i5-3330 with HD 7850 or i3-3220 with HD 7870?

whiteknights · Oct 9, 2013

i'm a about to build a new PC and I'm confused, i will play at resolution 1440x900 .. wich will be better for solid and newish games and give me good FPS.. The i5-3330 with an HD 7850, or i3-3220 with HD 7870

another question: how long the HD 7850 will last for playing the new upcoming games?, i dunno wich one will die sooner, the HD 7850 or the i3-3220?

Kurifox · Oct 9, 2013

The diference betwenn the 7850 and 7870 is not a lot, but the i5 is long way from an i3 its a huge diference.
So definitly get the i5, the 7850 will play most games at high settings with good fps, for at least 1-2 more years, when it can no longer can, upgrade the card to a 760gtx/7950 they will be cheaper anyway.
And the i5 will mostly be a standard CPU gaming-wise for a long time.

dish_moose · Oct 9, 2013

^agree. Many games need more cores - your monitor resolution will give good FPS on may games with the 7850.
-Bruce

unknownofprob · Oct 9, 2013

Honestly I think the i3 3220 because the 7870 is much better than the 7850 at gaming at all kinds of resolutions. Though the i3 3220 is dual core and that is a down side and the i5 3330 is Quad core, I still think that getting a i3 with 7870 is the faster option.

Go to hardware compare GPU for graphics card comparisons to see what I am talking about.

unknownofprob · Oct 9, 2013

For Games the Graphics card is most important, In the future he may-may not decide to upgrade his CPU later as the i5 3330 isn't a very good i5 and it isn't able to go much higher than 4.0Ghz as the voltage would need to be higher and you simply can't do that. The i5 3570k would be the much better alternative for future reference.

whiteknights · Oct 9, 2013

whiteknights :

unknownofprob :

how much would the i5-3330 be better than i3-3220 at performance in games? by % ...

unknownofprob · Oct 9, 2013

+ I use 7870 and plays very well at 1080p, I know your resolution is different but 1920x1080 is harder to power than 1440x900 but not by much. The 7850 lacks about 45% performance to 7870 on anisotropic filtering which is something to say about the 7870's performance to the 7850's. Fact: the 7870 is better at AA (Anti-aliasing) Than the 7970!, 16% better than 7850.

unknownofprob · Oct 9, 2013

whiteknights :

Well the i5 is quite a lot better than i3 3330 but since the GPU is different, it makes the comparison pretty close. The Quad core on the i5 is pretty handy for games as some need more than two cores like on the i3. The i5 choice is pretty good as well but for future (Not like 2+ years) The price of a new good GPU is a lot more than CPU so therefore actually putting the i3 3220 in front slightly. You can always put a new CPU in and sell the i3 later on if dual core isn't enough for you.

unknownofprob · Oct 9, 2013

Sorry I didn't completely answer your question, % wise probably 15% on most games but your resolution and games are a big factor on how much CPU and GPU % you use. It really depends.

whiteknights · Oct 9, 2013

unknownofprob :

thanks for your deep help, i usually play at a lower resolution, never played at 1080p..and i'm planing to buy a monitor 19 inch max., that's means that i can't go for a very high resolution, i will stay around 1360x768 to 1440x900, in this case the CPU will be more important than GPU, right?, and what about 1600x1200, i want to know the balanced resolution for my spec.

Raheel Hasan · Oct 9, 2013

whiteknights :

1680x1050

centaurius · Oct 9, 2013

Go for the i5. IF you can get the i5 3550p even. Since you are not gaming at 1920x1080, the more load will be on CPU in various situations. The bigger the resolution the more workload for the GPU, the lower resolution more workload on CPU. Therefore Invest in a good CPU for the next 3/4 years. Get the 7850 (or a 660?) and in 2 years you can get a better GPU (middleterm wise) that the CPU will still be able to kick juice enough in it.

unknownofprob · Oct 10, 2013

centaurius :

For his resolution, A better Graphics card would be needed because the Resolution he is using is more GPU than CPU. If it were 800x600, then it would be more CPU intensive.

-IDEA: You can always go fan and AMD 6 core black edition CPU, even though they lack intel a lot at gaming, you can overclock the AMD CPU a lot then since it has 6 cores, it would be a bit better at gaming for quite the same price. Other links on this forum have suggested that an AMD CPU would be better at gaming than the i3 3220. If that were your approach, you will need a new motherboard with AM3 Support.

unknownofprob · Oct 10, 2013

centaurius :

In 3/4 years a CPU will be outdated and performance wise in games not that good. A graphics card in 2 years will NEVER last as the graphics needed in games are always becoming more demanding. Next year you might as well go Nvidia's Maxwell GPU's

whiteknights · Oct 10, 2013

unknownofprob :

2 cores running most of games since 6 years, and till now the minimum requirements of most solid games is 2 core CPU, so i don't think that a Quad core will be outdated in 3/4 years i guess it will live more longer..but i agree that the the card i have HD 7850 will be outdated in 2 years

whiteknights · Oct 10, 2013

unknownofprob :

centaurius :

For his resolution, A better Graphics card would be needed because the Resolution he is using is more GPU than CPU. If it were 800x600, then it would be more CPU intensive.

-IDEA: You can always go fan and AMD 6 core black edition CPU, even though they lack intel a lot at gaming, you can overclock the AMD CPU a lot then since it has 6 cores, it would be a bit better at gaming for quite the same price. Other links on this forum have suggested that an AMD CPU would be better at gaming than the i3 3220. If that were your approach, you will need a new motherboard with AM3 Support.

i might play at 1360x768, or 1440x900..still would be more GPU intensive?

unknownofprob · Oct 10, 2013

whiteknights :

I reckon It will be more GPU intensive in all games as that resolution on ultra and high settings will push a graphics card more to power your screen. Play at 1440x900 as it is a much better resolution to game at with a 7870. I have done looking online and I still think that an AMD FX 6200 will do slightly better than i3 3220 since it has 6 cores compared to the i3's dual. More games are needing more cores and since this AMD core is the same price as the i3, might as well give it a try. If you are planning on upgrading the i3 in the future then i would suggest buying it as Intel are far better for gaming than AMD. If you went AMD then you would need to change the socket to AM3 and if you wanted to change back to intel in the future, you would have to buy an intel chip as well as a new motherboard. Your choice.....

YoungWolf · Oct 10, 2013

I'd go with the 7870 and i3. With the 7870 compared to the 7850 you will see a big difference in gaming in every game, however if you get the i5 and 7850 you will gain better performance only in games which are both CPU dependent and require more than 2 cores. Currently there are very few games which do that and while the number of games which use more cores will increase over time - A GPU is still a much bigger bottleneck than CPU in most games.

dz_designer · Oct 10, 2013

For that price range i would say AMD FX-6300 + HD 7870 .. more cores and more threads then the i3.

i5-3330 with HD 7850 or i3-3220 with HD 7870?

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