Pentium G3220 or Athlon X4 750K??

[snaggster]

Hi folks. A friend of mine has asked me to build a cheap rig for his son. The rig will many be used for homework (yer right!! lol) Light gaming ie the sims ext, and more than likely "other" things 16yr lads get up too ..

He will be using a gtx460 that his dad has already supplied. I only have a small budget so what cpu will be best for his needs?

Ether:

AMD Athlon X4 750K Black Edition 3.40GHz (Socket FM2) Trinity Quad Core Processor for £60

Or

Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor for £50


Motherboards for ether are roughly the same price.

 

[kefan77]

G3220 with the option of getting something like 4440 or 4570 in the longer run.

 

[Martini1991]

Has to be the Athlon.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Athlon II X4 750K. However,the X4 760K can be around £60 if you shop around.

 

[JonSmith]

Go with the Athlon.

Overclocking is fun btw, make sure his dad teaches him

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Make sure you get an FM2+ motherboard.

 

[snaggster]

Thx gents. its looking like the Athlon then. I will prob clock it to 4ghz across all four cores and leave it at that,as he will be using the stock cooler for the time being.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What motherboard are you getting??

 

[Stas823]

Either will be fine but the Athlon being a quad core is slightly better

 

[snaggster]

What motherboard are you getting??

Its quite budget dependent, but i think i will go for the Gigabyte D3H A88X, As its a fm2+ board, and has all the features he will want.

 

[Akagi]

I would honestly get the Intel. I know the Athlon will come out on top in most benchmarks, but it would give you the option of upgrading to an i5 or i7 further down the line.

Paired with a 460 it won't make a huge difference.

 

[ubersonic]

I would honestly get the Intel. I know the Athlon will come out on top in most benchmarks, but it would give you the option of upgrading to an i5 or i7 further down the line.

Paired with a 460 it won't make a huge difference.

Same here, even at 4GHz the Athlon won't be able to match the 3GHz Haswell in 1-2 thread software (most software). Ii will "last" longer as the industry is moving towards using more threads (and optimizing them worse) but then the are very good upgrade options for LGA1150 that will last a very long time, FM2 not so.

 

[Boomstick777]

I would go for Intel Pentium G3420 (Haswell 1150) it's around £50. Awesome performance for the price, can pick up a 1150 mobo for £35+. Throw in 8GB of vram and you'll have a decent setup that paired with the GTX 460, will run all games at nice settings. Plus the option to upgrade to future Haswell / possibly Broadwell CPU's.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Its quite budget dependent, but i think i will go for the Gigabyte D3H A88X, As its a fm2+ board, and has all the features he will want.

That sounds about right. There are some other motherboards like the ASUS A88XM-PLUS and Gigabyte GA-F2A88X-D3H which have VRM cooling too for a few quid more. I know two mates who use the X4 760K(one in a SFF mini-ITX lanbox and another in a budget rig). A good CPU for the price,and they are paired with an HD7770 and HD7790 cards respectively.

You will be perfectly fine with it unlike some naysayers in this thread. HONESTLY,you will be. Games like LoL,DOTA,Minecraft and plenty of other games will be fine. Regarding The Sims I know people running it on the A10 IGP fine. Hence an X4 760K and a GTX460 will be more than enough,and will be a balanced rig.

So get something that will last a few years on the budget,instead of having to have CPU updates all the time,since that means you need to support it. Just set it up at stock(or a well tested overclock) and let it be IMHO.

 

[Boomstick777]

Either Intel G3420, good performance, low price, very low power consumption or if you want AMD a Athlon X4 760K are the best options atm. Overall if you weigh up the performance, low cost of the Intel Haswell CPU and the low cost of 1150 motherboards, and future upgrade options path etc. Intel just edge it out imho.

 

[Smoogels]

I'd just get the AMD over the Pentium.

It's one thing saying it's more upgradable to get a Pentium but what is the probability that he will want to upgrade? Even if he really did, he could get a Kaveri.

I'd rather get a quad core CPU with decent performance now, which can handle everything he wants it for now easily, rather than a dual core just for the option of plumping a i5/i7 in.