6500 or i5 6600k

 

[gussrtk]

you said it yourself. PC for 5 years. At this point it should even be a 6600k.

So your budget = i5-6500. You seem to have a lot of "demands" from your PC. There is no reason to fall short on paying for performance, especially since you are already paying out.

i3 = you will be upgrading cpu in 2 years, more than likely.

i5 = you should last 3 years of good gaming, then it'll go downhill but still usable.

the i5 4460 on paper is on par with i5-6500. But in real life performance the 6500 is quite a bit faster.

Dont forget, there are games which require 4 core CPUs, and that i3 wont perform as you wish, and then what? you gonna buy another CPU?


I think you only need confirmation on your feeling. it's the i5-6500.

 

[aquielisunari]

I know that this has been asked before, but I have found already existing answers to be less than satisfactory. Anyway. My CPU budget is 200EUR, absolute max being 220EUR. Will be using the PC mostly for ArmA 3 and GTA V (hope to play A3 with good/great settings and not drop below 30fps unless there's a good reason). I do not plan on upgrading, I want to build a PC that will last about 5 years and be able to play releases of the near future with decent settings and framerates. I have narrowed my choices down to the following:

-i3 6100 (125EUR),
-i5 4460 (200EUR),
-i5 6402p (200EUR),
-i5 6500 (220EUR).

I am mostly concerned about A3, as GTA V seems to run great on all of these. I saw a video where the 6300 outperformed the 4460 in A3 by ~5fps. However the 6300 is dual-core, which might mean it's a no-go. As for Skylake 4-cores, it seems most people focus on upgradeability (which I don't care for) and general consensus appears to be that they're only marginally faster than Haswell. So I would like to know the following (answer in the same format please, if possible):

1. Am I exaggerating the disadvantages of the 2-core? It certainly has best value-for-money, but for me performance is the top goal, so is the 6100 (def. not getting the 6300, price difference is too big) a good option, or should I forget it and go quad?

2. How do the i5s compare with each other? 3. How much better is each CPU than the other? 4. How does 6402p/DDR4 stack up against 4460/DDR3 (6402p lower clock kind of bugs me)? 5. Just how much better is the 6500 compared to both individually? Is it really "marginally faster"/unnecessary?

Overall, which one would you pick?

I can't really compare these apart from showing you videos, which you have seen and bland benchmarks. However over time I have came to see the 6500 as a great gaming chip. I see people going for the 4460 to save money. I don't see a reason that someone HAS to use DDR4 and skylake as opposed to Haswell. https://postimg.cc/image/4lwdzu29f/ is my current sysem which can max out all of my ~50 games(Steam, Uplay**** and Origin) on a 1080p 60Hz TV with vsync enabled. I haven't heard much at all about the 6402.

6500 i5

 

[damric]

i3-6100 has four logical cores and can be overclocked very easily with the right motherboard. The i5-6400 and 6500 each have four physical cores and can be overclocked with the right motherboard, but will need much better cooling to do so than the i3. Average Skylake core overclock is 4.6GHz.

The i3 is actually the ideal number of cores and threads for over 99% of modern game engines. It only really bogs down when streaming/recording, but for that purpose you should use at least an i7 anyway.

I would not even consider the i5-4460.

 

[photonboy]

i5-6500

No question.
Arma 3 is very CPU intensive at times, as are other games. DX12/Vulkan may require better CPU's for some games, but it's hard to say. They improve efficiency, but games may start to add code that uses more cores so the CPU requirement may stay the same or increase.

(many games don't properly benchmark MMO CPU requirements. From experience, some may show an i3-6100 being similar to an i5-6500, but in demanding maps the i3-6100 isn't enough... you should NOT use a single player or low-client map to test the CPU requirement.)

FALLOUT 4:
Yes, it's a mostly old engine and not very efficient but if you want to play this game then here's the reality:
http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2182-fallout-4-cpu-benchmark-huge-performance-difference

It's very taxing on the CPU at times.

 

[damric]

Unfortunately Photon's review site didn't actually test a Skylake i3. But we can reasonably guess by frequency and IPC gain over the Haswell i3 shown in his review that performance of an i3-6100 would be very close to the Skylake i5 tested in the game Fallout 4.

Yes I own an i3-6100 overclocked to 4.6GHz, but you don't need to take my word on it. Greg at Science Studio has also done much work with this CPU:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmbkRUS_4Efdt5UIhwNqtcw/search?query=i3-6100

 

[myusernamesucks]

Thanks everyone for your answers. I see that some of you think the i3 is a good idea. While I certainly appreciate everybody's individual input equally, it seems that more people can vouch for the 6500, and no offense, but I still don't feel very confident picking the 6100, as some people seem to back up my concerns about the 2 cores. I guess I could be wrong, but I probably wouldn't understand it even if you explained it to me, heh. Besides, I don't see anyone saying the 6500 is a bad choice in general, so I'm going to play it safe here and go with that. Again, thanks everybody.

 

[aquielisunari]

Thanks everyone for your answers. I see that some of you think the i3 is a good idea. While I certainly appreciate everybody's individual input equally, it seems that more people can vouch for the 6500, and no offense, but I still don't feel very confident picking the 6100, as some people seem to back up my concerns about the 2 cores. I guess I could be wrong, but I probably wouldn't understand it even if you explained it to me, heh. Besides, I don't see anyone saying the 6500 is a bad choice in general, so I'm going to play it safe here and go with that. Again, thanks everybody.

Glad we could help. One day you can return the favor by helping someone.