More Threads VS More Cores vs Higher Frequency

[HKILLER]

I've been wanting to make a small budget Gaming PC for a while and i have decided that i would go with a Mini-ITX B85 board...what troubles me is i'm looking at a few options for CPU :

G3258 2 core 2 threads overclock-able to 4.0-4.5Ghz (mostly)no hyper threading

i3 4170 2 core 4 threads no overclock 3.7Ghz hyper threading

i5 4460 4 core 4 threads no overclock 3.4Ghz no hyper threading

i have been wondering that for gaming if i go with G3258 what would i be sacrificing compared to getting 4170 or 4460?

if i overclock G3258 to 4.5Ghz is it better than having 4170 with 2 more threads?

between 2 core/4 threads and 4 cores/4 threads which is better?

also the trouble with G3258 is that apparently in order to make it overclock in Windows 10 you gotta have a Z97/Z87 board so is it worth going with a Z97 and G3258?

obviously i don't want to pay $190 for CPU as i would be able to spend that money on other components like the GPU or SSD ( if i go with the $65 G3258 i can use the extra money and get a GTX 970 instead of GTX 960 ).

Thanks.

 

[unksol]

For starters you won't be able to play games that require a quad core like fallout 4. I would avoid dual cores at all cost.

 

[Benjiwenji]

the i3 and i5 here costs about the same. If its the same in your case, then go with the i5. The G3258 is an excellent 2 core, but I can't see that it is a good thing to buy an 2 thread cpu for gaming when it is nearly 2016.

4 threads is becoming the new standard for gaming. Even if you manage to get games to load on G3258, people are experiencing stutters with games like GTA 5. For FarCry4 you need to hack the game to get it to work with a 2 thread CPU.

If you want budget rig, go with FX 6300 overclock it pair with 290. (I will get a lot of hate saying this, but it is cheap and can play new AAA titles just fine)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($107.98 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.50 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($95.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $223.46
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-08 21:52 EST-0500

Or

If you want intel performance, then pay intel price. (This is the better performing cpu. In gaming, it depends on the GPU.)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($191.98 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper T2 54.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($17.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($71.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $281.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-08 21:58 EST-0500

Please note that I added a $15 USD cooler on the 4460 set because I don't like stock coolers on any systems. Prices are all in USD.

Also, note that I used Newegg prices because they are pretty standard. Amazon contains 3rd party sellers and MicroCenter is best but not accessible by everyone.

If you're going with an GPU that's R9 290 or less, the FX 6300 will handle with in 5-10% fps as any intels, with exceptions of titles like Arma 3.

However, if you're going with an above $300 GPU, then Intels will be much better option than AMD.

Here is a benchmarks breakdown,
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Systems/Quad-Core-Gaming-Hardware-Roundup/Metro-Last-Light-and-Middle-Earth-Shadow-Mordor

 

[gamerk316]

The i3 is already a significant step up from the Pentium; even those extra two HTT cores make a big difference for budget CPUs. Unless you are severely price limited, get at least an i3, if not an i5.

 

[Crixilian]

i5>i3>Pentium without oc
4 cores no ht is better than 2 cores with ht
pentium oc to 4.5 GHz will faster than i3

as benji said, it is end of 2015
4 physical cores will be the standard od gaming processor

 

[gamerk316]

I think for most games, the i3 with HTT will be enough, barely, like it currently is. But the i5 is going to be stronger in a number of higher-performance titles.

 

[Benjiwenji]

Although sometimes I think we weight too much on the CPU for gaming, gaming is one of those things that I think we should pick the best GPU we can afford and then choose the CPU accordingly.

If it is the 980ti/Fury x, then go with the Xeon/i7

If it is the 970/390/x, then go with i7/i5 4690k

960/290/280x, 4460/8350

280/380, 8350/6300/i3

Under $200, i3/6300/860k

 

[gamerk316]

That's silly; then the user upgrades GPUs after two years, and gets no improvements because of the CPU. ALWAYS get the best CPU you can afford; it's less hassle to swap GPUs then CPUs.

 

[Benjiwenji]

I understand your argument, but it is very subject and counter-intuitive.

