is i5 still good?

[togostarburst]

i'm planning to upgrade from my intel pentium g3258 to an 4th generation i5,but im kinda confused because of amd fan boys saying intel sucks now, is an i5 really a bad CPU now?, i mean it's a quad core processor, are they trying to say it can't handle things now? i can save more money if i don't change my motherboard and ram, so is it really a bad choice??

 

[Mike3k24]

"AMD fanboys" ok. The i5 is still good for gaming but if you plan on doing anything other than gaming its best to go with the better option in Ryzen. The i5 is held back by its 4 cores and 4 threads which basically take away all multitasking options.

 

[Snipergod87]

Best upgrade for you would be either a 4670/4690 or 4770/4790 that being said something like a 4590 isn't a bad choice either. No point in spending a lot of money for a newer system that performs a little bit better gaming and other common tasks. It's not like when Ryzen came out all of the sudden games can no longer perform well on 4 core and 4 threads.

 

[Solandri]

"AMD fanboys" ok. The i5 is still good for gaming but if you plan on doing anything other than gaming its best to go with the better option in Ryzen. The i5 is held back by its 4 cores and 4 threads which basically take away all multitasking options.

Hyperthreading works by allowing one thread to use a core, but another thread to use unused parts of that same core. So for example, if one thread is using the ALU (basically integer math), another thread could use the FPU (floating point math). If both threads needed the ALU, the second thread simply wouldn't be able to run and you gain zero benefit from hyperthreading (and it may actually be slower than without hyperthreading because the CPU may assign the thread to a virtual core where it can't run, instead of a physical core where it can).

This is important because when a program or game is bottlenecked by the CPU, it's usually bottlenecked because it needs a specific function on the CPU and that function is being used on all cores. So hyperthreading won't speed up a bottlenecked task. It only speeds up eclectic tasks which involve lots of different things which need to be done simultaneously. In real-world tasks, this shows up in video encoding, data compression, and very little else (and even then only by about 30%-50%). Most games see little to no benefit from hyperthreading. A handful of games do benefit from it, but they are the exception, not the rule.

So having 4 cores without hyperthreading isn't really much of a handicap. You've still got twice as many physical cores as a dual core CPU. Unless you're doing one of these real-world tasks which specifically benefit from hyperthreading, having 4 cores + hyperthreading isn't like having 8 cores. It's more like having 4.2 or 4.4 cores. Not that big a deal.

Ryzen is performance-competitive with Intel by using more physical cores. This allows it to outperform Intel on tasks which can be parallelized into multiple threads. Intel still beats it in tasks which are single-threaded. Outside of video encoding, data compression, and newer games (especially online multiplayer), most tasks are still single-threaded. So the only way to really take advantage of having lots of physical cores is to multitask (run lots of different things at once). Humans suck at multitasking, so you won't benefit from extra physical cores that often. Usually 2-3 cores is enough for multitasking.

Given your existing system and CPU, simply upgrading to an i5 is by far your best bang-for-the-buck upgrade option. When you plan to completely upgrade the system with a new motherboard and memory, then you can consider Ryzen. But switching to a completely new Ryzen system vs an upgrade to an i5 would be like paying 3-4 times as much for only 1.3-1.5x more performance most of the time.

 

[synphul]

No, intel doesn't 'suck now'. Amd made impressive improvements in their ipc (core performance) from fx to ryzen. They still lag a bit behind recent intel cpu's in terms of ipc. They do have higher core count models for less but that's not always an advantage in games. Most of the time the i7 7700k is still the gaming leader over higher core count ryzen and intel cpu's. It's just a quad core with hyper threading yet clock speed out of the box is still the fastest. It's also faster than ryzen which seem to top out at 4ghz or so when oc'd.

In your situation I'd keep the system and just upgrade the cpu. I5's are still viable for the vast majority of games and in heavily threaded games like bf1, witcher 3 etc they fluctuate a bit in fps so you may notice a few drops in intensive situations (lots of action, heavy multiplayer on large maps). It's not like it's going to tank at 15-20fps or anything.

If you're concerned about threading in more intensive games, consider a xeon e3 1231v3. It's up to 3.8ghz and hyper threaded, usually runs just a bit more than a top end i5 from that generation. It's the equivalent of an i7 4770 without the integrated graphics and if you're gaming you're going to be using a dedicate gpu anyway.

If the xeon is out of your budget, try to consider a 4690 or 4590 if at all possible. Clock speed still matters and the cheaper 4440/4460 are verging on being a handicap due to much lower clock speeds. The 4590 is listed from several ebay sellers for around $130-150. Xeons appear harder to come by, many places aren't selling them new any longer. When cpu's start falling behind by several generations they can be a bit difficult to find. As always, be wary with ebay. Try to use a payment method that's protected, check the seller's rating/feedback, contact them with any questions prior to bidding/buying.

Normally ebay isn't the first place I'd suggest but many of the 4th gen cpu's aren't showing up in retail searches.

 

[jankerson]

Nothing wrong with an i5, still a good gaming CPU as most games are more graphics card intensive these days.

All depends on what you want and or believe you need or not.

 

[goldstone77]

If you want to upgrade to an i5 you will be fine for gaming. I have a first generation i5 2500K@4.5GHz, 16GB 2400MHz DDR3, 500GB Samsung SSD, 6TB western digital black, and an RX480 4GB. I can play anything at 1080p with no problems. Only thing I've had to do is buy a new video card every 4 years to play the latest triple A titles. If I was going to buy a cheap new system to game I would get a 1600 that costs $199 now, and good B350 motherboards are around $75-100. DDR4 RAM cost about $130. Total cost to upgrade around $430 isn't bad for brand new.