Hey, so I'm building a budget gaming rig, here - http://pcpartpicker.com/uk/p/yWMK and I'm at the point where I'm confused as the which CPU and mobo to drop in as I'm out of touch as to what's on the market these day's. I was looking at maybe an i3 2100 or an AMD FX-4100 (although I'v read these can have issues-"faildozer"), the Phenom II X4 965 look's like a pretty decent CPU for the price aswell . This system will be running Windows 7 home 64bit on a 1080p monitor and it's primary use will be gaming with about 80-90 pounds to spend on a CPU, so any info on best budget CPU atm would be a great help to me. Cheers.
How come, is it just generally a better all round CPU? I see there are many variations too, 2120/2130 ect, any of these worth buying over the 2100 as there is little difference in price.
I'd go with the i3 as you'll have a nice window of incremental logical upgrades available to you in the future. Which reminds me of this website: http://www.logicalincrements.com
^ you reminded me I'm not much of an overclocker and I personally would just build a new system in a year or two than upgrade
Probably a little bit faster than the 965, depending on the game, definitely faster than a 4120/30. Also, as per below, much better upgrade path. If you need more power you could just replace it with a 2500k in a year or twos time, doubling your core count, and potentially upping your overall clockspeed. Buying a new system instead of just upgrading doesn't make any sense unless you have money to burn (in which case, why are you buying an i3 at all!)
I would go for a Pentium as well. The only things i3 offers over Pentium is HT which most games don't make any use of, and a slightly better integrated graphics, which I will guess you won't be using. Considiering Pentium is so much cheaper, you could get a better gpu which may be of more benefit, a larger ssd or any number of other things. Here is a good comparision, you can see that Pentium 840 is nearly identical to the i3 2100 in performance.
either i3 or this it has no integrated graphics which translates to less wattage and less heat so you can save even more money on cooling or power supply. Plus fm2 motherboards are way cheaper than z77 and this cpu allows overclocking. Depends on whether you want intel or amd to be honest and how upgradeable you want it to be, if you are going to upgrade within a year or two then get an i3 and put a 3570k in later or if you wont be upgrading for a while then go for the athlon II as fm2 isn't a dying socket unlike 1155.
The G840 actually got better results in Arma 2 than the i3 2100 according to Bit-tech reviews. Here is the benchmark for games Benchmark I say save the money and buy the G860, or buy a second hand i5.
I had g840 rig and an i7 920 rig at the same time both running an ati 5850 gpu, there was no differance in performance in games that i could tell, the g840 is great cpu.
I'm rocking an i3 2100 in my rig at the moment - I originally had the intention to upgrade to an i5 at a later date, but to be honest, it doesn't need it, so I'm keeping hold of the cash for a bit longer. It's a solid little chip and thus far I can't fault it.
I'll go with the i3 , everyone seem's to rave about them, plus I can put an i5 in at a later date. I can pick up a 3220 for the same price as a 2100 and according to this http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=677 it out performs it (if this is a good benchmark to go by).
The 3220 is the latest generation and if you can get it at the same price, I would go for that, in a few years when the price of i5's or 7's have dropped you can upgrade to something with more cores. Good choice! Let us all know how the build goes
****Update**** Thought I'd let you guy's know I have my new system up and running and all seem well, updating drivers now and so on
