# Sandybridge vs Ivybridge vs Haswell budget gaming



## newconroer (May 29, 2015)

I want to move a friend from his old AMD platform over to Intel. I suggested he go out and get a used setup like mine (CPU/MOB/RAM), at least as a starting point to get his feet wet. I can help him more particularly because I know the ins and outs of my system.

However some of the prices for i7/i5 2600ks and socket 1155 boards are kinda ridiculous. It makes me consider having him go Ivybridge instead, or maybe even Haswell for just a bit more cash.

Though I remember reading an article that there are inherent benefits to the newer chips of course, but that for day to day use and some gaming, the Ivybridge/Haswell were kind of a step backwards.

What's a good reference point to get him started on post Nehalem generation Intel platform without breaking the bank - used kit is acceptable.


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## rtwjunkie (May 29, 2015)

Does he want to overclock?  If not, and it's just standard use with some gaming, for CPU I would recommend an i3-4130 up to 4160 whatever you prefer for him, depending what's on sale.


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## peche (May 29, 2015)

how much is the budget? that is the most important part, you can buy whatever your budget lets you get,  differences between Sandy, Ivy and Haswell are minimal, devils canyon offers a little bost on 4690K and 4790K, so … get what your money can pay… for gaming you don’t really need and i7, i5's are pretty capable for such task….


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## INSTG8R (May 29, 2015)

Thing is there is so little between them you just go for the one you can get the best deal on.


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## peche (May 29, 2015)

the thing here is … devil's canyon is the diference… ivy sandy and haswell are mostly the same, no real differences or big ones there…skylake will be a difference when DDR4 memory becomes mainstream and a little bit cheaper,


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## rtwjunkie (May 29, 2015)

peche said:


> the thing here is … devil's canyon is the diference… ivy sandy and haswell are mostly the same, no real differences or big ones there…skylake will be a difference when DDR4 memory becomes mainstream and a little bit cheaper,


 
Except he is "budget gaming"  That effectively puts those chips out of the running.


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## newconroer (May 29, 2015)

INSTG8R said:


> Thing is there is so little between them you just go for the one you can get the best deal on.


That was what I told him.

However...


peche said:


> the thing here is … devil's canyon is the diference… ivy sandy and haswell are mostly the same, no real differences or big ones there…skylake will be a difference when DDR4 memory becomes mainstream and a little bit cheaper,



He himself suggested Devil's Canyon from the start. Which I turned own immediately. Budget is probably around £200-£250


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## INSTG8R (May 29, 2015)

peche said:


> the thing here is … devil's canyon is the diference… ivy sandy and haswell are mostly the same, no real differences or big ones there…skylake will be a difference when DDR4 memory becomes mainstream and a little bit cheaper,



I have Super Pi'd with my mate and his 4790K there is literally a second between us. There is just so little gains.


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## Aquinus (May 29, 2015)

What kind of budget are we talking about here? Without knowing that, it's hard to make a recommendation.


peche said:


> how much is the budget? that is the most important part, you can buy whatever your budget lets you get,  differences between Sandy, Ivy and Haswell are minimal, devils canyon offers a little bost on 4690K and 4790K, so … get what your money can pay… for gaming you don’t really need and i7, i5's are pretty capable for such task….


CPU means less and less as you increase resolution. I would go so far to say starting with a half-capable i3 would even be adequate for most circumstances. Now I know my i7 is a quad core, but it's still a Sandy CPU and I don't feel that I ever need to overclock it to have a half-decent experience at 1080p. If you can find an i5 or i3 that boosts 3.4-3.8Ghz or higher, you'll probably be in good shape for most games.

Edit: I see budget was posted, 250 - 300GBP, hmmm. Going Intel might be tricky, I would have to think about that. I would still lean towards a new i3 if you can manage to make it fit into the budget.


INSTG8R said:


> I have Super Pi'd with my mate and his 4790K there is literally a second between us. There is just so little gains.


Even more so when compute heavy tasks benefit more from improved cache and memory, when most applications won't, but that only proves your point further.


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## rtwjunkie (May 29, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> If you can find an i5 or i3 that boosts 3.4-3.8Ghz or higher, you'll probably be in good shape for most games.


 
That's exactly why I suggested the Haswell i3-41xx family.  They all run full time between 3.4GHz and 3.6Ghz.