I don't fault people for thinking that way. However, some people don't replace GPU as often as you'd think (some do, some don't). I know people that are still holding onto their HD 7xxx series from 2011, which still can perform fine. I just replaced an old HD 7770 myself earlier this year. People with the 780ti are never going to let of them, and they'll be fine for another year and a half before they have to adjust settings. On the low end, the 750 ti is still one of the most popular budget card. Some people used it on the SW BF beta. There is no reason for those people to drop the 750 ti at the 2 year mark.

The new r9 300 series is almost a rebrand of the 200 series, which means my 290 is going to be in my desktop for atleast another year and a half.

Furthermore, those who can afford the top end cards will automatically have top end cpus, which will fine for that next 4 years as well. Upgrading every 2 years for them isn't a problem. However, those with mid-low end gpu probably won't have the mentality/ability to upgrade every 2 years. Thus, your argument also defeats itself on both ends.

So yes, there are those who would replace GPU every 2 years, but don't generalize the population to fit your argument.

 

[HKILLER]

One thing i have to mention is i don't Play AAA games that often,Specially Ubisoft games...they just come out like Crap with unholy bugs and system requirements...i Often play 3rd person games(WarFrame,DMC,DeadSpace,MSG Revengeance and...),DOTA 2,CS GO,Borderlands series,Some racing games like GRID and a TON of Indie games...

as for GTA V I've seen people hit a 60FPS on G3258+960 1080p High(without dropping below 45 FPS)...so although those games are comfortable with an i5, money is the main problem here...i also hear that in open world games like GTA V one of causes of stutters is H.D.D and having an SSD would help a lot with removing the stutters...

I personally think a G3258 or 4170 with GTX 970 would do me much better in games compared to a 4440/4460 with a GTX 960 unless like the 4 core CPU would do some great magic in games which i highly doubt it...it might have some stutters with 2 cores but that is to be expected since I'm spending only $410 on GPU and CPU...

I have some parts left from a while back ( like HDD,MB,PSU,RAM,Case... )so I'm just buying GPU and CPU and if i get some money left over i would get a SSD...

A 4170 is better than an Overclocked G3258?but do all games benefit from Intel HT?from what i know HT is not very effective in games and games prefer a non HT CPUs...unless they have like crazy physics effects like Crysis 3 which again is a game i won't be playing...

but if i am to buy an i5 i would just tear down my current power rig with 4690K make an Small PC out of it..then sell my left over parts and get a X99 as my primary power rig...

 

[Benjiwenji]

The CPU is what causes stutters in the case of GTAv, not the HDD.

Watch the following video and pay attention to the CPU usage. It is maxing out the CPU, thus, stutters.
You will also notice the stutters more on a visual level and then on the FPS display. That's why benchmarks don't necessarily tell the whole story.
Watch it and think about how the GTAv is also a 2 year old game. The problem will only be worse as newer games becomes more demanding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TflMlYNgKec

from what i know HT is not very effective in games and games prefer a non HT CPUs...unless they have like crazy physics effects like Crysis 3 which again is a game i won't be playing...

Games that utilize 3-4 cores don't specifically benefit from from Intel's hyperthreading. Rather, they benefit from having 3-4 threads in general. Intel's hyperthreading just happens to be a solution in that category. If games use 4 threads, then it uses 4 threads.

No matter if it is 4 threads coming from 4 cores, or 2 cores HT, they are still 4 threads. That is still 2 more threads than what the G3258 can ever offer.
There is no way that the G3258 will out perform the 4460 in games. There "might be" exceptions, but never the rule.

Intel already has excellent single threaded performance, overclocking the G3258 just kills its TDP. OC'ing the G3258 won't succumb its limitations of having only 2 threads. Thus, OC'ing it is a waste of money.


If you have already made up your mind, then I won't try to change it. However, just know that what you personally think just might not be in accordance to the reality.

 

[HKILLER]

Games that utilize 3-4 cores don't specifically benefit from from Intel's hyperthreading. Rather, they benefit from having 3-4 threads in general. Intel's hyperthreading just happens to be a solution in that category. If games use 4 threads, then it uses 4 threads.

No matter if it is 4 threads coming from 4 cores, or 2 cores HT, they are still 4 threads. That is still 2 more threads than what the G3258 can ever offer.
There is no way that the G3258 will out perform the 4460 in games. There "might be" exceptions, but never the rule.

Intel already has excellent single threaded performance, overclocking the G3258 just kills its TDP. OC'ing the G3258 won't succumb its limitations of having only 2 threads. Thus, OC'ing it is a waste of money.


