here's the thing, overall performance the pentium is going to win, especially with an insanely low tdp compared to the core 2 quad, but, I did hear of how they made far cry 4 not able to even run with a dual core, hopefully no new games do this, because considering 2 new cores today that cant even run the game, can get better performance than a quad core from many years ago that can run it only because it has 4 cores, even if they are worse.
this is the only game i've hear this with and there is a fix to it
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/266114-running-farcry-4-on-a-dual-core-cpu-guide-my-fps-numbers/
I think enough people made a stink about it so this probably wont happen again unless we get to a point where even new dual core processors cant handle a game (highly unlikely)
actually, just realized that this is an older pentium. do you have these processors, or a way to get them cheaper than what they are selling (same goes with the boards) because both make a factor, but if you dont have any of the hardware easily accessible, and on an extreme budget, its probably not the best way to go. but if i had to choose i would go q6600 for the lulz and overclock the crap out of it..
But I dont have a space heater yet so that's just me.
EDIT: but on a more serious note, with sandy bridge you will get better features like usb3 (as long as you dont get the cheapest 1155 board that exists, which i actually purchased one like that for my brothers whos original board got fried), and have the possibility for an actual upgrade thats not just a higher frequency. buttttt, despite its age, the higher end sandy bridge cpus really haven't budged in price too much for a while (i sold my i5-3570k for 120 ish about 10 months ago) because they are still really good processors and the newer stuff doesnt exactly blow it away, especially for the high price tag of upgrading the whole platform. but nevertheless you're going to spend a lot of money either way to get more performance. (for the best i suggest x58
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