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## Dent1 (May 29, 2015)

newconroer said:


> I want to move a friend from his old AMD platform over to Intel. I suggested he go out and get a used setup like mine (CPU/MOB/RAM), at least as a starting point to get his feet wet. I can help him more particularly because I know the ins and outs of my system.
> 
> However some of the prices for i7/i5 2600ks and socket 1155 boards are kinda ridiculous. It makes me consider having him go Ivybridge instead, or maybe even Haswell for just a bit more cash.
> 
> ...



Which AMD platform is he coming from? Knowing exactly what he has right now will help us determine what's best in the future.



INSTG8R said:


> I have Super Pi'd with my mate and his 4790K there is literally a second between us. There is just so little gains.



SuperPi is a very old benchmark. WPrime is a multithreaded variant and should show larger gains.


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## INSTG8R (May 29, 2015)

Dent1 said:


> SuperPi is a very old benchmark. WPrime is a multithreaded variant and should show larger gains.



It was the latest one we could find. But yeah I hear your angle


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## GhostRyder (May 29, 2015)

newconroer said:


> I want to move a friend from his old AMD platform over to Intel. I suggested he go out and get a used setup like mine (CPU/MOB/RAM), at least as a starting point to get his feet wet. I can help him more particularly because I know the ins and outs of my system.
> 
> However some of the prices for i7/i5 2600ks and socket 1155 boards are kinda ridiculous. It makes me consider having him go Ivybridge instead, or maybe even Haswell for just a bit more cash.
> 
> ...


 From what I see on the used market, one of the best options available is the Z77 platform with an i5 3570K.  Those seem to be the only deals for used chips I would consider if your looking for something along the lines of a budget Intel system and still want overclocking and 4 cores.  Sandy Bridge prices a lot of times stay high because a lot of people have them and they overclock so well while Haswell is still to new to get much of a deal. 

If you want new the best bet would be a good motherboard and something like an i3 for now then working towards a better one in the future.  Otherwise if yo uwant to go used I would take a look around for a used Ivy-Bridge platform system.


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## peche (May 29, 2015)

used plataform is a matter of luck ... you can find hot deals everyday... it depends how much would you like to spend...
Regards,


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## newconroer (May 29, 2015)

After further conversation he admits he will spend some time doing transcoding and decoding, and he also runs SQL while at home for work purposes.
I am wondering if the i3s or even older Sandy i5s are going to be sufficient for what he wants at that end of the spectrum.

I do not remember what platform he has currently, I do know he recently acquired a R9 290 GPU and 16GB RAM. He runs this on 1080p.


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## rtwjunkie (May 29, 2015)

The i3's should be up to the task of transcoding...I don't know about decoding.


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## peche (May 29, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> The i3's should be up to the task of transcoding...I don't know about decoding.


no my friend, im afraid that some i3's ... mostly sandies and Ivy's are not enough for decoding, also SQL demand so much from a processor, so i may suggest that i5 is the minimum finalist, desired to be i7... here in the office we have the following list for Work:


Tier 1 computers: Callcenter operators,

intel i3, 500Gb hdd, 4GB DDR3 Ram memory, 400W PSU, 2 Fans Generic Case, 
Win7x64enng, Symantec AV, Office 2007, Flash player, adobe and google chrome for Google drive, Voip Phone, scaners and printers shared on network.

Tier 2Computers: Callcenter admins, field supervisors,

intel i5, 750GB HHD, 4GB DDR3 ram memory, 400W PSU, 2 Fans Generic Case.
Win7x64enng, Symantec AV, Office 2007, Flash player, adobe and google chrome for Google drive, Voip Phone, scaners and printers shared on network.[Sap microsistems acceses, ]

Tier 3 computers, accountings tiers, supervisors,

intel i7 750GB HHD, 8GB DDR3 ram memory, 500W PSU, 2 Fans Generic Case.
Win7x64enng, Symantec AV, Office 2007, Flash player, adobe and google chrome for Google drive, Voip Phone, scaners and printers shared on network.[Sap microsistems accesses, ] admin network shared folders, voip admin accesses, sql and other data base accesses,

Tier X computers, mostly IT guys,  systems or company owners group, 
intel i7 2x500GB, raid or SSD storge options, , 16GB DDR3 ram memory, 500W PSU, 2 Fans Generic Case.
Win7x64enng, Symantec AV, Office 2007, Flash player, adobe and google chrome for Google drive, Voip Phone, scaners and printers shared on network.[Sap microsistems acceses, ] admin network shared folders, voip admin accesses, sql and other data base accesses, development tools, programming and web managing software, design or graphics dedicated software,

My computers are on Tier X Group which is almost IT department computers, office allow ius to customize and manage our own computers, also if available hardware upgrade .