If you have already made up your mind, then I won't try to change it. However, just know that what you personally think just might not be in accordance to the reality.

what i find funny is that you don't read the situation...if i go with an i5 i would have enough to go with GTX 960 but on the other hand a weaker CPU means i would get a GTX 970...the performance gap between 960 and 970 is about 60%-70%...i already have an i5 rig with a 980 in it.I've put the option of 4460 in this topic to see if going with anything lower would not meet my expectations i would just sell the left over parts and move to X99...

the same person you linked to has said this in the comments "But I had the same result with i7 5820K on 2 core enable with 4 threads with GTX 660Ti" so according to him having 2cores/4threads is still useless meaning whether you have a G3258 or 4170 it's the same thing it's gonna stutter...also according to you there isn't a difference between 2core/4threads and 4core/4threads...which i find very,Very Hard to agree on...

not to mention i wouldn't MAX OUT everything to make it start stuttering...the options are there to configure them and make the game work at its best on your rig. i never said my intention is to MAX OUT all these games on this budget build...the whole point of this budget build is to put it in the living room for friends to come over and play in front of TV.

OCing G3258 is a waste of money?Kills the TDP...again i do not agree with you...

i have not made up my mind yet. the same goes for you. you personally think an i5 is better in any situation...true...if i was getting a GTX 960 either way! but i think i heard what you had to say and now i'm gonna wait to see if anybody else has anything to say...

 

[Benjiwenji]

I wasn't telling you to get the i5. The point was, and remains still, that the 2 cores/threads cpu will produce stutters that there is not a GPU that can fix. I was showing you the stutters, even with a GTX 970 in the video. The G3258 will bottleneck the 970. The i3, however, remains to be a valid option.

I didn't, and still don't, care what people comment on a youtube page. These comments ranges from "Holocaust never existed" to "Obama is a terrorist." Thus, are not creditable. So, lets look for something more tangible. If you want another example, then here you go. You can see for yourself the difference in having 2c/2t vs 2c/4t.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbglcO1QFjM


On the topic of overclocking. We overclock to increase the single thread performance to eliminate/reduce the cpu bottleneck to the gpu.

Here is the issue with the G3258, and unlike the AMD CPUs, the bottleneck isn't from its single thread performance. Rather, it is at the limited threads the CPU can handle. Therefore, no amount of overclocking can lessen that bottleneck. Therefore, it begs the question, why do you overclock this cpu? You will only get better performance in games that only uses 2 threads, which is a disappearing trend. Refer to the video link.

edit:

i have not made up my mind yet. the same goes for you. you personally think an i5 is better in any situation...true...if i was getting a GTX 960 either way! but i think i heard what you had to say and now i'm gonna wait to see if anybody else has anything to say...

I mean no offense here. However, this is an open forum for anyone to come to. People, other than you, might have the same questions and find this on google or whatever. Thus, I am not targeting you personally. I want people to be able to understand this issue through this discussion should they come across this at a later time.

 

[gamerk316]

There is no way that the G3258 will out perform the 4460 in games. There "might be" exceptions, but never the rule.

Sure there is:

G3258 Clock Speed: 3.2 GHz
i5 4460 Clock Speed: 3.2 Ghz

OC the G3258, and there will be many situations it ends up being faster.

Here is the issue with the G3258, and unlike the AMD CPUs, the bottleneck isn't from its single thread performance. Rather, it is at the limited threads the CPU can handle. Therefore, no amount of overclocking can lessen that bottleneck. Therefore, it begs the question, why do you overclock this cpu? You will only get better performance in games that only uses 2 threads, which is a disappearing trend.

WRONG. This is the single biggest logical fallacy I continue to see, often from people who don't know how CPUs work under the hood.

The total number of threads doesn't matter; what matters is that no critical thread is bottlenecked by the CPU. Simple example: You have two threads, each which takes ~40% CPU time. On a single-core CPU, there's no bottleneck. The bottleneck exists when each thread requires 60% CPU time; then you've got a problem. OC the CPU by 20% though, and the problem goes away again.

