Will a dual core cpu be able to run games that require quad cores

No, some games nowadays do require at least 4 cores and if you have a dual core the game is not going to run smoothly -if at all! For a budget pc I would recommend something like a fx 6300 which is a six core processor and would handle everything better than a g 3258 but at a slightly higher cost 40$ More than g3258 but the Mobo will also be cheaper.

I wouldn't pay 100 bucks for a three year old processor that gets trounced by a current gen i3 in almost all titles even when the FX chip is overclocked and the i3 is not. I just wouldn't. Makes no sense.

This is the minimum configuration I'd consider for anybody making an entry level gaming rig currently.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($129.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($51.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws 4 series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $221.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-29 03:07 EST-0500


Chances are good that before long, all the motherboard manufacturers are going to release bios updates that allow BCLK overclocking on non-Z boards, so you can really get some decent performance out of that configuration if that happens. Even if it doesn't, it's still going to outperform most FX chips whether they're four, six or eight core versions, on most everything that isn't video encoding.

Sorry but the fx 6300 is clearly better than an i3 not only in gaming but in other areas too like rendering and such and is overall cheaper and much more bang-for-your-buck than a dual core i3.

Ah christ. We've hashed this out in a thousand threads already, over and over again, so I'm not going there again. Do your research. You're wrong and that's all I'm going to say on the subject. Even a Haswell i3 kills an FX-8320@4.6Ghz OC in almost everything, and Skylake is maybe 15-20% improved over the first Haswell chips, so just don't go there again. The last thing we need is another AMD vs Intel thread. It's not going to happen either, I assure you.

Consider, these benchmarks are a two generation old Haswell chip, not a newer Skylake processor, so you can probably widen the margin of beat down seen here to account for that.

http://www.techspot.com/review/943-best-value-desktop-cpu/page6.html

And we'll just leave it alone now. FX-6300 is ok-ish, but when you can get a much stronger CPU for about 25 bucks more, it makes little sense. IF the extra 25 bucks is a burden, then of course the 6300 is an option, but it's not a good one really.

15 to 20% performance difference wtf lol. We're talking about a maximum of 5% between skylake and Haswell. And please, there is no competition between the fx 6300 and i3 6100. Sure the i3 might be able to get you 3-5 more fps in some games but the fx 6300 is better in every other aspects.

No, we're talking about 5% between Skylake and Haswell refresh. There was also a performance increase of about 5-10% between Haswell and Haswell refresh, so depending on what the process is, you're looking at an 8 to as much as 20% difference between the first series of Haswell chips, and Skylake. And you are clearly on the fanboy side of the fence, so I can see no amount of proof or argument will sway you, as it never does with any of the fanboys. If you have some proof, bring it, otherwise, I say it's false.

Remember, we're talking gaming, on modern titles, not encoding video or playing pinochle.

A fanboy? There is one thing I've learned in the pc world and that's amd is always better for budget builds and this time I doubt its any different. I know that Intel is better for the most part but it comes with a great cost. I will be upgrading to a skylake I5 in 6 months from now when I ll have the money I need. I never said amd is better than Intel, heck I prefer Intel but when Intel prices a non overclockable dual core Cpu this high then I have no other choice but to go with Amd.

EVERY single title, the 6100 beats the FX-6300. Nothing more to say.




http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-intel-core-i3-6100-review

If you read that article, or any recent article, you'd know that ALL the Skylake chips can be overclocked.

Dude they use a titan X what did you expect to see? Op is building a budget build so he is propably going to use a R7 370 or gtx 960 or something and there is not going to be a difference when using those gpus. If there is it will probably be very small and not even noticeable.

They use a Titan X to eliminate the GPU as the cause of anything related to the graphics side of the equation. If the FX chip was stronger, it would win out. It doesn't. Using the same GPU card when testing offers an even playing field. It doesn't matter WHAT card it is, so long as it's used on both systems. Some of those titles had a 10-40fps difference. I'd say that's pretty damn noticeable. I'm done here.

What I'm trying to say is that amd Cpus are not the best for enthusiast gaming but when they are paired with a gpu that is more budget minded then it's going to perform just as well as any Intel processor, especially if the game can use all the cores. And of course the fx 6300 is better in every other Cpu intensive task and please don't try to deny that.

In terms of gaming, the i3 6100 gets more than 3-5fps in 'some games'. At 1080p, the i3 was 7.1fps faster than the fx 6300 in ac unity, 10.8fps faster in bf4, 44.7fps faster in crysis 3, 17.7 fps faster in cod aw, 10fps faster in gtaV, 10.9fps faster in farcry 4, 35.2 fps faster in shadow of mordor and 20.2 fps faster in ryse.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-intel-core-i3-6100-review

Including the 300mhz speed increase of the i3 6100 vs the older i3 4130, skylake was found to be 17-26% faster. With that in mind, the older slower 4130 nearly kept pace with the fx 9590 in fallout 4 both at 1080p and at 1440p and suffered less performance hits at the min fps. The fx 6300 doesn't compete with the 9590.
http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2182-fallout-4-cpu-benchmark-huge-performance-difference

When compared to the fx 6300, the older i3 4330 total benchmark times outpaced the fx 6300 across a field of 30 benchmarks. It also did so with 36% less power consumption under load and the new 6100 is even more efficient.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2015/-36-Total-Time,3728.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2015/-35-System-Peak-Power,3727.html

Outside of a few rare cases such as 7zip performance, where is the 6300 beating the i3? The older i3 much less skylake's i3? Not in games. Not in 3dsmax, not in blender, a slight edge in photoshop which I'm sure the newer 6100 has no trouble making up the difference since the i3 6100 nearly matches the fx 8320 in photoshop cc.
http://www.techspot.com/review/1087-best-value-desktop-cpu/page2.html

I think you're right, there's no competition between the fx 6300 and i3 6100 far as I can tell. If the fx 6300 is so much stronger even discounting the realm of gaming, shouldn't it start to show somewhere? I'd be happy to see benchmark comparisons where the fx 6300 is blowing away the competition, I've been looking from gaming to office workload to professional use and I'm not finding them.

