Which budget processor for Swtor?

[vizzion]

Hello, I am seeking to do a budget upgrade of my wife's processor and mainboard to increase her Swtor experience

Her current specs are:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2ghz
HD Radeon 4670
4 GB ram

I know the gpu is low end but as far as Star Wars is concerned, the cpu is still the greater contributor to her fps woes.
I know this because on my other computer with the same processor and an HD 4850, TOR was performing no better.
Then I upgraded that cpu to an i3 2100 and the difference was extreme.
Now it's time to upgrade the remaining 4200+ and I wish I could put out $120 for another i3 2100, don't get me started.

It's down to these two and I'm wondering which of these CPUs are better gamers (particularly TOR) for their price: (If they were the same price I think I would be choosing the pentium, but I'm wondering if the Athlon is pretty much the same power for $15 less.

AMD Athlon X3 450 (best price $68 on newegg)
Pentium G840 (best price, $83 on Amazon)

The price of motherboards is not an issue, I found the AMD and Intel boards I would get for each cpu and they are both $49.99.
Thanks all for the help!

 

[diec4st]

I would personnally go with a quad core (Phenom II X4 830 or 960T on Newegg) but out of these 2 the Athlon looks like the better deal IMO.

 

[popatim]

I'll second this recommendation. The 830 is $90 on newegg and worth the few extra bucks over the athlon 450 thanks to its having L3 cache but if its down to just those two processors then go with the x3 since you will have a chance at unlocking the 4th core.

The 960t is an excellent processor that many find unlocks to an x6 but its another $25 over the 830.