In an effort to further illustrate the performance you get for every dollar spent on our recommendations, we chart out the hierarchy of processors in our column. The green, blue, black, and red bars represent average frame rates in StarCraft II, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Far Cry 3, and an aggregate of all three titles. The orange line indicates cost. Mousing over the bars gives you a pop-up with performance statistics relative to Intel's Core i7-4930K, our 100% ceiling. Mousing over the dots on the orange line pops up a price that's easily attainable. Clicking a bar or dot gives you the option of shopping for a specific CPU, taking you to a link of our choice in that category. Often, our picks are priced lower than the number displayed.
Price and performance generally scale along a similar upward trend as we look down the chart, not including the pricey Core i7 options. Budget-oriented gamers should pay attention to the significant performance increase available when you step up from the $70 Pentium G3258 to the $125 Core i3-4130, though. The $180 Core i5-4430 looks great, offering performance close to more expensive options that cost well over $200.
After that, the speed-ups are more subtle, while the premiums are far greater (particularly as you look to the $590 Core i7-5930K). Frankly, if value is an important consideration, there's little reason to spend $180 on a Core i5-4430 (or even more on a Core i7) unless you want to overclock it for a better experience in some of your other apps. The Core i5-4430 is a clear performance-per-dollar winner, demonstrating no weaknesses in any of the games we've tested.
| Price | Starcraft | Skyrim | Far Cry 3 | Average | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Pentium G3258 | ![]() |
70.00 | Amazon | 75 | 58 | 76 | 69.7 |
| AMD FX-6300 | ![]() |
120 | Newegg | 73 | 61 | 87 | 74 |
| Intel Core i3-4130 | ![]() |
125 | Newegg | 85 | 74 | 84 | 81 |
| Intel Core i5-4430 | ![]() |
180.00 | Newegg | 99 | 97 | 95 | 97 |
| Intel Core i5-4690K | ![]() |
240 | Newegg | 99 | 97 | 95 | 97 |
| Intel Core i7-4790K | ![]() |
340 | Newegg | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Intel Core i7-5930K | ![]() |
570 | Amazon | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |






All things considered, I would pick the Core i7 5820K over the 5930K. The processor itself is priced just very slightly over the 4790K and will still perform quite a bit better in Heavily threaded apps and gaming. I wouldn't care much about the lack of 12 PCI-E lanes because I wouldn't cramp in anything more than 2 GPUs anyways. Apart from the -12 PCI-E Lanes, the 5820K is still pretty much a 5930K; even if that was clocked lower, you can Overclock it so no difference at all.
Cpu benchmarks at 5000 ( 2000 single thread)
I'm building a gaming HTPC with a PicoPSU 160XT (which has 96w of continuous output) and a GTX 750Ti from KFA2. I know that the i3 4130T fits the power requirements but I wish to know if stepping up to a 4C/4T with lower frequencies is better. In my opinion it should. Meanwhile I think I'll wait Broadwell K and the Impact VII ITX.
"Four hundred dollars and change left over, and an Intel Core i7-3530K. "
As many have argued I would have liked to see the 5820K as an honorable mention but with the caveat that any build will cost more due to the high price of DDR4 right now.
Also would be nice to see more segregation at the top of the hierarchy right now there are 39 (by my quick count) processors listed in the top bracket