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## rtwjunkie (May 29, 2015)

peche said:


> no my friend, im afraid that some i3's ... mostly sandies and Ivy's are not enough for decoding, also SQL demand so much from a processor, so i may suggest that i5 is the minimum finalist, desired to be i7... here in the office we have the following list for Work:


 
Actually, now that I think about it, decoding takes much less work than transcoding, and both my server (see ancient Xeon in signature), which also runs SQL without a problem, and my HTPC i3-4130 can do transcoding pretty well.  Am I correct on decoding being less intensive than transcoding?


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## thebluebumblebee (May 29, 2015)

(forgive me if I get the UK pricing all screwed up)
IMHO, it doesn't make sense to buy the older platform (1155) because of the very affordable B85, H97 and even Z97 motherboards out there.  That and an i3, and hopefully his old RAM, and he's good to go.  MSI H97/Z97 PC Mate comes to mind. (stupid PCpartpicker-UK won't allow proper searching with B85 - you can't select B85 under chipsets)  I am seeing B85 motherboards under £50, which gives you up to £200 for a CPU.
Okay, now that I've looked at UK pricing, how about starting with an i5-4690(£167) and then matching that to a motherboard with the features he wants.  Or a ~£100 motherboard and an i5-4460 for £143, although £24 is not that much more for the i5-4690.
@newconroer , might be a good time to upgrade your system.


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## newtekie1 (May 29, 2015)

SQL only really take a lot of CPU power if you have a lot of people accessing it.  A current gen i3 can easily handle up to 5 users or even more, it largely depends on how big the databases are and how complex the queries are. I've got i3-4160 servers with 10 users accessing SQL and it is plenty fast.  I can't really see a home environment being that stressful with SQL. My guess is he'll probably be the sole user, so an i3 should be just fine.



newconroer said:


> I do not remember what platform he has currently, I do know he recently acquired a R9 290 GPU and 16GB RAM.



That sounds like he is probably running a platform that is already DDR3, so he doesn't need new memory.  Just a new CPU and Motherboard.  So the budget can be stretched a lot further. He could probably squeeze in a 4690K and Z97 motherboard(I'd say AsRock Z97 Extreme3) for just about £250.  I don't see a reason to go with a dated used platform.

Edit: After looking on pcpartspicker, it seems a 4690K and Z97 board would be about £275 after taxes and everything.  So, if he really wants to stay under the £250, or he just doesn't care about overclocking, then a 4690 and H97 board would do.  Even the H97/4690 setup would crush whatever AMD he currently has.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

*CPU:* Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£167.00 @ Amazon UK) 
*Motherboard:* ASRock H97 Anniversary ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£76.09 @ Amazon UK) 
*Total:* £243.09
_Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-05-29 20:19 BST+0100_


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## peche (May 29, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> Actually, now that I think about it, decoding takes much less work than transcoding, and both my server (see ancient Xeon in signature), which also runs SQL, and my HTPC i3-4130 can do transcoding.  Am I correct on decoding being less intensive than transcoding?


have seen i3 getting slow because lots of work .... they are so brave... fearless processors with limits for sure... i preffer i5's or i7s for the win ...
by the way the word  overkill doesn't exists on my dictionary,


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## Frick (May 29, 2015)

Dunno where you live, but here €200 would definitely get you a K CPU and a capable motherboard.


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## Dent1 (May 29, 2015)

newconroer said:


> After further conversation he admits he will spend some time doing transcoding and decoding, and he also runs SQL while at home for work purposes.
> I am wondering if the i3s or even older Sandy i5s are going to be sufficient for what he wants at that end of the spectrum.
> 
> I do not remember what platform he has currently, I do know he recently acquired a R9 290 GPU and 16GB RAM. He runs this on 1080p.



It really depend what AMD processor your mate is upgrading from. If your mate is coming from a FX 8xxx and plans on doing lots of transcoding and decoding then a Sandy i3 would be a catastrophically bad idea and a sandy i5 wouldn't make sense.

We really need to know your mates current CPU otherwise we could be advising him wrong.

If you don't know what he has got. Then the safest best is best value high-end Haswell you can find.


