I5 2nd or 3rd gen

fajanelat · Jun 12, 2018

I currently have the AMD A10-7870K, and I know AMD is *** below Ryzen, so I was planning on maintaining my RAM (1x8, planning on selling and going 2x4 or going 2x8) and GPU (GTX 1050), so I was planning on either getting an I5-2500 or I5-3570. Which of the two would not/avoid bottlenecking with my GPU? I play mostly Dota 2, PUBG, CSGO, and some more common games. Oh, and what motherboard should be my best bet?

Mod edit: language

Rogue Leader · Jun 12, 2018

If you are building a new system I'd highly recommend against building something so old. Everything you buy will be second hand, and many are hard to come by. You're better off trying to buy someone's complete system. OR even better buy something new. Something like the Pentium G5600 and a good board won't cost you much more and will be as fast if not faster.

As an aside please watch your language, no profanity.

captaincharisma · Jun 12, 2018

those CPU's are too old to be worth it and would be hard to find parts for. if you need something cheap you would be better off building a PC around a 7th or 8th gen Pentium CPU

justin.m.beauvais · Jun 12, 2018

I'm not sure I agree with the Pentium argument. You should really go for an i3 8100. It is a true quad core, just like the old i5s were. Its performance is comparable to a top end i5 from those generations that you are looking at. On top of that, it is recent hardware, so you have an upgrade path, support, warranty, and the new electronics smell...

But, if you want to maintain DDR3 support, go for a 4th generation i5. Something like a 4670 or 4690 would bring you current to i3-8100 speed, which is plenty for the vast majority of games... but if you are planning on selling EVERYTHING, consider the AMD Ryzen 2400G. It has 4 cores and 8 threads, is plenty fast, and comes with integrated Vega graphics that play all the games you listed pretty well. It isn't 1050 level performance, much closer to 1030 level, but it is good to hold you over till you can get your hands on a 1060 or something worthy of all the cores and threads.

zyh1987 · Jun 12, 2018

i would say, cpu aside, the most difficult part is to find a good mobo and ram. concurrent hardware offers great selection and support. and have very little issue with other hardware like gfx card, and ram. with older hardware, there is no guarantee that they are going to work, and high quality parts cost more than their original msrp.

Ztdutxjgxgtu · Jun 12, 2018

Ddr4 ram is expensive right now!
I never saw a faulty cpu so i think 2nd hand is ok.
Go with 3570 , though from this gen it use ****** paste.but its a refresh from last gen
I think you can only buy NEW h61m mobo, all others are either very expenzive or stopped production

MOD EDIT: Language, did you not see the BOLD warning in the original post?!?!?

fajanelat · Jun 12, 2018

Rogue Leader :

Was just planning on this, instead of upgrading everything right now. Was also thinking if a 3rd gen or 2nd gen I5 would last me, like a year or something before I could upgrade for a whole new system. I could barely game on my system

fajanelat · Jun 12, 2018

I'm not sure I agree with the Pentium argument. You should really go for an i3 8100. It is a true quad core, just like the old i5s were. Its performance is comparable to a top end i5 from those generations that you are looking at. On top of that, it is recent hardware, so you have an upgrade path, support, warranty, and the new electronics smell...

But, if you want to maintain DDR3 support, go for a 4th generation i5. Something like a 4670 or 4690 would bring you current to i3-8100 speed, which is plenty for the vast majority of games... but if you are planning on selling EVERYTHING, consider the AMD Ryzen 2400G. It has 4 cores and 8 threads, is plenty fast, and comes with integrated Vega graphics that play all the games you listed pretty well. It isn't 1050 level performance, much closer to 1030 level, but it is good to hold you over till you can get your hands on a 1060 or something worthy of all the cores and threads.

But it won't bottleneck my 1050, won't it? And how hard can it game on my listed games? I was planning on maintaining ddr3 if it could still game good. Would it live till a year and a half or just a year?

Rogue Leader · Jun 12, 2018

fajanelat :

IMO thats a waste of money, when all is said and done you're going to spend a few hundred on something that won't even be worth half that when you're done with it. Meanwhile if you got a board and ram for a Pentium G5600 you in a year or so pull it out and drop in an i7-8700 and more ram and have a way upgraded system very easily. Its the most cost effective way.

captaincharisma · Jun 12, 2018

fajanelat :

you would be wasting money building on a 10 year old platform like that your would have to upgrade all components again when you decide to do an upgrade again.

this is why i suggested going for a current gen cheap Pentium or I3 for starting a computer build on the cheapside. this way in the future you won't have to buy as many parts

justin.m.beauvais · Jun 13, 2018

fajanelat :

I'm not sure I agree with the Pentium argument. You should really go for an i3 8100. It is a true quad core, just like the old i5s were. Its performance is comparable to a top end i5 from those generations that you are looking at. On top of that, it is recent hardware, so you have an upgrade path, support, warranty, and the new electronics smell...

