Gaming: high i3 or low i5

[cjb110]

What do people reckon the i3 4340 or the i5 4430 for gaming? Basically higher clock v more physical cores?
This is general gaming, rather than specific titles or genre.

[ChinesePate]

def more cores, especially if you want to play newish games

[GeorgeStorm]

If you're going with a new build then I'd lean towards more cores yes, although most cpus will cope with modern games ok, gpu >> cpu with games at the moment.

[ChinesePate]

in BF4 there is a big gap 2vs4 cores, not so much with the higher vs lower clock

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Core i5 or an FX8320(as it is under £110 now) would be my choices.

[KeyboardDemon]

BF4 saturates all eight threads on my i7 according to resource monitor if that helps, while BF4 might be an exception at the moment, I think it is an indication that other games will be going this way too.

[Obraxis]

While i3 is OK for most current games, newer games will take advantage of the i5's extra cores. Therefore if you can afford it, go at least i5 for gaming.

[minicale]

8320 would be best choice for that price in a build and forget rig.

[karl751]

I would agree an 8320 is the best budget biuld, then 4670k then 4770k

[KeyboardDemon]

Some of the main differences between the i3 and i5 are that the i3s have 2 cores with Hyperthreading (HT) while the i5s, depending on model, are either 2 cores with HT or 4 cores with no HT. Therefore both will allow 4 way multitasking/threading but Turbo Boost is available on the i5 processors but not on the i3.

[Jellyfish]

I would personally go for either the locked i5/8320 or even a 6300 with a nice oc on it if budget was a bit tighter.

[mikeo01]

I really don't see the point in the I3s, HT can only get you so far until you start exhausting that little chip. Course its IPC is high that's why it can keep up.

I'd skip the i3 and go for the i5. For me it is Celeron/Pentium - I5. Everything else seems a waste of cash to me.

Or a 6300/8320

[Mass Defect]

I'd go with the i5 purely because a lot more games are using multiple cores now. The i5 will last you much longer than a higher clocked dc.

I went through a similar dialema during the socket 775 generation (in choosing a CPU) and went for the Core2 Duo over the quad Q6600. That went the bite me in the ass later on .

[CustardInc]

As far as I remember, you can't run 2 separate gaming threads on one core, so hyper threading doesn't help for gaming.

[scaryjim]

As far as I remember, you can't run 2 separate gaming threads on one core, so hyper threading doesn't help for gaming.

Sorry, but that's utter nonsense. Hyperthreading doesn't care what each thread is actually doing - it simply uses different bits of the CPU core to process two threads at once. If a game is capable of using more than 2 threads effectively, it'll benefit from Hyper-threading. There's plenty of reviews out there that show the benefit of going to an i3 over a Pentium.

What Hyperthreading doesn't do is perform anywhere near as well as two physical cores. So for games that do utilise four (or more) threads, Hyperthreading won't keep up with more physical cores. That's why people tend to recommend the i5 over the i3 nowadays - games are getting better threaded, so the 4 physical cores is generally better than the 2 hyperthreaded cores. But if i5s are out of budget, hyper-threading will absolutely help in most modern games.

[cjb110]

I went with the i5 4570 and a MSI Z87M-G43, and also managed to add a GTX 750ti and still be in my budget. Quite pleased with it, does 1080@60 on most things with high detail.