Which is the overall better deal? i3 3220 or i5 3570k

[MCV430]

Hello everyone,

I'm putting together a new gaming PC and right now on Tigerdirect.com they have a nice deal on either the i3 3220 (99$) or the 3570k ($200). As far as my build goes, I will only be gaming with it. The games I will be playing are SCII,WoW,SWTOR mostly. I'm essentially trying to build a solid gaming rig without breaking the bank...too much, trying to keep it under $700, and was hoping to pair the CPU with a Radeon 7850 or similar. Any thoughts?

 

[th3_ory]

Get the 3570K. For $700 I dont see why you would go with the 3570k. As for the gpu it will do very well for what you will be using it on.

 

[mr1hm]

Hello everyone,

I'm putting together a new gaming PC and right now on Tigerdirect.com they have a nice deal on either the i3 3220 (99$) or the 3570k ($200). As far as my build goes, I will only be gaming with it. The games I will be playing are SCII,WoW,SWTOR mostly. I'm essentially trying to build a solid gaming rig without breaking the bank...too much, trying to keep it under $700, and was hoping to pair the CPU with a Radeon 7850 or similar. Any thoughts?

I'd definitely go with a i5 3570k. Going with the i5 3570k would future-proof you for games for quite a bit; on the other hand, the i3 3220 would do fine for SCII and other single/dual threaded but it's still only a dual-core CPU with 2 physical and 2 logical cores (1 for each physical core) giving you 4 threads but, I believe a true quad-core such as the i5 3570k with 4 physical cores with no hyper-threading would still blow the i3 out of the water.

i5 3570k also has the unlocked multiplier if needed and can be overclocked with ease depending on your motherboard.

IMO, if you're thinking about playing the newest games or something very system demanding such as Battlefield 3, go with the i5 as a dual-core in that game will most-likely be maxed out. My previous i5 3570k @ 4.4ghz reached around 60% usage on all cores with spikes to 70%-80%.

For reference, I ended up selling the CPU/mobo (due to audio production programs benefitting so much from the extra threads) and replaced it with a i7 3770k and Gigabyte Z77x-UD3H (rev 1.1) and haven't looked back.

 

[MCV430]

Thanks for the great responses! I really appreciate it.