I don't really see that as a problem, at least not for somebody with limited funds who want's good performance for their money.
Yes,but the whole OMFG AMD looses argument is misleading when more expensive Intel CPUs are also matched or exceeded in certain games too. In the Bit-tech test a Core i7 3770 is acually beaten by the G3258 when overclocked in Rome II. People quietly ignore that.
That's a bit of a leap, personally I bought the 4930K because I wanted it to last a long time, not for my WoW FPS.
Yes,the "most games are using only one thread" and hence the Pentium dual core being the only cheap CPU you should consider argument is not even believed by you,or lots of people on this forums.
Something like a Core i3 will last longer than an overclocked Pentium dual core in many games. The TH review showed that an overclocked Pentium dual core rarely could exceed a Core i3 let alone best its frametimes. Even the FX6300 series which was generally ahead of the SB Core i3 in many newer multi-threaded games,might have a lot of that lead negated by the newer Core i3s. I expect once we get Broadwell Core i3s,it won't be there anymore(or it will be exceeded).
An unlocked Haswell Core i3 would have been an awesome CPU.
What do you think is happening with DX12,Mantle and the move to the PS4 and XBox One being lead platforms in the next 6 to 18 months?
You answered that question yourself by buying a £300+ six core Core i7,which is OTT when most of as try to hedge our bets with £130 to £170 Core i5s.
Look at their own WoW tests with the G3258:
http://media.bestofmicro.com/X/X/440565/original/wow-fr.png
http://media.bestofmicro.com/Y/1/440569/original/wow-ftv.png
The Core i3 with a much lower base clockspeed is not slower.
A lot of people bring this up but it is a bit misleading. A friend of mine had a E8400 back in the day and I had a Q9650, today my CPU would fare much better than his but both would be bottlenecking a decent GPU, we both traded in for Sandy Bridge before that became an issue though, so while the more threaded CPU lasted longer before upgrading was needed both reached the point where it was advantageous at the same time.
Not misleading at all. The Q9550 and Q6600 still will do better than CPUs like an E8400 or E7300,where the latter actualy have poor minimums and worse frame latencies in many newer games.
Nearly every single person(plus loads of people I have helped online which probably spans 100s of builds now) who had Core2 quads and Phenom II X4 CPUs,have kept the quad cores longer than the people who had the equivalent generation dual cores.
They survived another round of GPU upgrades,the dual cores tended to have more issues.
I even had overclocked E6300 and Q6600 rigs until a few years ago(the E6300 was actually running at a higher overclock too). I only upgraded since the motherboard on the main rig started having issues.
I don't think anything NEEDS that, but then nothing NEEDS more than a HD7850 either but it doesn't hurt to exceed recommended specs. I/E WoW would defiantly see a difference between the Pentium at stock and 4.8GHz.
What about things like LoL,DOTA2,etc? All run fine on older and less powerful CPUs. I should know because I have played those games and have mates who played them and you get decent framerates. Only hardware forums do you need 5GHZ Pentium dual cores,5GHZ FX CPUs,etc to play such games.
Again lightly threaded does not mean you need the latest and greatest CPU. Just because you get 200FPS with a new fangled CPU against 150FPS with a golden oldie at 1920X1080,means nothing especially with 3rd person perspective games.
Things like WoT are a different kettle of fish and the G3258 will shine for it,but plenty of games are made by devs not to require massive performance.
FFS,many games will run acceptably well on a flipping IGP.
You need to think more as a dev,and less as a hardware enthusiast. Devs either want to push technical boundaries or want to go for the lowest common denominator. The latter sadly means more sales,and this is why you see the PC "stagnating" as people call it.
Once Intel gets Iris Pro MK2 and MK3 down to cheaper CPUs and AMD can actually get stacked DRAM with their APUs,expect more and more people to start using IGPs. Its already happening,discrete card sales are going down year on year,and more and more people are gaming on laptops.