But, if you want to maintain DDR3 support, go for a 4th generation i5. Something like a 4670 or 4690 would bring you current to i3-8100 speed, which is plenty for the vast majority of games... but if you are planning on selling EVERYTHING, consider the AMD Ryzen 2400G. It has 4 cores and 8 threads, is plenty fast, and comes with integrated Vega graphics that play all the games you listed pretty well. It isn't 1050 level performance, much closer to 1030 level, but it is good to hold you over till you can get your hands on a 1060 or something worthy of all the cores and threads.

But it won't bottleneck my 1050, won't it? And how hard can it game on my listed games? I was planning on maintaining ddr3 if it could still game good. Would it live till a year and a half or just a year?

An i5 4670 would last you a year at least, I would think probably 2, and would not bottleneck a GTX 1060 if you wanted to upgrade your video card.

Rogue Leader · Jun 13, 2018

justin.m.beauvais :

fajanelat :

An i5 4670 would last you a year at least, I would think probably 2, and would not bottleneck a GTX 1060 if you wanted to upgrade your video card.

Again why waste the money building a 4 generation old system. He can build a new Pentium based system for not much more and have an instant upgrade path to a monstrous processor (8700)

justin.m.beauvais · Jun 13, 2018

Rogue Leader :

justin.m.beauvais :

Again why waste the money building a 4 generation old system. He can build a new Pentium based system for not much more and have an instant upgrade path to a monstrous processor (8700)

Because RAM prices are absurd and if he is on an extremely limited budget he will be better served replacing as few parts as possible. These i5 CPUs that are being suggested are on par with an i3 8100, would cost him less, and he'd be ok for a couple years. Buying new is nice, but cost for performance is an important metric.

Rogue Leader · Jun 13, 2018

justin.m.beauvais :

Rogue Leader :

Because RAM prices are absurd and if he is on an extremely limited budget he will be better served replacing as few parts as possible. These i5 CPUs that are being suggested are on par with an i3 8100, would cost him less, and he'd be ok for a couple years. Buying new is nice, but cost for performance is an important metric.

But he already said he wants to do an upgrade within the next year or so. Why spend the money on parts that he may not get his money back on, when he can just upgrade his CPU in a year and be ahead of the game.

And Memory has dropped in price already, no its not as cheap as it was but

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233982&cm_re=8gb_ddr4-2400-_-20-233-982-_-Product

$83 for 8gb isn't that bad.

justin.m.beauvais · Jun 13, 2018

Rogue Leader :

Yes, what you are advocating is an intelligent choice, and it is the one that I would make, but I'm not on a crap CPU that can't do what I want it to.

If he can spend $200 now to get playable games for a couple years, vs waiting and not getting what he wants out of his machine for a year or more, then spending $350 on a new Pentium machine that may or may not perform better than the one he could have had for $200, just to have an upgrade path that doesn't make sense 6 months later because new generations of CPUs are out and might be a "better idea" and he has to buy a whole new setup anyways and is spending even more money, spending the $200 now would be better for him.

We'd need a crystal ball to give the perfect advice, but we don't have one. I'm not going to suggest "Hey wait 6 months and get a machine that doesn't perform as well as the one you could get today, just on the off chance that you might want to put a faster CPU in it a couple years". That is a sub-optimal thing to suggest in this case. If you go into a build planning an upgrade it is a good strategy, but if your reason for building is to play games now the argument falls apart. You get the best performance you can as soon as you can so that you can just play... and in this case that is a Haswell i5 and motherboard, which will be cheaper than a Coffee Lake Pentium, motherboard, and RAM, and give him better performance.

madmatt30 · Jun 13, 2018

A 7870k isn't 'that' crap.
Its perfectly serviceable for running a gtx 1050 imo.

Certainly wouldn't look at anything sandy/ivy - apart from heavily overclocked k series chips from that era they're also fairly deficient at modern gaming.

