Pentium for gaming?

[MrInteresting]

Hi everyone! my uncle recently have me his 8 year old gaming PC. At the time when he bought it, this thing was top of the line. The CPU in it is a Pentium 4 550 at 3.6GHz. My uncle also installed a dedicated cooler for the processor (something like this: http://www.newegg.ca/CPU-Fans-Heatsinks/SubCategory/ID-574?Tpk=Processor%20cooler). I would like to know if this processor would be able to used for games. I would be playing Minecraft, Portal 1 (and 2), Dirt 3, and some basic video and photo editing. I am going to get a Sapphire Radeon 7770, so would this processor be a good match for this video card? Or should I get another processor? Thanks for the help.

 

[PCDave]

The Pentium 4 in this day and age is basically unusable for most games, however is suitable for light surfing.

I used to have a Pentium D and tried putting in a 550ti and that didn't help at all, as the GPU was bottlenecked by the CPU.

Bottlenecking is when a product cant preform as great as it can due to not having enough power from the CPU to preform its processes.

So, I would recommend you get something like a i3 3220, or wait for the Haswell i3s, or you can go with a AMD APU if you need to save some money on hardware.

Let me know if you need any help picking out a CPU!

 

[MrInteresting]

Sorry, just clarifying- If I were to get an A6-5600K, would it pair up nicely with the GPU that I mentioned above? Would either be a bottleneck for each other? Thanks again.

 

[PCDave]

I assume you mean this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113281

This should be fine with that GPU, HOWEVER: That is an APU, which is a GPU + CPU solution, so if you want to save some bucks, I would recommend, the AMD Athlon X4 750K Processor, which is basically that but without the GPU part, and switching out the 7770 with a 650 Ti if possible.

Of course, if you want to save some bucks you can go with the APU only.

 

[jammesscot]

As I concerned the 4550 isn't meant for much more than Browser-based gaming. It is good for older games.