My observation regarding differences between budget CPUs - share your view

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Juraviel

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Jul 18, 2013
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Hello everybody. This is not a question im posting but rather the conclusion of my research, by no means do i consider myself an expert on the matter but there seems to be a confusion when it comes to difference(s) between Intel's ivybridge entrylvl CPUs that most of you here disregard right of the bat being enthusiast and such, but there is a cosiderable user/buyer base that in my opinion has not been properly addressed so far.

Ok.. so..

I been reading this and other PC oriented forums to find out what would be the best buy for the buck if i wanted to build a new PC that could run fairly smoothly and with resonable settings modern games. What i came accross was recurring opinion that it is not wise to purchase any CPU (like Celeron or Pentium) below i3 (like a i3 3220), because supposedly you won't be able to run games at anywhere near good FPS.. but im here to tell you that is nonsense.

I went to Intel's website to see for myself what are these crucial freatures that im gonna miss if i will decide to save myself 50$ on the CPU.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/65692,65693,71072,74749,71070,65527

Short version: difference between G2120 (BOX: $82.00) and i3 3220 (BOX : $134.00) is: somewhat faster iGPU (clocked the same but does come with some extra features, no idea how much can that influence performance, i doubt much though), naturally the hyped HyperThreading, and.. suprise suprise.. 200mhz higher clock. Extras include some anti-theft thing technology and some other hardly relevant (in my opinion) additions. So.. many people seem to believe that HT and 200mhz faster CPU justifies almost 50% (!) higher price of the CPU. Is that really so? I know HT is important in many applications, but come on. I think that if you're planning on getting an external video card then you are not gonna gain so much, as far as gaming goes, choosing an i3 over much cheaper pentium cpus.

Im curious what you guys have to say about this :)
 
Solution
smorizio
The cheaper chip memory controller is slower. Max ram speed is 1333 ram vs 1600. The real killing is real world bench marks done from many pc techs. If the Chip were the same inside then the i3 and g line with the same ram and mb and gpu should be in a dead heat. But in real wold testing the i3 and amd CPU blow the g line of CPUs out of the water. The amd fx 8000 CPU that are the same price are faster then intel g line and i3 CPU. You also see the same real world test when you see a buch of CPU from the i7-i5 and amd go head to head. In real word testing the i7 CPU are the fastest gaming CPU. Amd has the best value for gaming CPU.
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smorizio

smorizio

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Jan 22, 2010
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The cheaper chip memory controller is slower. Max ram speed is 1333 ram vs 1600. The real killing is real world bench marks done from many pc techs. If the Chip were the same inside then the i3 and g line with the same ram and mb and gpu should be in a dead heat. But in real wold testing the i3 and amd CPU blow the g line of CPUs out of the water. The amd fx 8000 CPU that are the same price are faster then intel g line and i3 CPU. You also see the same real world test when you see a buch of CPU from the i7-i5 and amd go head to head. In real word testing the i7 CPU are the fastest gaming CPU. Amd has the best value for gaming CPU.
 
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Juraviel

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Jul 18, 2013
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Sure I know there's always a huge difference between what's on paper and the real world performance, nevertheless its hard to deny that's that there's simply no big advantage of the i3 line over the g one. Games and aps that take advantage of HT do in fact gain quite a lot, but these are still limited. Ram speed.. I'm sure u know the difference between 1600 and 1333 is negligible, also g2120 unlike g2020 already comes with the support for 1600 so theres no problem there either.
 
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ethereal essence

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Jun 5, 2013
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The problem is that even the i3 is starting to show its limits now as a dual core processor. More and more games are optimized for 4 cores now. As far as passable gaming, yes the g series can do an ok job if you aren't expecting mad performance. The G line definitely has its place. There are many people that (as you pointed out) enthusiasts don't understand. People that can put up with stutter every now and then and sub 60 FPS. The problem is that there are some very real gains to be had by a budget minded user by going with AMD's apu's (and their dirt cheap athlon cpus).

