New Hasswell CPU for Gaming... Pentium G3420 vs i3 4130 vs i5 4330, which one to get?

of0xo

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Greetings community!

I'm planning on buying a new gaming system, but my budget is a bit restricted. As far as I have been reading and searched all over the net, I've decided on getting a new Hasswell CPU (socket 1150 is supposed to last 2-3 years, so just thinking about an upgrade in that time), but I'm not still sure about the performance/money "worth" cost, so this is my little dilemma.

I'm upgrading from an AMD platform, but since a few months, I've started to have some problems with temperatures and after a few tweaks, I've decided to spend no more money on it and just get a new build.
It was a Phenom II x2 550BE (and yes, I tried to unlock the other "sleeping" cores, but didn't worked), with an Asus M5A78L-M/USB3, 4 x 2Gb G.Skill Ripjaws @ 1333, an OCZ ModXstream Pro 500W, and a Shappire HD 4870 2Gb Vapor-X. It permormed great for 2 years, but started to leak in the last month with serious heat problems that I can't handle without spending more money in a new case + vents, just to make it last a few months more...

So in the upgrade, I was thinking about what processor from Hasswell could be more "worthy", since actual and short-in-time-terms (about 1 more year or so) games aren't correctly optimized for more than 2 cores processors (I mean that there's no great "real" advantage in between a 4 cores Vs 6 Cores Vs 8 cores)... I've tried to find out any review from the Pentium G3420 just to imagine how it could perform vs i3 4130 and vs i5 4330 but seems there's still no reviews available...
So since in performance terms the difference between i3 and i5 is not really big (or almost was on Ivy generation, in some games the i3 performed better than the i5 as I've seen on some benchmarks), I'm too confused about what to do... You know, just trying to find out how to save some money without sacrificing too much performance.

For the new build, I'll maintain the PSU and my HD's, so excluding the new CPU (what I'm doubting right now about what one should I get), the new componentes are these:

GPU - HIS HD 7870 2Gb IceQ Turbo
MB - Asrock B85M-ITX
RAM - 2 X 4Gb DDR3 1600 Kingston HyperX Black
Case - BitFenix Prodigy (yeah, it fits my new monster GPU http://www.tweaktown.com/image.php?image=http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/content/4/8/4872_34_bitfenix_prodigy_arctic_white_mini_itx_chassis_review_full.jpg )

Keeping in mind that mainly I'm gonna use it for gaming... What do you think? Any possibility of having a bottleneck with the G3420? Is it really worth to go on with the i3? Or really much better with the i5?


Sorry for the long explanation, and thanks in advance for all the suggestions and your time.

Have a nice day! :)
 

of0xo

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Yep, sorry for the novel, but I just wanted to put you in the actual situation, with all the details...

An i5? is it really worth? for example, inside Ivy generation, the difference between i3 3220 and i5 3470 in Hitman Absolution in Ultra Quality @ 1900x1200 it's just 12fps more for the i5, and around here, the difference of price between them is about 60€ :??:

I like to play @ 1920x1080 so I won't suicide if new games won't run with that res. in Ultra settings (As in Hitman Absolution the difference was really insignificant, in Crysis 3 it's about 34fps more with the i5 :heink:) so I'm wondering if it's really worth to spend more money to get the i5 :whistle:
 

IAMEXTREME

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Now it's quite obvious you want to save euros, for that get an i3.
But let me outline the difference between the two processors.

Intel Core i3-4330 advantages:
The Intel i3-4330 is 36% more energy efficient than the Intel i5-4670.

Intel Core i5-4670 advantages
The CPU is 9% faster when running single-threaded programs.
This microprocessor has 61% better performance in multi-threaded applications.
In memory-intensive tasks, the Core i5-4670 CPU has 10% higher performance.
The microprocessor is 2% faster in graphics programs and games.
 

of0xo

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Hhhhmm... If it's just a 2% faster for games, then I think it's not really worth the extra money, thanks for the advice :D

What about the difference between the G3420 and the i3? is it really noticeable? I'm still searching for any real review of the G3420, but still nothing :mouais:
 

IAMEXTREME

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of0xo

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Well, those graphics benchs are not really reliable, I'm looking for something like someone did in this article:

http://www.techspot.com/review/608-hitman-absolution-performance-benchmarks/

As far as these are real benchmarks, it's demostrated that in terms of Ivy bridge family, the performance between i3 and i5 is not really big at all, depending more on the GPU powerhorse than only the CPU :mouais:

So to have a real idea about the differences between the 3 CPU's stated in the title of the thread, I'm still a bit confused about the real performance between the Pentium G3420 and the i3 4130 :whistle:

Anyway, many thanks for your time and your comments, your help is great :D
 
Go with the i5. Quoting from the same article you linked:

http://static.techspot.com/articles-info/608/bench/CPU_01.png

Obviously shows bottleneck occurring with the processors below the top two i7
12 frames per second between the i5-3470 and i3-3220. Think 12 is a small number? It's 26% of the i3's fps!

And you're wrong about games not optimized for more than 2 cores. In the near future we'll be getting games that run on all 8 cores in the new generation of consoles.
 

of0xo

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I was just saying that actual games, and the new ones in mid future are not really good optimized for multicore... In fact, just 4 cores (dones't matter if it's 4 cores or 2cores + 2 threads) for games is the most it could handle, meaning that if you have more than 4 cores, only 3-4 of them will work hard, and the other 4 will be "free", because games are not really going to be really optimized for more than 4 cores... Neither the aclaimed incoming Battlefield 4 is going to be optimized for that kind of processors...

http://elchapuzasinformatico.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Battlefield-4-Alpha-carga-CPU-Intel.jpg

A "little" i3 2100 will be able to handle BF4 properly, if you have the correct amount of RAM and a very nice GPU, but that's all... fps rely more on GPU's horsepower than in CPU's itself :eek:

12fps more with the i5 vs the i3, means nothing while the fps are over 35, that will be more than human eye can get... the "minimum recommended" amount of fps for a game is about 46fps, but I realised that while it's over 35, it's totally playable, so I think that the extra money is not worth for just 12fps more :mouais:
 

of0xo

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Hi there again!

After getting lost for several hours trying to find out some "real" info, I found this video where a guy makes a real comparison between i3 4130 and i5 4670K by benchmarking them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXPK9doyMLg

The i3 4130 performance is really awesome, and as from time to time started to happen with the "real" differences between i5 vs i7 3rd gen CPUs, now it started to happen almost the same in case of i3 vs i5 4rd gen :ouch:

Anyway, I'm still trying to find out some info about the Pentium G3420, so if get something, I'll share with you :D
 
That video already shows a bottleneck in Metro Last Light. First person shooters are typically more GPU heavy.

He should have done a comparison in very CPU intensive RTS or physics sandbox games, in which you will see a much larger gap in performance.

i3's are catching up with i5's and i7's, because the performance demanded by games is not increasing at the same rate at which CPUs improve.
In the near future new games will likely be optimized for multithreading to make full use of the Xbone and PS4's eight core AMD processor, so I would recommend against getting that G3420 as it has two cores and no hyperthreading.
 

Valentin_N

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I would take the pentium g3420, increase the blck to 105 and get for about 100 MHz increase (3,316 MHz) and upgrade to an i5: investing in a i3 will cost you 100 something and another 180 or more for an i5, so save yourself 60 more or less and buy the Pentium.
 

vicwiz007

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I got the i34-4130. there's almost no difference for single threaded games between that and the i5-4330 as said before but if you don't have much money i'd get the i3 and either upgrade to 15 later or upgrade to something better than the i5 later on depending on how demanding the games are you play cpu-wise. just my opinion