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## arbiter (May 29, 2015)

I would say get least an i5 as some games won't run on dual core chips.


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## newconroer (May 29, 2015)

He has a Phenom II X4 965 on an Asus Crosshair IV 890FX


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## rtwjunkie (May 29, 2015)

arbiter said:


> I would say get least an i5 as some games won't run on dual core chips.


 
You are correct, but for the most part it applies to the pentiums.  The i3's have been fine according to most forums/sites, because for whatever reason, the HT seems to fool the games affected into thinking there are more cores.


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## newconroer (May 29, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> SQL only really take a lot of CPU power if you have a lot of people accessing it.  A current gen i3 can easily handle up to 5 users or even more, it largely depends on how big the databases are and how complex the queries are. I've got i3-4160 servers with 10 users accessing SQL and it is plenty fast.  I can't really see a home environment being that stressful with SQL. My guess is he'll probably be the sole user, so an i3 should be just fine.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



He found the Devil's Canyon for a tenner more, however it requires the Z97 board. Do we think that Devil's is a one off series and there's no upgrade path in using that version of the 1150 boards?


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## newtekie1 (May 29, 2015)

arbiter said:


> I would say get least an i5 as some games won't run on dual core chips.



I don't think there is anything that won't run on an i3 because it appears to the system as 4 usable threads.  This is really only a problem with the Pentium chips.



newconroer said:


> He has a Phenom II X4 965 on an Asus Crosshair IV 890FX



So he already has DDR3, and only needs a new CPU and Motherboard.  A 4690 would be a really big upgrade for him.



newconroer said:


> He found the Devil's Canyon for a tenner more, however it requires the Z97 board. Do we think that Devil's is a one off series and there's no upgrade path in using that version of the 1150 boards?



Devil's Canyon doesn't require a Z97 motherboard, it will work just fine in the H97 I posted, he just won't be able to overclock it.  But, again, if he isn't into overclocking there is no point in getting a K series Devil's Canyon processor.  He can just go with the standard i5-4690 and an H97 motherboard.  He'll still get a massive boost over his current Phenom II x4.

Z97 and H97 both will get Broadwell, but that will only be a limited release with only 2 processors coming to the desktop, and probably won't be worth upgraded to over Haswell(Devil's Canyon is still Haswell).  Skylake is coming out, but it will have a new socket and chipset, so you'll need a new motherboard, and likely still won't be worth upgraded to from Haswell.  If he wants to buy now, Z97/H97 and Haswell is his best choice.


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## rtwjunkie (May 29, 2015)

newconroer said:


> He found the Devil's Canyon for a tenner more, however it requires the Z97 board. Do we think that Devil's is a one off series and there's no upgrade path in using that version of the 1150 boards?


 
Check around.  Your possibilities expand, bc if I'm not mistaken there are a whole lot of Z87's that support Devil's Canyon also, via BIOS update.


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## newconroer (May 29, 2015)

Well after that back and forth, he's considering a motherboard that supports Crossfire. My concern is that most of them are still using the 8x/8x arrangement. ARe there any that support PCI E 3.0 16x/16x simultaneously?


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## newtekie1 (May 29, 2015)

newconroer said:


> Well after that back and forth, he's considering a motherboard that supports Crossfire. My concern is that most of them are still using the 8x/8x arrangement. ARe there any that support PCI E 3.0 16x/16x simultaneously?



The 1150 CPUs only have 16 PCI-E lanes, so they can only do x8/x8 natively.  There are some boards that use a PLX chip to give x16/16, but they are more expensive.  Also, x16/x16 makes not noticeable difference over x8/x8, so it really doesn't matter.


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## newconroer (May 29, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> The 1150 CPUs only have 16 PCI-E lanes, so they can only do x8/x8 natively.  There are some boards that use a PLX chip to give x16/16, but they are more expensive.  Also, x16/x16 makes not noticeable difference over x8/x8, so it really doesn't matter.


 
But isn't a single PCI E 3.0 about 10% faster than PCI E 2.0 at full chat?


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## peche (May 29, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> He'll still get a massive boost over his current Phenom II x4.


not so difficult to get a boost with any intel core processor,


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## krusha03 (May 29, 2015)

newconroer said:


> But isn't a single PCI E 3.0 about 10% faster than PCI E 2.0 at full chat?


