Pentium G3220 bottleneck GTX 760, or other GPU's

Yazooman

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Feb 9, 2014
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So I intend on doing a budget build, and I obviously want the most bang for my buck. Apparently there is virtually no difference between a Pentium G3220 and a i3 4130 besides Hyperthreading, and I don't even think many games even utilize hyperthreading (correct me if I'm wrong).

So instead of going for say an i3 4130 + R9 270 combo, would a Pentium G3220 + GTX 760 be alright? I know that there will be a bottleneck, but is it really a significant one? If the GTX 760 is too overpowered for the Pentium, would a R9 270x be a better option?

I would be playing games like Counter Strike GO, both Borderlands games (and upcoming Pre-sequel), eventually Battlefield 4, Minecraft (with shaders), maybe a bit of DayZ standalone.

This is the build that I would probably do, if anyone is interested.

Thanks guys!
 
Solution
There is a difference between the G3220 and the i3-4130. Pretty much the practical difference is the 0.4Ghz extra on the i3, because otherwise the specs are close and the benchmarks hold up about as would be expected.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Pentium-G3220-vs-Intel-Core-i3-4130

The i3-4130 is the minimum I would recommend for a GTX 760; I've looked at a lot of in-game benchmarks since I was considering a choice between the same 2 CPUs. The i3-4130 is comparable to the FX-6300, whereas the G3220 is more comparable to the FX-6100. The FX-6300 is the weakest AMD CPU I would recommend for the 760, and the i3-4130 is the weakest Intel CPU I would recommend for the 760.

Personally, I've settled on the i3-4360 for my GTX 660.

Counter...
There is a difference between the G3220 and the i3-4130. Pretty much the practical difference is the 0.4Ghz extra on the i3, because otherwise the specs are close and the benchmarks hold up about as would be expected.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Pentium-G3220-vs-Intel-Core-i3-4130

The i3-4130 is the minimum I would recommend for a GTX 760; I've looked at a lot of in-game benchmarks since I was considering a choice between the same 2 CPUs. The i3-4130 is comparable to the FX-6300, whereas the G3220 is more comparable to the FX-6100. The FX-6300 is the weakest AMD CPU I would recommend for the 760, and the i3-4130 is the weakest Intel CPU I would recommend for the 760.

Personally, I've settled on the i3-4360 for my GTX 660.

Counter Strike GO is easy - any CPU will run that.

Borderlands 1 is easy - the G3220 or i3 will run that with no stress.

Borderlands 2 is harder; if you get an AMD card you would need a stronger CPU for the PhysX (probably i5-4440), so Nvidia is recommended to keep the PhysX on the GPU. And probably at least the i3-4130.

Minecraft only uses 1 CPU core - Intel is the way to go, but even the G3220 should be enough for that.

Battlefield 4 is heavily multithreaded - It will run better on an FX than an i3, so if you're going i3 you'll want a minimum of the i3-4130. Preferably faster, as I'm not sure whether the i3-4130 would be enough. It really relies on more cores, rather than fewer faster cores, and is therefore the opposite of how most games optimize. I attribute that mostly to the extremely high number of players in multiplayer matches compared to other shooters.

I think it'd be a bad idea to switch to the 270X, since your chosen games include Borderlands 2 and the Borderlands prequel/sequel. They both make extremely heavy use of high quality and new PhysX effects (just like Metro, Witcher 3, Batman Arkham, etc), so if you go for an AMD card you might need a stronger CPU, at least an i5, to ensure similar performance to an Nvidia card in those games.

Most people run GPU benchmarks with an i7 to ensure the CPU is overkill and won't affect the GPU performance. This actually unfairly biases the results for AMD cards in PhysX games, since the PhysX is put on the i7 and relieves the AMD GPU of all the weight. If you don't have an ultra fast i7, rest assured, PhysX games will perform much better on an Nvidia card like the GTX 760.
 
Solution


How about the X4 760K? Some people say that it's comparable to the i3 4130, whereas others say that it's like the G3220.
 


Benchmarks say the 760K is better than the G3220, but that's not entirely true. Benchmarks are heavily multithreaded 99% of the time, and will show AMD CPUs to perform better than they really do in some games. A dual core will pretty much always run how it's rated... A quad core can lose half its speed if the game doesn't use the extra cores. That's why I decided to get a dual core even though I budgeted myself $150 for the CPU; for that much I can't get a quad core that would perform similarly to the i3 in games that don't use 4-6 cores. Ofc, your results may be different as quite a few of my games still use 2-3 cores, not 4+.

In actual games, I suspect the 760K will range from running better than the G3220, to worse, depending on the game itself. The 760K will probably be better in new games (perhaps as good as the i3-4130, not sure on that though), but worse in older ones.

I recommend the Athlon 760K to quite a few people, but those people aren't normally getting a GTX 760. :s
I normally consider the 760K a pretty good pairing for an R7 260X or a GTX 750. Not sure about the GTX 760. It might be a good pairing, but IDK.
 
I had a GTX 760 paired with my G3220 and couldn't run my games well. They'd crash a lot or I'd have to play them on a really low setting. But since I got my r9 290 I can run most of them on high to ultra at 40 fps avg. I find its strange tbh
 

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