GTA V runs on approx 70 threads at a time (based off of what Task Manger reports), and uses 8 threads that do *significant* (>1% CPU time) work, based on an analysis I did using GPUView not long ago. One thread is the games primary thread, the other 7 are DX rendering threads. In this case, the problem the G3258 is simply the total workload is greater then 200% CPU time (100% times two CPU cores). The fact this is split into 8 threads, rather then any other number, is irreverent. The ONLY problem is the total thread execution time is greater then the CPU can handle. OCing helps reduce the bottleneck somewhat, but at no attainable clock with the G3258 escape CPU bottleneck at highest settings. In theory, if you could somehow get the CPU to ~5 GHz or so, the bottleneck would be gone, but it's unlikely you could ever clock that CPU that high.

So yes, more CPU cores help, by virtue of adding more computing resources. The number of threads, by itself, really doesn't matter. All that matters is the NO CPU core get bottlenecked, and it's really irrelevant if this is done by one, two, a fifty separate threads. Say what you will, but an infinitely clocked single core CPU would be automatically superior to any non-infinitely clocked multi-core CPU, since there would never be a CPU side bottleneck on the former, unlike the latter.

 

[gamerk316]

Case in point:

http://www.techspot.com/review/1089-fallout-4-benchmarks/page5.html

Specifically:

Fallout 4 uses four heavy threads threads, but an OCd G3258 is perfectly playable even at Ultra quality. Competitive with the FX-9590 in fact. While the FX gets a higher minimum, the averages are only a couple FPS apart. Granted, both get spanked by i7s (116 FPS instead of ~70), but still, says something a OCd Pentium can almost match AMDs top CPU, even in threaded workloads.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Cores are more important then threads. Clock speeds only matter within proccessor family, comparing different families by clocks is futile. Case in point, the FX-9590. The 4.7gHz clock and 5gHz Turbo tempted a lot of people, but with the exception of extremely threaded tasks an i5 at the same clock would win.

 

[Benjiwenji]

Case in point:

Fallout 4 uses four heavy threads threads, but an OCd G3258 is perfectly playable even at Ultra quality. Competitive with the FX-9590 in fact. While the FX gets a higher minimum, the averages are only a couple FPS apart. Granted, both get spanked by i7s (116 FPS instead of ~70), but still, says something a OCd Pentium can almost match AMDs top CPU, even in threaded workloads.

Well, welcome back to the discussion!

Thanks for bringing those charts up. They are interesting. I am not here to bash the G3258, and it is a good CPU. However, it has it limitations, it would be bias if all we do is praise it without discussing its limitations. With all these talks and charts, we are still avoiding the conversation on the micro-stuttering shown in GTAv. Not just GTAv there are cases in other games too. What you need to know is that these stutters don't seem to appear on a FPS chart (I am not claiming that it also stutters on Fallout 4). And they appears more on the G3258 than other modern quad core CPU. So, tell me, how is overclocking the G3258 going to solve stutters in games? And that is what I meant by overclocking the G3258 won't help. Don't take parts of my argument out of context again.

For the record, if I am actual wrong, then I am happy to learn something out of this discussion. Thus, lets solve the stutter issue, and we'll go from there.

 

[HKILLER]

Case in point:

http://www.techspot.com/review/1089-fallout-4-benchmarks/page5.html

Specifically:

Fallout 4 uses four heavy threads threads, but an OCd G3258 is perfectly playable even at Ultra quality. Competitive with the FX-9590 in fact. While the FX gets a higher minimum, the averages are only a couple FPS apart. Granted, both get spanked by i7s (116 FPS instead of ~70), but still, says something a OCd Pentium can almost match AMDs top CPU, even in threaded workloads.

well from what i saw i think G3258 is gonna do what i want it to do...Thanks everyone.

 

[Benjiwenji]

You're welcome. Hopefully Haswell will stick around the market for a bit, you might find yourself looking again soon.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

The I3 can perform better than an I5 in various cases since the I3 processors have such high initial clock rates (even 3.9Ghz). In games that are single-threaded or 2-threaded an I3 can exceed an I5 non-K.

 

[Benjiwenji]

I feel the same. For a budget gaming rig, as you described it, the i3 would be the best option.

The G3258 almost never exceed i3 in modern multi threaded games.

Surely, overclocking the G3258 to something like 4.7 ghz will lessen the gap. However, with the extra expenses on CPU cooling and overclocking mobo with good VRM/heatsinks. You are better off with an i3.

Here are some benchmarks failed to appear in this discussion. They are from AnandTech and Tom's Hardware, and they both show that the i3 simply out performing any overclocked G3258 in popular titles.

And