PCIE 3.0 x16 vs PCIE 3.0 x8 is 1% and PCIE 3.0x 16 vs PCIE 2.0 x8 is 5% difference in performance


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## Aquinus (May 29, 2015)

newconroer said:


> But isn't a single PCI E 3.0 about 10% faster than PCI E 2.0 at full chat?


More bandwidth, yes. Performance difference? No.





source

Also PLX bridge chip add latency, you might lose that 1% advantage with it to do 16/16. In reality, the CPU can't do more than 16 lanes anyways, they're just shared with the PLX chip. So instead of each GPU getting a dedicated 8 lanes, it shares all 16. You don't get "more". You gain efficiency at the cost of latency and purchase price.

All in all, don't worry about PCI-E because anything more is way out of the budget for minimal gain for dual-GPUs.


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## krusha03 (May 29, 2015)

newconroer said:


> Well after that back and forth, he's considering a motherboard that supports Crossfire. My concern is that most of them are still using the 8x/8x arrangement. ARe there any that support PCI E 3.0 16x/16x simultaneously?



For 250 pounds you can get a new i5 k type and a z97 board or look at used i7 k type. If he doesn;t want to overclock it gets even cheaper

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

*CPU:* Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£177.99 @ Amazon UK) 
*Motherboard:* MSI Z97-G43 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£69.99 @ Amazon UK) 
*Total:* £247.98
_Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-05-29 23:35 BST+0100_


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## newtekie1 (May 29, 2015)

Also, if he is going for Crossfire, make sure he has a good PSU.


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## peche (May 29, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> Also, if he is going for Crossfire, make sure he has a good PSU.[/*QUOTE]*



*^^^^^*
This !!!

Regards,


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## xvi (May 29, 2015)

The Phenom II X4 he has already isn't particularly anemic, but a modern (or even older Intel) would likely give a healthy jump in performance. Because of the need for transcoding capabilities and SQL, I'd suspect they'd be able to take advantage of an i7. If not for that, an i3 or i5 would probably do fine. Any word on how much load the SQL portion will see? If it's just a test environment, then anything should be fine. If it's actually in production, yeah, throw as many threads at it as you can.

I'd lean towards an i7-2600k and scale up from there depending on budget.


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## arbiter (May 30, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> You are correct, but for the most part it applies to the pentiums.  The i3's have been fine according to most forums/sites, because for whatever reason, the HT seems to fool the games affected into thinking there are more cores.





newtekie1 said:


> I don't think there is anything that won't run on an i3 because it appears to the system as 4 usable threads. This is really only a problem with the Pentium chips.


there was 1 or 2 games that refuse to run on dual core even with HT, yes the game will be able to see if its dual core or quad.


xvi said:


> Because of the need for transcoding capabilities and SQL, I'd suspect they'd be able to take advantage of an i7. If not for that, an i3 or i5 would probably do fine. Any word on how much load the SQL portion will see? If it's just a test environment, then anything should be fine. If it's actually in production, yeah, throw as many threads at it as you can.


Yea SQL work depending on what it is can be nasty on a cpu. transcoding well if its depends on what kinda you are doing can take almost no cpu to well a lot. 

i looked up board he has, he could drop an FX 8150 on it with beta bios would save a bit of $.


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## xvi (May 30, 2015)

arbiter said:


> i looked up board he has, he could drop an FX 8150 on it with beta bios would save a bit of $.


I was thinking that too. A FX 81XX or FX 83xx (depending on compatibility, of course) would likely do well at both transcoding and SQL performance and the money saved by keeping the current motherboard could go towards nice cooling to allow for a bit of overclock (or something). Should do decently well with both gaming and all but the heaviest workloads.

Edit: I find that people who decide on switching to Intel can rarely be swayed to stick with AMD. Usually it's people complaining about their $50 FX 4100 being too slow, so they want a $500 Intel proc. In this case, I don't think the FX series will be huge jump for everyday tasks, but multithreaded tasks should get a healthy bump.


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## newtekie1 (May 30, 2015)

arbiter said:


> there was 1 or 2 games that refuse to run on dual core even with HT, yes the game will be able to see if its dual core or quad.


None that I've heard of.  FarCry4 and COD:Advanced Warfare and Dragon Age.  Farcry4 works with an i3, but not with straight dual cores like the Pentiums, COD:AW has since been patched and works with dual-cores, and Dragon Age also works with i3s.

