I am building a new PC on an old fart's fixed income budget, so every dollar counts. I am replacing a 7 year old quad core AMD running L:inux and a 9 year old Pentium 4 running WinXP with a single computer dual booting Linux and Windows 7.
My question is which CPU to buy. If I understand everything correctly, the primary difference between the current Pentium and the Core i3 is hyper threading. I really doubt that anything I do (internet, word processing, spreadsheet, genealogy) can take advantage of that, except for games, I currently do not play any games but want to try Train Simulator and Railroad Tycoon. I have a very old version of the long discontinued Microsoft Train Simulator that I played a few times I think with Windows 98. I want to play the current version and Railroad Tycoon. The minimum system requirement for the TriSynergy 2013 version is:
- OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8
- Processor: Processor: 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo (3.2 GHz Core 2 Duo
- recommended), AMD Athlon MP (multiprocessor variant or
- comparable processors)
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: 512 MB with Pixel Shader 3.0 (AGP PCIe only)
- DirectX: 9.0c
- Sound: Direct X 9.0c compatible
My budget allows for buying either a Core i3-4130 and using the integrated Intel HD Graphics, or buying a Pentium G3220 and a GeForce GT630 graphics card (buying the Core i3 AND the GT630 is not going to happen). Aside from the hyper threading and a 0.4GHz difference in CPU speed, what is the difference? I have no clue which of the current CPUs best relates to the Core 2 Duo since both the Pentium and the Core i3 are both dual core CPUs. I am quite sure that either graphics options in my budget far exceeds the above listed minimum requirements. Please don't give me links for benchmarks, I've have tried to read them and don't know any more than I did before I went to those web pages.
Thanks for the help!
Dave
My question is which CPU to buy. If I understand everything correctly, the primary difference between the current Pentium and the Core i3 is hyper threading. I really doubt that anything I do (internet, word processing, spreadsheet, genealogy) can take advantage of that, except for games, I currently do not play any games but want to try Train Simulator and Railroad Tycoon. I have a very old version of the long discontinued Microsoft Train Simulator that I played a few times I think with Windows 98. I want to play the current version and Railroad Tycoon. The minimum system requirement for the TriSynergy 2013 version is:
- OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8
- Processor: Processor: 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo (3.2 GHz Core 2 Duo
- recommended), AMD Athlon MP (multiprocessor variant or
- comparable processors)
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: 512 MB with Pixel Shader 3.0 (AGP PCIe only)
- DirectX: 9.0c
- Sound: Direct X 9.0c compatible
My budget allows for buying either a Core i3-4130 and using the integrated Intel HD Graphics, or buying a Pentium G3220 and a GeForce GT630 graphics card (buying the Core i3 AND the GT630 is not going to happen). Aside from the hyper threading and a 0.4GHz difference in CPU speed, what is the difference? I have no clue which of the current CPUs best relates to the Core 2 Duo since both the Pentium and the Core i3 are both dual core CPUs. I am quite sure that either graphics options in my budget far exceeds the above listed minimum requirements. Please don't give me links for benchmarks, I've have tried to read them and don't know any more than I did before I went to those web pages.
Thanks for the help!
Dave
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