i5 4670k general gaming usage

robertchalmers1 · 12 Mar 2014 at 13:40

i asked last week about a reasonable basic 1150 gaming pc based on the g3220 pentium dual core cpu and almost every reply was an i5 4670 and z87 board, after some research im wondering if i should go the 4670k and use integrated gfx for 4 or 5 weeks and then purchase a gfx card tehn

pc will be for my young console who normally plays games like minecraft, TF2 etc so im hoping that going by google the hd 4600 should be fine for a few weeks at low settings.

what does anyone think of that???

otherwise its go with the g3220 ( which we already have ) and purchase an m itx board and either 26o or 270 gfx card.

Lex1970 · 12 Mar 2014 at 13:45

I did exactly (almost as you are thinking) purchased a i5-4670K not overclocked ran out of funds then so used the Integrated graphics card for a while which isen't brilliant but still OK for Minecraft then whilst saving for my current Graphics card stuck a Nvidia GT640 in which was OK, now running with a GTX780 now on the Minecraft Home screen I'm getting an insane 2000 frames a second, which I must admit does mean I get some coil wine from my 780 at these insane speeds and around 200 frames a second when playing the game at 1080 ultra settings.

BinnsY · 12 Mar 2014 at 13:46

This seems a bizzare recommendation as the two chips are at really different ends of the performance scale.

The 4670k is suitable for all out performance and overclocking and will be more than happy teamed with a 780/290 playing games at max settings, but your rig would end up costing £1200 by the time you are done.

The G3220 is a relatively low end processor that will be ok at playing most games on medium settings when teamed with a mid range GPU, but the rig will be lest than half the cost.

Personally if you already have the G3220 I would stick with that and go for the new AMD 265 GPU as they are only £110. It will be more than enough to max things like TF2 at 1080p and would even handle some of the more intensive games like Crysis 3 if you are willing to drop the settings to medium / low.

If you do go for a 4670k teaming it with a 260 or 270x would seem like a waste to me. The GPU will run out of grunt long before the CPU does. It would make more sense to up your budget and go for at least a 280x.

In short stick with the g3220 and build a medium spec pc that will handle the latest gamest at medium/low settings and probably spend £350 if you already have the CPU, or go to a 4670k and spend a lot more to max everything and anything.

DaleTheWhale · 12 Mar 2014 at 13:53

Lex1970 said:
I did exactly (almost as you are thinking) purchased a i5-4670K not overclocked ran out of funds then so used the Integrated graphics card for a while which isen't brilliant but still OK for Minecraft then whilst saving for my current Graphics card stuck a Nvidia GT640 in which was OK, now running with a GTX780 now on the Minecraft Home screen I'm getting an insane 2000 frames a second, which I must admit does mean I get some coil wine from my 780 at these insane speeds and around 200 frames a second when playing the game at 1080 ultra settings.

With a card like that you need Shaders & a 256x Texture pack

robertchalmers1 · 12 Mar 2014 at 14:55

BinnsY said:
This seems a bizzare recommendation as the two chips are at really different ends of the performance scale.

The 4670k is suitable for all out performance and overclocking and will be more than happy teamed with a 780/290 playing games at max settings, but your rig would end up costing £1200 by the time you are done.

The G3220 is a relatively low end processor that will be ok at playing most games on medium settings when teamed with a mid range GPU, but the rig will be lest than half the cost.

Personally if you already have the G3220 I would stick with that and go for the new AMD 265 GPU as they are only £110. It will be more than enough to max things like TF2 at 1080p and would even handle some of the more intensive games like Crysis 3 if you are willing to drop the settings to medium / low.

If you do go for a 4670k teaming it with a 260 or 270x would seem like a waste to me. The GPU will run out of grunt long before the CPU does. It would make more sense to up your budget and go for at least a 280x.

In short stick with the g3220 and build a medium spec pc that will handle the latest gamest at medium/low settings and probably spend £350 if you already have the CPU, or go to a 4670k and spend a lot more to max everything and anything.

that was what i was basically asking. the budget was between 350-500 for everything bar cpu which we have here, bearing in mind its for a childs 13th birthday as well. yeah he does play bf4 and cod ghosts etc but on his xbox 360 and ps4.

however 1 thing i have noticed is that most dont consider a budget when it comes to a spec, previously i asked for a spec of 350-500 with 500 being max and was hit with builds almost 600 which is verging on double the minimum price.

to put it politely will our g3220 and the 270x be enough to play games ive asked about at medium settings???

BinnsY · 12 Mar 2014 at 15:22

I think it's worth having a look at this review, specifically pages 6-10. In this they have teamed the CPU's with a GTX670 which is a decent graphics card on par with the 270x

http://www.legitreviews.com/intel-pentium-g3220-processor-review_137016

When you look at frame rates at 1080p there isnt really much in it. In tomb raider the g3220 is averaging a frame rate slightly higher than the 4670k! Even in something as intensive as Metro Last Light it's only 8FPS behind the 4670k when teamed with a decent GPU.

As you already have the CPU and your budget is low I think you are going down the right path by using the CPU you already have and just settling on medium settings. There really is no need to spend more as that CPU will be more than capable as long as you dont expect to max absolute everything.

The only recommendation I would have is not to go mini ITX as you have to spend more to go that small. You will get more bang for you buck at micro ATX or ATX. I personally would go for something like this using your existing CPU. If this is too close to the 500 limit you can drop it back to bang on £400 by dropping the SSD as that's optional. But yes to answer the question the below coupled with your existing CPU should be more than enough for a decent 1080p gaming experience.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 270X "PowerBank" 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x Gigabyte H87M-HD3 Intel H87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £73.99
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £55.99
1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £55.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x SuperFlower Amazon 450W "80 Plus Bronze" Power Supply £39.95
1 x Zalman T4 Micro-ATX Case USB 3.0 - Black £22.99
1 x Arctic F12 Pro PWM Case Fan - 120mm £4.99
Total : £457.49 (includes shipping : £8.00).

pastymuncher · 13 Mar 2014 at 10:02

You could save another £30 or so off that by going with a H81 board which will be just as good. The G3220 is a lot of bang for buck really. I built a pc for my sister in law with a tight budget of £300 including windows and a whole base unit. I ended up with a G3220 brand new for £37, Asrock H81-HDS motherboard for £35 brand new, 4GB of ram and a cpu cooler from the MM, re-used her old dvdrw, new case, new Silverstone psu off the bay for £11 delivered, new 1TB Seagate HDD, Kingston 60Gb SSD and W7 64Bit all for £298. She is chuffed to bits with it and it's perfect for playing her crappy Facebook games and general internet use. It also uses bugger all power and is very cool running. Most i could get it up to was 54 degrees after a two hour run of Linx. It's surprising what you can build for the money if you shop around.