The fact of the matter is that we probably won't see any games that won't work on the 2-Cores/4-Threads configuration for a very long time.  The main reason for that is most laptop processor, even a lot of the i7s, are 2-Core/4-Thread. Plus, it would eliminate all the AMD APUs, as they are all read as 2-Core/4-Thread.  No game dev in their right mind would cut out such a massive portion of the already slim PC market.


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## R-T-B (May 30, 2015)

newconroer said:


> But isn't a single PCI E 3.0 about 10% faster than PCI E 2.0 at full chat?



Each PCIe 3.0 lane is about twice as fast as a PCIe 2.0 lane.  So a PCIe3 x8 is about the same as a PCIe2 x16, and offers very little tangible difference in actual gaming speed (if there is any, it's less than 1FPS in most reviews with current cards).  

Only compute users will even notice a difference, tbh.


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## arbiter (May 30, 2015)

xvi said:


> I was thinking that too. A FX 81XX or FX 83xx (depending on compatibility, of course) would likely do well at both transcoding and SQL performance and the money saved by keeping the current motherboard could go towards nice cooling to allow for a bit of overclock (or something). Should do decently well with both gaming and all but the heaviest workloads.


reason i said 81xx is cause that is highest they listed on the website. they don't say 83xx as supported.



R-T-B said:


> Each PCIe 3.0 lane is about twice as fast as a PCIe 2.0 lane. So a PCIe3 x8 is about the same as a PCIe2 x16, and offers very little tangible difference in actual gaming speed (if there is any, it's less than 1FPS in most reviews with current cards).
> 
> Only compute users will even notice a difference, tbh.


wonder with DX12 if that will change.


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## R-T-B (May 30, 2015)

> wonder with DX12 if that will change.



If anything, it will buy us PCIe 2.0 users on x58 and others more time, as it will reduce communication with the CPU (and thus, give us LESS bandwidth usage).  That's supposedly how it should work.


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## Frick (May 30, 2015)

Wait there are actually games that won't even launch on dual cores?


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## GhostRyder (May 30, 2015)

Frick said:


> Wait there are actually games that won't even launch on dual cores?


Yep, Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age were two big names that will not run on chips like the Pentium Anniversary (G3258).

If your not overclocking, you could just look into a locked i5 then on a new platform.  They do have a few H97 boards that will support CFX.  Also PCIE 8x does not effect performance especially at 3.0 speeds enough for anyone to truly notice so I would not worry.


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## newtekie1 (May 30, 2015)

Frick said:


> Wait there are actually games that won't even launch on dual cores?



Yes, FarCry 4 just  opens a black screen and won't load at all.


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## newconroer (May 30, 2015)

Thanks guys. He will decide between 4690/H97 or Devil's Canyon/Z97.
As for power supply, I have looked at it (forget name), was 900 wattts, reputable, enough amps.


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## Folterknecht (May 30, 2015)

If he has an Phenom II with DDR3 its probably *1.65V RAM*. Dont know if its a good idea to let the RAM work 24/7 with 1.65V on modern Intel platforms - try lowering the RAM voltage a little bit on the Intel platform to 1.55V, maybe he has to downclock the RAM or loosen up the timings a little bit for that.


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## Iceni (May 30, 2015)

FreedomEclipse has a motherboard and CPU combo up in the BST for £200.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/updated-mobo-cpu-combo-gpus-various-for-sale.148496/


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## Jetster (May 30, 2015)

Budget gaming? A Pentium and a descent 1150 board. Out the rest of the budget in the GPU Later upgrade to the chip you want when you have the $ Otherwise forget the budget build just save for a decent rig


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## newtekie1 (May 30, 2015)

newconroer said:


> Thanks guys. He will decide between 4690/H97 or Devil's Canyon/Z97.
> As for power supply, I have looked at it (forget name), was 900 wattts, reputable, enough amps.



The only difference this will make is allowing him to overclock.  So if he has no plans of overclocking, there is absolutely no reason to go with Devil's Canyon/Z97.



Jetster said:


> A Pentium and a descent 1150 board.



That recommendation isn't good for budget gaming anymore, some games flat out won't run on the Pentium.  An i3 is minimum for budget gaming now.

I really wish Intel would release a K series i3.


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## thebluebumblebee (May 30, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> I really wish Intel would release a K series i3.


After the i3-530/540's, I think they know that it would cut into their sale of i5's - so I don't ever expect them to do it.


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