Solution
Depends on the motherboard, for gaming your going to want to overclock that. It would be nice to have some ram in that deal, I7 860 overclocked is comparable to a Fx 6300 in gaming and used they both go for around $60.

delaro

Judicious
Ambassador
Depends on the motherboard, for gaming your going to want to overclock that. It would be nice to have some ram in that deal, I7 860 overclocked is comparable to a Fx 6300 in gaming and used they both go for around $60.
 
Solution

delaro

Judicious
Ambassador






You greatly underestimate what older hardware can do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkAzPXSvyoY

Yes this is a better deal to start with but there are factors that make it less attractive like buyer location and a strict budget to work with. Prices overseas can be nearly double what you find in the US so going with something you can afford is viable when you happen to have a old PC to steal parts from.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($78.89 @ B&H)
Motherboard: ASRock - B250M-HDV Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($62.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Crucial - Ballistix Sport LT 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($59.88 @ OutletPC)
Total: $201.66


 


That's not bad with a MB, the I7 860 can still do well in games.

Get a fast Graphics card to go with it like a GTX 1070 and it can play current games without much of a problem.

Be aware though, this is 9 YO technology so things will be somewhat slower than they would be with the same GTX 1070 on current hardware.

 


For a hundred bucks on mobo/CPU for literally $20 more you can get vastly better performance, it's mostly clock speed and IPC for modern application anyway.
Unless there's 8GB of existing DDR3 RAM that @OP has, not worth considering.
 


The 1070 will bottleneck like hell.
I suggest a 1050 Ti max with a stock i7 860, if you're up for a good bit of OCing, a 1060 can work, but again, a G4560 combo is a better fit.
 


Won't be THAT bad, would still be a lot better than a 1060 or 1050Ti.

And they will already have a GTX 1070 if they want to upgrade the MB and CPU later to a newer generation.

I still have an i7 870 machine with an RX 480, while slower than current hardware it's still an i7.

They will be gaming so as we know the GPU takes most of the work in MOST games.

 
It actually will be, it's quite a dated CPU, without an OC even a 1060 will struggle horribly.
It's the same argument for driving a top end Mercedes and being homeless, but it's okay because you're saving up for government housing.
Not a good choice.
GPUs see much larger performance gains generation over generation vs CPUs, I cannot exemplify this enough.
 


Meh....

In my i7 7700K machine I ran the old RX 480 until I got the GTX 1080...

Not much of a difference in the RX 480 performance from what I saw, although things do depend on what games one plays. My i7 870 pushed the RX 480 pretty well so it seems.



 



My old i7 870 had zero issues playing, but one has to be realistic with the settings, even in the I7 7700K machine the RX 480 won't come close to what the GTX 1080 can do.

Now I wouldn't get a 1st Gen i7 machine today, no way.

I wouldn't get anything below 4th Gen i7.

Was just saying they do perform, but not even close to the newer hardware overall, but that's a given.

With a GTX 1080 or GTX 1080Ti I can see some CPU's could hold them back.

But from the GTX 1070 and below not so much, the bottlenecking thing has been overblown by the YT people like most things seem to be. They tend to make things look worse than they really are on purpose from what I have seen and from my own testing.

I have seen it so bad that some have overclocked the heck out of the new hardware and ran the older hardware at STOCK speeds to exaggerate the performance of the newer hardware. I have seen this so many times it's gotten to the point I don't even watch a lot of them anymore. It's getting as bad as reality TV, and we all know what reality TV is.
 
Mar 23, 2017
7
0
510

Ok
 


Here is a simple example with my own machines.

Same graphics card, the XFX RX RS 480 8GB in Fire Strike.

Graphics scores only in Fire Strike to isolate the GPU.

i7 870 @ 3.2 GHz - 13,807
i7 7700K @ 4.8 GHz - 13,922

115 points..... 0.8% change.....

That's real, and in my own machines.

So like I was saying with something like a GTX 1070 he would be better off in the long run and get more performance out of it than a midrange card like the RX 480 or GTX 1060 if he wanted to go that way. He would have much more headroom with a GTX 1070 to grow with the new platforms.

 
You're comparing an RX 480 to a GPU with 50% higher performance.
Also that's on par about with what I said, OC'd i7 = 1060 at most, any higher isn't considered a good use of money imo, and this is buying new. I'm not going to bother discussing further, should be enough info out.
 


That's the problem though, there is a big jump in performance between the midrange RX 480 and GTX 1060 to the GTX 1070.... And then another big jump from the GTX 1070 to the GTX 1080.

The GTX 1070 kinda sits there by itself performance wise, it is closer to the GTX 1080 than it is to the GTX 1060 however.

So the question is what does one do with that midrange graphics card once they upgrade to a higher platform because it won't scale with it. So they will be stuck with midrange performance in games.



 

Tsurusaki

Prominent
Aug 2, 2017
2
0
510
PCMARK 7
SCORE
3 014 with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti(1x) and Intel Core i7-860 Processor
SHOW RESULT DETAILS
GRAPHICS CARD
Graphics CardNVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti VendorMicro-Star International Co ., Ltd.# of cards1SLI / CrossFireOffMemory1.024 MBCore clock607 MHzMemory bus clock3.504 MHzDriver version22.21.13.8205Driver statusFM Approved
PROCESSOR
ProcessorIntel Core i7-860 Processor Reported stock core clock2.794 MHzMaximum turbo core clock3.192 MHzPhysical / logical processors1 / 8# of cores4PackageLGA1156Manufacturing process45 nmTDP95 W
GENERAL
Operating system64-bit Windows 10 (6.3.15063)MotherboardIntel Corporation DH55TCMemory8.192 MBModule 12.048 MB Kingston DDR3 @ 1.330 MHzModule 22.048 MB G.Skill DDR3 @ 1.330 MHzModule 32.048 MB G.Skill DDR3 @ 1.330 MHzModule 42.048 MB G.Skill DDR3 @ 1.330 MHzHard drive model1.000 GB ST1000DM003-9YN162 ATA Device