I3 and GTX 670 or I5 and GTX 660ti?

[TheBigTroll]

give me a budget, location what parts not required, and if you are going to do crossfire/SLI
in the future

ill decide the parts then

 

[Devourer1987]

For financial and hardware availability reasons I have the following choice to make whilst putting together a mini PC;

Intel i3 2120 (2 x 3.3GHz) Sandy Bridge with a GTX 670 GPU

or

Intel i5 3550 (4 x 3.3 GHZ) Ivy Bridge with a GTX 660TI GPU

The reason I ask what may appear to be an obvious question is that through all the forums I've scrolled through it's hard to discern whether GPU or CPU is more important for gaming experience- or if its a balance. And what the benefits of quad core over dual core are for gaming. Some would suggest that a decent CPU will see you through if you have an excellent GPU (option 1 above) others say that a balance of good CPU and good GPU is best (option 2). They will both cost about the same with the build I'm doing.

Which of the two options above would you choose for gaming performance and why? Both will have same mobo and 4gb RAM.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Devourer1987]

Location UK, budget £750ish, other specs are;

4GB corsair RAM,
Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3V (Intel B75) - VGA/DVI mobo
320 GB hard drive
DVD Drive
600W Cool Master power supply,
Case either a Novatech eCute Mini Cube or Silverstone SG02B-F Mini-ITX Case

 

[Devourer1987]

Oh and no crossfire or SLI planned

 

[TheBigTroll]

do you need the OS?

 

[Devourer1987]

No, will get windows 7

 

[TheBigTroll]

then you need the OS.windows 7 costs 70 pounds

if you need it, here you go

http://pcpartpicker.com/uk/p/fbo8


you could get the os from this guy. they offer both digital copies or a dvd rom. get it when the auction starts back up again
http://uk.ebid.net/perl/auction.cgi?auction=71238157&mo=auction&quantity=1#ship

 

[Devourer1987]

Ok cool. But back to my original question, out of the two options above, which is the better spec?

 

[TheBigTroll]

first if you do mostly single player gaming and the second if multi-player since games like bf3 really use up the cores. the difference is 2-4fps at most though (CPU wise).

so technically the i3 2120 and the 670 would perform since it has a more powerful card.

 

[Devourer1987]

Great, thanks for your help

 

[theProbe]

How are you satisfied with your intel b75 chipset mobo?

 

[FinneousPJ]

i5 and 7870