Best bang for buck CPU?

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jaylim0512

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I was wondering what the best bang for the buck CPU is right now. I want a unlocked CPU so I'm looking either at a 3570k or a 4670k.

Would motherboards be relatively the same price with the same features? I am looking to overclock my cpu.
 
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CTurbo
Browsing around the internet, I see that I can save $55-60 on a new 3570k + Z77 combo over a new 4670k + Z87 combo.

The 4670k holds on average a 6-7% performance increase over the 3570k.

The 3570k has a hands down better price/performance ratio over the 4670k.
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CTurbo

CTurbo

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The 3570k is the better bang for the buck usually. The LGA1155 motherboards are usually cheaper too. The LGA1150 comes with better standard features though.

The FX 8320 or 8350 are better bang for buck processors though. I'm not saying they're better than the i5s, they're not, but considering the price, they have a better price/performance ratio for sure, and they overclock like hell too.
 
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DeathAndPain

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CTurbo's advice is garbage. The old Ivy Bridge (3xxx) CPUs are inferior to Haswell (4xxx) in every respect. Unfortunately there is a bunch of false rumors circulating, and I suppose CTurbo worships them, so let me quickly address them.

  • ■ Rumor: Ivy Bridge delivers better performance from overclocking. False. Even if the Ivy Bridge chips can be overclocked slightly higher, it is important to keep in mind that on non-AVX code Haswell delivers 10% higher performance out of the box. So you need to compare the overclocking potential of a 3500 MHz Haswell to that of a 3500 MHz Ivy Bridge that has already been overclocked to 3850 MHz! (On AVX code Haswell is ~70% faster than Ivy Bridge.)
    ■ Rumor: Ivy Bridge is cheaper because it is old. False. Intel does not reduce their prices for their discontinued processor lines, because they know that whoever buys these does so because he specifically wants the old products. This applies to companies that want all of their hardware to remain identical and need replacements for their old computers. Same goes for motherboards. Price differences between Ivy Bridge and Haswell boards are negligible if you buy cheap in the internet (which is always recommendable).
    ■ Rumor: Haswell runs hotter. False. True is the contrary: Haswell has new power-saving mechanisms that will usually cause it to consume less power than Ivy Bridge. Haswell CPUs allow building computers with an idle desktop power consumption of less than 15 Watts! Haswell also does not consume more power than Ivy Bridge under heavy load when running conventional applications. The cause of this rumor is that Haswell gets slightly hotter when running new code that uses AVX commands. The reason is that Ivy Bridge cannot process AVX commands in the first place and has to slowly emulate them. Haswell has dedicated AVX units that are enabled when AVX code is encountered. True, it gets hotter then, but while doing so it returns a whopping 70% performance increase over Ivy Bridge, so the performance-per-Watts-ratio is still heavily in favor on Haswell.
Best bang for the buck is usually the Core i5-4670. Core i7 is much more expensive and only faster if you have code that can utilize more than 4 cores.

Oh, and the AMD processors are so outclassed performance wise that I would not even consider giving them a second thought. Besides running a lot hotter. (Check performance charts here on Tomshardware if you want to see for yourself.)

If I were you I would think twice about going for overclocking:

  • ■ The CPU will be slightly more expensive, and in order to be able to actually overclock you will need a Z87 chipset, which is considerably more expensive. You will also need to disable power-saving CPU features, so your electricity bill will also be higher. Paying more for the ability to overclock defeats the overclocking idea of getting more performance out of your CPU for free! In other words, Intel charges you for your overclocking gain. You just do not realize it.
    ■ The unlocked versions of Intel processors have the virtualization feature disabled. If you ever want to run a virtual machine on your PC (which is always nice because there you can install a virtual Windows and try out software in a sandbox with no risk of messing up your installation, not even if the software is infected), then your performance will be considerably lower because your unlocked CPU does not support it. Some virtualization software does not even run on such processors in the first place.
 
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CTurbo

CTurbo

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Browsing around the internet, I see that I can save $55-60 on a new 3570k + Z77 combo over a new 4670k + Z87 combo.

The 4670k holds on average a 6-7% performance increase over the 3570k.

The 3570k has a hands down better price/performance ratio over the 4670k.
 
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