AMD's A-10 will run games quite nicely when compared to a G series cpu and dedicated gpu totaling the 150.00 price tag. (Say a G2020 and the remaining balance would be more or less used up by an HD 6670 w/ gddr5 ram which would actually be around 5.00 more than the A-10 itself). The A-10 would out perform this set up on integrated graphics alone. Not to mention the fact that you can add an HD 6670 down the road and run a dual graphics set up.

Yes the G series is good for people on an extreme budget, but there are technically better options out there. They are a viable choice, so are AMD Athlon x4s for around 75.00. In my opinion that would be the better processor considering dual core computing is on its way out. It has a much higher clock speed and a high core count for the same price. Yes you sacrifice single core performance, but few games now will use less than 3 cores. Few programs use just one, and most of the ones that do (both games and programs) you won't really notice the difference between amd and intel.

Honestly Intel really can't compete with AMD in a price per performance game at this price point.
 
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Deitsu

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Jun 21, 2013
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AMD dominates the integrated graphics realm at most price points between Intel and AMD. AMD's Trinity wrecks Ivy Bridge, and in most instances, the A8 5600k is enough to do in the i3 3220 in gaming applications where integrated graphics are concerned.

Although in a general computing scenario, that would be extremely different.

But what I've said doesn't really touch base on what the OP had suggested.

Between the G series CPU's and the i3's, there is a performance increase that would likely be largely attributed to supported RAM speeds (1600MHz i3 > 1333MHz G series), and architectural differences, but the difference isn't much. You would want to go i3 over a G series anyway (if, of course, you needed to pick Intel), because they do outperform the G series processors in a vast majority of tasks. However, the integrated graphics experience in an i3 over a G series processor would be marginal at best.

With a discrete video card, an i3 would still be above a G series processor because of said architectural differences, HT and higher clock speeds.

Personally, if I were looking for the integrated graphics experience, I'd pick up a Trinity or the new Richland's over Intel's solution any day.
 
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ethereal essence

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Jun 5, 2013
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As far as integrated graphics are concerned, ram speed is very very important, with discrete, not so much. Honestly, even comparing a G series to an Athlon x4, there isn't many areas that the G series would beat the higher clocked Athlon and where it does, I doubt you could tell the difference in a real world application. There are very few games (poorly optimized games) that the G series might get higher frame rates, but again, the difference would likely be negligible.

That is why I said Intel can't win a price per performance game at this price point. The biggest differences between the two are the number of cores and the significantly higher clock speed. both of which would have a significantly higher impact on day to day use than Intel arch vs AMD arch.

At this price point, it isn't just the integrated graphics that has to be considered. Since the OP mentioned discrete graphics paired with the Pentium, I pointed out 2 AMD solutions which would net more performance. One was a very specific situation (Pentium with an 80.00 GPU vs APU with iGPU) and the other scales all the way up the chain of GPUs (The Pentium vs Athlon).

Like I said before however, the Pentium does have its niche, but adding a discrete card is not that niche and it isn't in competition with the i3. That niche is simple day to day web browsing and daily computer work using the iGPU. Again AMD does have offerings in this department too but (at around the same price there is 1 quad core) but the performance difference is negligible one way or the other for the most part and either option is an equally viable budget friendly solution (unless power use is a concern then Intel has it all over AMD here).

However the scope here is gaming, and yeah, you can play games on a Pentium. But you'd be far better off getting an i3 for that in the scope of this comparison. Solely due to the fact that games are moving towards being 4 core optimized, the i3 with HT has that much more of a boost over the 2120.
 
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Juraviel

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Jul 18, 2013
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Sorry im responding to you only now, bumping what is essentially an old topic. However.. none of you convinced me. Most of you here seem to believe paying extra 40% for the cpu reflects the worth of having HT technology in your processor. I can't agree with that and find it hard to believe people with cpu master rank and such, say such things.. im basing my opinion not on my experience which is very limited but on the graphs and comparisions i found on the web. Nevertheless.. i got the g2120, couldn't say how fast it is in games because i still do not own a dedicated graphic card, i only eventually plan to maybe jump to i5 or skip this generation of cpus entirely and wait 2-3 years for skylake with ddr4 to come out.
 
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