Haswell could be a practical choice but in all honesty they dont sell that cheap & decent boards can be hard to come by now too.

captaincharisma · Jun 13, 2018

justin.m.beauvais :

Rogue Leader :

Because RAM prices are absurd and if he is on an extremely limited budget he will be better served replacing as few parts as possible. These i5 CPUs that are being suggested are on par with an i3 8100, would cost him less, and he'd be ok for a couple years. Buying new is nice, but cost for performance is an important metric.

even if DDR4 ram prices are as expensive as they say are the OP will still have to fork out as much money or more in the future when they decide to upgrade. sticking with a platform that only can use DDR3 ram is a bad option

Rogue Leader · Jun 13, 2018

justin.m.beauvais :

Let me caveat you there, the 4590 will play SOME games faster. The Pentium G5600 having Coffee lake cores will play single core games faster than a 4590, and in most benchmarks isn't that far off. Hes playing games that are all esports titles that aside from PUBG will probably work better on the Pentium. For $245 he can have a build

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Pentium Gold G5600 3.9GHz Dual-Core Processor ($93.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI - B360M PRO-VDH Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($83.75 @ Amazon)
Total: $246.74
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-06-13 11:55 EDT-0400

With memory that will play all his games just as well if not better. And then can drop a new processor in when ready. I mean do you see the ridiculousness of advising him to buy a 4 year old processor and then being concerned about where processors are at a year after he is ready to upgrade? The 8700k is king of the hill for the foreseeable future, but the 2 year old 6700k still is a very strong contender. There is no upcoming replacement for the 8700k for at least a year thanks to Moores law, and even then, don't expect a monster upgrade, as there hasn't been for a REALLY long time.

So again I don't see the point of spending any money on obsolete equipment, he can sell his memory and whatever else and be into a brand new setup thats easily upgradeable for under $250 net cost.

dontlistentome · Jun 13, 2018

Just how badly is your APU struggling? If you run a game on low settings at 1080p and note the framerate, then run the same game the same way at 720p does the framerate stay more or less the same or does it go up a lot?

The reason I ask is because at 1080p, a GTX 1050 is going to be the limiting factor in many games especially at anything other than low settings, due to only having 2gb vram. I'd want to verify that your APU is leaving a lot of performance on the table before I'd upgrade.

In answer to your question, I've seen both types of i5 in action and there's no practical difference. So I'd advise buying the least expensive between the two. An Ivy Bridge motherboard may get you other things, like faster SATA ports, but that has no real impact on game framerate.

justin.m.beauvais · Jun 13, 2018

Rogue Leader :

justin.m.beauvais :

Let me caveat you there, the 4590 will play SOME games faster. The Pentium G5600 having Coffee lake cores will play single core games faster than a 4590, and in most benchmarks isn't that far off. Hes playing games that are all esports titles that aside from PUBG will probably work better on the Pentium. For $245 he can have a build

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Pentium Gold G5600 3.9GHz Dual-Core Processor ($93.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI - B360M PRO-VDH Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($83.75 @ Amazon)
Total: $246.74
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-06-13 11:55 EDT-0400

With memory that will play all his games just as well if not better. And then can drop a new processor in when ready. I mean do you see the ridiculousness of advising him to buy a 4 year old processor and then being concerned about where processors are at a year after he is ready to upgrade? The 8700k is king of the hill for the foreseeable future, but the 2 year old 6700k still is a very strong contender. There is no upcoming replacement for the 8700k for at least a year thanks to Moores law, and even then, don't expect a monster upgrade, as there hasn't been for a REALLY long time.

So again I don't see the point of spending any money on obsolete equipment, he can sell his memory and whatever else and be into a brand new setup thats easily upgradeable for under $250 net cost.

Yeah, mine is an absurd argument, but the problem is a bit absurd too. Also, you've chosen the G5600... given the price difference between that and the i3-8100, why wouldn't you go for the i3? It would play PUBG better, which would cover all the games he listed instead of the 3/4 that the Pentium solution would (maybe less, who knows what other games those might be). The 8100 was my original suggestion, but instead of considering that he blasted right on by and asked what he could get out of a 4th gen i5, so I told him, and stand by my statement that if he is set on it a Haswell i5 could be a fine choice, which it would. I never said it was the best choice. The best choice is obviously the 8100

Rogue Leader · Jun 13, 2018

justin.m.beauvais :

The sole reason for the Pentium is price which is clearly an issue here, and the Pentium is $25 cheaper. I agree, the i3-8100 is essentially an i5-7600, and would be a perfect choice, and worth the $25, especially for what hes playing.

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