Ivy Bridge CPU to pair up with HD7850 1GB?

roman1024

Honorable
May 27, 2013
6
0
10,510
I have some parts laying around, including:
- new h61 mITX motherboard (with ivy bridge support)
- used MSI HD7850 1GB GPU
also bunch of hdds, 450w PSU.. basically, everything except CPU and RAM needed to build a pc.
Question is, which CPU will make the best combo with that gpu?
I'm primarily choosing between i3-3250 and i5-3470. Goal is... err.. no particular goal, would be nice to run Arma 3, BF4 and Grid 2 with properly dialed settings @1080p
 
Solution
In Grid 2 and BF4 the i3 and the i5 perform almost the same, in arma 3 the i5 performs better, i'd go with the i5, you never know when you'll use those extra cores, also make sure that you're using a quality psu with at least a 80+ certification, a bad psu can doom your components. Also 1080p can eat easily 1GB of video ram:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/battlefield-4-vga-graphics-performance-benchmark,11.html

The 7850 is still a great card, but 1GB of vram will really cripple it.

mlga91

Admirable
In Grid 2 and BF4 the i3 and the i5 perform almost the same, in arma 3 the i5 performs better, i'd go with the i5, you never know when you'll use those extra cores, also make sure that you're using a quality psu with at least a 80+ certification, a bad psu can doom your components. Also 1080p can eat easily 1GB of video ram:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/battlefield-4-vga-graphics-performance-benchmark,11.html

The 7850 is still a great card, but 1GB of vram will really cripple it.
 
Solution