Processor to go with Radeon HD 7770?

[ChaseCTech]

I am a patient person, so I don't really care about synthetic benchmarks or stuff like that. I just want the best BUDGET CPU that wont bottleneck the Radeon HD 7770. Thanks!

 

[akxpckwb]

AMD or Intel? How much is your budget? I find that low end Sandy Bridge CPU's are very good for their price. Stuff like G620 or G840 will be good enough for most stuff and they're very cheap

 

[Onus]

Agreed. The low-end models are locked, so it's probably worth paying for a higher clock rate. If Pentium, I'd go G850 if possible, but I'd really prefer an i3-2120, if it is in your budget.

 

[motorneuron]

There is no universal problem of bottlenecking. Some games or applications are relatively more CPU-intensive, and some are more GPU-intensive. Assuming you're gaming, the 7770 will be the limiting factor in basically any setting relative to any current CPU, except maybe at very low resolutions in certain games (but that's an invented problem). So, without knowing more--we need to know your motherboard if you have one, your intel/AMD preference, and your screen resolution--it's pretty hard to make a positive recommendation. OTOH, if your only criterion is that it not bottleneck your 7770, you can freely get pretty much any processor.

 

[InvalidError]

The 7770 is not particularly powerful, even an old Core2Duo E8xxx will be GPU-bound by it in less CPU-intensive games.

 

[ChaseCTech]

BTW my screen resolution is 1080p

After reading what you guys said so far, I might go with one of the pentiums. So... what am I losing (besides money) by getting an i3 or higher-end pentium instead of, say, a pentium g620?

 

[motorneuron]

To be clear, it's not like pentium processors are so great. It's just that, for gaming purposes, you won't see much difference between a pentium and a core i7 when you're pairing it with a 7770. That's especially true at 1080p.

The biggest difference between the core i3 and the pentiums is that the pentiums don't have hyperthreading support. That will affect some general application scenarios, but it won't do too much in gaming; most games don't use more than two threads.

If you're going for a pentium, though, it's best to try to get as high a clock speed as possible. That could make a difference, especially in CPU-intensive games.

 

[ChaseCTech]

Best answer selected by ChaseCTech.