You did notice that when you pause your mouse over a persons avatar you can see their system specs right? Try that with darkbreeze before calling him a fanboy

You are also aware that ALL Skylake CPUs can be overclocked right? That's right. Now the i3 kills the FX 8xxx series even when the 8xxx series is overclocked as well. Once again there are a very few situations where AMD wins. Gaming is not among them. Skylake has double the IPC.

http://www.techspot.com/review/1108-intel-locked-skylake-cpu-bclk-overclocking/

So now that that's settled, I'll just add, the FX-6300 is probably still a better option than the G3258. At least, if you're going to play any of the games that requires a quad core processor, which is more and more all the time. The G3258 is a bit less expensive, yes, but not so much once you factor in the fact that it needs to be overclocked significantly to be worthwhile, that it needs at least a thirty dollar cooler and a bit higher quality motherboard in order to overclock it to that level and the additional fact that even if you do that, there's going to be some games you can't play with it.

You won't have that problem with the FX 6 core chip and it DOES offer ok performance on most games and applications. Just not AS good as some other options that are realistically close in price.

The i3 I listed is probably, almost certainly, the least expensive option that gives you great entry level performance, the latest platform so you can upgrade to something even better later (You'll already have DDR4 so whatever upgrades come later won't require also buying new RAM. You'll already be on an LGA 1151 socket so you won't need a new motherboard to move to a Skylake i5 or i7 and there'll likely be at least one more upgrade cycle that uses the LGA 1151 socket, if not two, so your upgrade path will remain relevant for at least a while. These others are already dead. Some for quite some time.) when you're ready.

Saving a few bucks now really isn't worth it unless it's absolutely the only way you can get a system. Saving a few more bucks for something more viable is a much better option, and really, if an additional sixty bucks for a Skylake i3 instead of a G3258 is a major burden then perhaps it's not the right time to be building anyhow, and you should wait until you can afford something that's honestly worth your investment.


Even this would be better than going with the G3258.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4170 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($107.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81M-HD2 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($39.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $182.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-29 15:46 EST-0500

i thought this was not supposed to turn into an amd vs intel thread?

i would suggest both sides heeding those words.

The op's original question regarding dual vs quad core was already well answered, many games are starting to require quad core cpu's. The i3 is technically a dual core but due to 4 threads is able to fit the bill where the g3258 may not and is still a solid performing budget option at around $100-130 usd. That's price competitive to the fx 6300/6350.

If someone wants to make a suggestion for a similar budget or lower budget cpu that performs as well or better I'm all for it. No one likes to overspend for tech, if there's a sweet deal to be had who wouldn't want in on it? It would be helpful though if people are going to make claims that they have some sort of evidence to back it up.

I certainly don't have an issue with amd being recommended, but not under false premises such as claiming for instance that the fx 6300 is better than an i3 6100 in 'every other aspect'. Or saying that skylake i3's are only at most 5% faster than their haswell predecessor. In some cases that may be true when generically comparing skylake to haswell but as it turns out not in this case. Claims that the particular i3 and fx cpu in question are only separated by 3-5fps. If that were the case I'd be too happy to say that the op has two very good candidates to choose from.

Benchmarks from countless sources don't back up those claims though, they say something very different. Hopefully my question of benchmarks showing the suggested fx cpu being notably better than the i3 didn't come off as snarky as it wasn't the intention. I was being serious, I haven't found those benchmarks. In real world use scenarios involving gaming, multiple popular games at that, office productivity, professional use applications covering a wide variety of potential usage the data is largely favoring the i3.

Just so folks understand that I'm not out to be biased, I try to look for solid reliable and repeatable results. By my own nature if only one site or one set of benchmarks showed drastically different results for either cpu I would tend to question it. If there are sources for performance results I'm unaware of that show other than what I've been able to find I'm open to checking it out. When numerous sites with a whole slew of performance comparison environments begin returning similar results it's hard to ignore the repeated outcome regardless of what product is in question.

If this is just a stepping stone, then you could do worse and it's probably not the worst idea in the world. Going from G3258 to i3 though, seems a waste when you could simply wait and keep the 65 bucks for the G3258 for something else. Either way though, good luck to you Doc.

No man, Far cry 4 can run on dual cores.
My rig:-
Processor - i3 6100 6th gen
Ram - Kingston 16gb (2X8 gb)
Graphic card - gtx 950 2gb
Psu - cooler master 600watt

And i can run any high intensive games.
Far cry 4 @ 60fps( avg)
The witcher 3 @ 50fps(min)
Gta 5 @ 53fps (min)
Crysis @ 56fps (min)
And all the high intensive games at minimum 35-40 fps
And Cs go at 120fps
So in this case processor matters but not if the gpu is not strong.
So dual core can run but g3258 will not give more than 30 - 35 fps (doesn't matter what gpu you throw in but the capacity of g3258 will not coupup.
So i recommend i3 6100 or i5 processors for good and budget oriented performance.

An i3 has two additional hyperthreads, which games see as cores AND this was already addressed and answered earlier in this thread. Pentiums do not. Plus, this is an old thread. Please do not make necro posts into old threads especially when you are not offering any new information that has value. Thanks.