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Budget gaming upgrade

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  • Gaming
  • CPUs
  • ASrock
  • Budget
  • AMD
  • MSI
  • Intel
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March 14, 2014 6:04:14 AM

It's time for me to upgrade my old Propus-core'd Phenom II 840. The lack of an L3 coupled with more and more hypertransport sync flood errors are adding up to "replacement". I'm looking for a good, reasonably future-proof processor/mobo combination and I'm coming up with three possibilities (Need to keep it under $250).

Option 1: Intel i5-4670k paired with an MSI Z87-G41 - $230
(Pro: It's the 4670k. Con: Board seems "eeeeh", MSI is kind of hit and miss these days)

Option 2: AMD FX-8350 paired with an ASRock A970 Extreme4 - $225
(Pro: Solid board, CPU is one of the better AMD offerings, good history with AMD. Con: Heat/power and single-thread performance)

Option 3: AMD FX-6350 paired with an ASRock A970 Extreme4 - $175
(Pro: Wallet wants this one, only 1Ghz off above. Con: Same as above with less cores)

Gaming rig, mostly running The Old Republic and Borderlands 2, some Guild Wars 2. Paired with a Corsair CX600 and a 1Ghz HD7770. I'm not really looking for max detail, just something that'll run smooth FPS and be able to keep up if I do spring for a shiny R9 or GTX 7xx later on. Overclocking isn't my goal, but my trusty Hyper212 will make the migration and gives me that option.

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March 14, 2014 6:09:40 AM

Option 1, because it consumes less power, which is a plus for that PSU! You've said that you won't overclock, so you can pair an Intel Core i5-4430/4440 with a H81/H87/B85 motherboard (Which saves alot of money).
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March 14, 2014 6:14:08 AM

Where did you find a 4670k for $170. Just wondering. The lowest price I could find was 209$ for the CPU.
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March 14, 2014 6:19:10 AM

Shneiky said:
Where did you find a 4670k for $170. Just wondering. The lowest price I could find was 209$ for the CPU.

Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz costs $167,14 here in Croatia.
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March 14, 2014 6:29:41 AM

1) The G41 is horrible. skip that.

2) ASRock is ok. Just get 8320 instead. IT IS THE SAME AS THE 8350!

3) fx-6350 ..nah.

best AMD option = fx-8320 + Extreme 4.
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March 14, 2014 6:34:35 AM

If you don't have a AM3+ compatible aftermarket cooler and you are not planning to get one then you should get whatever is clocked higher out of the box. The FX-8350 in this case would be your best option IMO.
Also I don't recommend the Asrock Extreme boards specially if you are going to overclock. I would personally go with an Asus or a Gigabyte board.
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March 14, 2014 8:09:51 AM

ASRock boards are solid. I would trust an ASRock any day than MSI. And I do wish I had the possibility to with Z68 Extreme from ASrock than with a P67, but that is another story. Also in most reviews here at Toms, the ASRock boards do fare better in OC compared to Gigabyte.

In the end my vote goes for Asus/ASrock. If the I5 in Croatia is 170$, then the motherboards will be also cheaper, I guess.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-z87extr...

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-z87pro4

And best would be:

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-z87k

If you can live with the ugly gold color that is.

Cheers and good luck.
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March 14, 2014 8:21:58 AM

I was talking about AMD platforms and I didn't suggest a MSI board to him. The AMD Asrock board suggested only has 4+1 power phases and I read complaints about it before, some reviewers on new egg say it can't even handle a FX-8320 because its VRM overheats.
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March 14, 2014 8:27:57 AM

Yes, sorry about that. I was talking about the Intel boards. Also, why go 8350/8320 when you can go I5. I5 is the better CPU for gaming for now and in near future. No offense to AMD and I do not wish to start a Intel/AMD war or anything.
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March 14, 2014 8:28:43 AM

It doesn't officially support the FX 8320 either, iirc.
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March 14, 2014 8:58:04 AM

Shneiky said:
Yes, sorry about that. I was talking about the Intel boards. Also, why go 8350/8320 when you can go I5. I5 is the better CPU for gaming for now and in near future. No offense to AMD and I do not wish to start a Intel/AMD war or anything.


Well, Watchdog is to be released in May and is said to utilize 8 threads, we will have to wait and see some benchmarks that will either prove whether the i5 with its stronger 4 cores will dominate on the longer run were games are expected to support more threads/cores, that is assuming that the game will be as well multithreaded as advertised.
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March 14, 2014 9:13:25 AM

AMDRadeonHD said:
Option 1, because it consumes less power, which is a plus for that PSU! You've said that you won't overclock, so you can pair an Intel Core i5-4430/4440 with a H81/H87/B85 motherboard (Which saves alot of money).


Unfortunately, Microcenter doesn't sell the i5-4430 and 4440s, and the Newegg prices are the same as what Microcenter is charging for the 4670k.

