Cheap gaming processors

[Gadget Maniac]

Hello,
I am building my own PC which I can upgrade as I go and I am wondering if it is worth spending £100 on a processor with 4 cores such as the phenom ii x4 or bulldozer x4 or will it not matter if I go for a £40 2 core processor for games such as battlefield 3 with a mediocre graphics card?
Thanks

 

[esrever]

I think its worth it to get a 4 core if you go AMD

or an 2 core i3 would also be good for a budget build.
it all depends on how much you can afford.
if you really are low on money, a celeron g620 or simmular would be ok too.

 

[RealBeast]

2 vs. 4 cores for games is really not an issue, few games use 4 cores. Get the fastest 2 core you can afford if your primary use is gaming. BF3 seems to only care about your video card, at least according to THIS.

 

[bawchicawawa]

Realbeast, no, the latest games are starting to utilize more cores/threads, bf3 is processor heavy.

I'd suggest i3 2100.

 

[manu 11]

i3 is a beast for a dual core. just get it with an h61 and you have an upgrade path to ivy bridge

 

[amuffin]

i3-2100 for $100 cpu, and for $40 cpu get the pentium g620.

 

[HEXiT]

this still amazes me... most games are developed on xbox (a tri core) and then badly ported back to pc... so its all well and good saying buy a dual it will play bf3 ok, but it wont be able to play games like assassins creed or gta 4 because pc wasnt the dev platform. it really does make a difference. its all well and good saying benchmarks, benchmarks, but real world performance often contradicts them... for instance i have a mate who has a amd 6000x2 3.1ghz and a gtx 275 and another that has a e6600/4870... on bfbc2 there gfx is limited to under 50 fps but they spend most of there time at 15 or lower. simply because the cpu cant cope and wont allow the gpu to go above 50% usage...

if you want to play games and not just pc dev games then you really do need a quad... and most cases i3 or dual core/core 2 duo wont do unless you limit the gfx card... any dual core at any speed will bottleneck bfbc2 as will any card bigger than a gtx 260 or ati 4870 on a dual core system... i know this for a fact... and you will have the same limits in games like starcraft 2, the witcher 2, dead space, crysis, crysis 2 and so on... seriously you cant recommend sum1 buy a cpu on the performance of 1 game.
especially when pc was the lead developer platform and the devs have spent so much time tweaking it to get it to work on a lowend pc...

today the recommended minimum is a 2.6 tri core or a 2.2 quad for most new games. manufacturers recommendations, you know the people that make the games...
i know a lot of people that have systems comparable to mine that are scraping minimums 30fps @1080p and thats on fast quads...
so i recommend the althon 2 631 quad, it costs 90 bux and murders the i3 by a good 20 percent...

 

[simon12]

very low budget Athlon x3, x4 or Pentium GXXX with a Radeon card up to 5770/6770
low budget i3 or Phenom x4 with 5770/6770 - 6870
This gives you a balanced gaming system, I only included AMD cards as in am not so familiar with Nvidia but im sure that have replacements.