They do have the i5-4570 for $30 cheaper, would I be just as happy with that one? As far as I can tell, it's the 4670k without OC ability and .2Ghz slower. Pair that up with an ASUS or Gigabyte B85 board maybe?
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March 14, 2014 9:30:31 AM

To be honest, games have a very dynamic nature. The fact that a game has been coded for 8 threads does not mean that those threads will execute continuously at a high demand. To illustrate this - take rendering for example. Depending on the case the FX 8350 lands where the I7 2700k/3770k and a bit below 4770k. The reason for this is because the process is executed in a very ordered and sequential manner. When you move to a more dynamic load, the single core power is more effective than core count. Even at 6 threads, I imagine the I5 to be equal to the 8320/8350. 8 threads do lean towards the 8350 though. But, that just means that the I7 will pull even further ahead than the 8350/8320 will maybe overtake the I5. One main reason is that the Intel platform does utilize PCIe and RAM better. Running a game, or anything for that matter, does not only count on CPU+GPU power, but also on the underlying architecture that binds the components together and Intel has the upper hand there. I have to admit I am not against AMD, I actually do like their video cards more than nVidia and I like their OpenCL performance, but I am stuck with nVidia and their driver crippling performance due to my software.

Now back to the question. Yes, you will be as happy with the 4570 and an ASRock B85 Pro4 for example. And you will not see that much of a difference between those and a 4670k and Z motherboard without overclocking.
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March 14, 2014 9:33:51 AM

Option 1 still sounds like the best deal. I would still overclock a little, since you have a hyper 212. Set the multiplier to 40 for 4.0ghz and leave everything else alone. It is that easy. A 4.0ghz 4670k will last you quite awhile.
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March 14, 2014 10:01:13 AM

Blze001 said:
AMDRadeonHD said:
Option 1, because it consumes less power, which is a plus for that PSU! You've said that you won't overclock, so you can pair an Intel Core i5-4430/4440 with a H81/H87/B85 motherboard (Which saves alot of money).


Unfortunately, Microcenter doesn't sell the i5-4430 and 4440s, and the Newegg prices are the same as what Microcenter is charging for the 4670k.

They do have the i5-4570 for $30 cheaper, would I be just as happy with that one? As far as I can tell, it's the 4670k without OC ability and .2Ghz slower. Pair that up with an ASUS or Gigabyte B85 board maybe?


Intel Core i5-4570 is $30 cheaper than Intel Core i5-4670K and it performs THE SAME as Intel Core i5-4670K at stock speed, you don't even need a B85 motherboard, H81 is perfect, too. Like ASUS H81M-A.
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March 14, 2014 10:06:52 AM

I don't know about utilizing PCIe better, if you mean by that the fact that the FX chips only support PCIe 2.0, from what I have seen that doesn't make much difference in performance, and whatever minimal difference it makes is usually with flagship class cards. Or maybe what you are talking about is related to Hypertransport? As for memory performance, the FX chips actually have the upper hand in memory intensive programs when compared to the i5 (at least that is what CPU world claims) and it supports up to 1866 MHz RAM.
The one thing I am sure of is that the Intel platform is superior in single threaded performance, and as you said in the case of a load that switches between single threaded and multi threaded work loads the Intel platform will be more efficient depending on the number of cores utilized on both platforms and how heavily/lightly the multi-threaded work loads are. However I have seen a number of games benchmarks where the FX processors number of cores give it an advantage over i5/i3 chips, in one case, metro last light, at lower resolution which is a cpu bound situation, Even the FX-6350 beat the i5-3330.
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March 14, 2014 1:15:41 PM

AMDRadeonHD said:
Blze001 said:
AMDRadeonHD said:
Option 1, because it consumes less power, which is a plus for that PSU! You've said that you won't overclock, so you can pair an Intel Core i5-4430/4440 with a H81/H87/B85 motherboard (Which saves alot of money).


Unfortunately, Microcenter doesn't sell the i5-4430 and 4440s, and the Newegg prices are the same as what Microcenter is charging for the 4670k.

They do have the i5-4570 for $30 cheaper, would I be just as happy with that one? As far as I can tell, it's the 4670k without OC ability and .2Ghz slower. Pair that up with an ASUS or Gigabyte B85 board maybe?


Intel Core i5-4570 is $30 cheaper than Intel Core i5-4670K and it performs THE SAME as Intel Core i5-4670K at stock speed, you don't even need a B85 motherboard, H81 is perfect, too. Like ASUS H81M-A.


Microcenter doesn't offer motherboard deal for a 4570. ;) 
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March 14, 2014 4:54:33 PM

Microcenter has the 4670k + MSI G41 (not good for overclocking) at $230 + tax. If you did want to consider overclocking, Microcenter also offers the 4670k+ Asus Z87-A for $295 + tax. ...just saying
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March 17, 2014 8:59:08 AM

That MSI would be good enough for a minor overclock to 4.0. I agree that it wouldn't be very good for anything major.
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