I3 4170 good for gaming?

[applesuxD]

Does it bottleneck, in terms of Minimum fps.

Minimum fps can be affected by cpu if im not wrong.

[Arty]

Does it bottleneck, in terms of Minimum fps.

Minimum fps can be affected by cpu if im not wrong.

what gpu?

What Game?

how much ram?

[theereal]

Depends, on the game On your other specs

[Godlygamer23]

Realistically, the CPU should be fine.

[ltguy]

haswell i3 is a beast. 

[applesuxD]

what gpu?

What Game?

how much ram?

Can it handle titan x

[Imakuni]

Can it handle titan x

Anything can handle a titan at 4k. That, ofc, includes the i3.

[Hieb]

Depends on the game. It's a pretty solid CPU, though some more demanding modern triple A titles it will have some sub-60 fps dipping, such as in GTA V. With a Titan X it would bottleneck it horribly at 1080P in the overwhelming majority of games. At 1440P it would be a minor bottleneck in most games, and at 4K it would support it pretty well.

 

If you're looking at a GTX 970 or better I'd suggest getting an i5 though.

[Zeruel]

Honestly, i5 or go home. 

 

 

The i5 4440 is good "real" 4 core beast.

[Yoinkerman]

Realistically, the CPU should be fine.

 

This.  

[techguru]

name some games you wanna play

[applesuxD]

name some games you wanna play

mainstream AAA titles

[typographie]

Does it bottleneck, in terms of Minimum fps.

Minimum fps can be affected by cpu if im not wrong.

 

CPU limitation are more likely to show up in the minimum framerates, that's true. It can also affect averages and maximums if the CPU demand is high enough, as in Cities: Skylines or certain MMOs.

 

If you're considering an i3-4170, I assume it's because you cannot afford an i5. Core i3's are the best gaming CPUs available in that price range. You might run into CPU bottlenecks in certain titles, but you're only going to avoid that by spending more money.

[othertomperson]

Honestly, i5 or go home.

 

There's a little thing called "budget" in the real world.

 

An i3 is good for the money. Don't expect it to be as good as an i5, but if you can't afford an i5 then that's little consolation.

[Nena Trinity]

Get the i5 or go AMD...

[SteveGrabowski0]

An i3-4170 is a really nice CPU if you're on a tight budget. One thing to factor in though is that if you go with an i3, you should go with an Nvidia GPU. The reason is that Nvidia's DX11 drivers are much more efficient with lower end CPUs. This difference goes away once you run an i5 or better, but it can be pretty significant with the i3. For example, there is a section of Call of Duty Advanced Warfare where Digital Foundry demonstrates an i3 + GTX 750 Ti system getting higher, smoother framerates than an i3 + R9 280 system despite the 280 being enormously more powerful on a hardware level (and also when combined with an i5 or higher). See the GTX 960 review at eurogamer.net to see this specific video showing this. Digital Foundry has been testing this since January, and it keeps showing up in a lot of games. Even last week they were discussing this in their Ashes of Singularity video. But back to the i3, I was amazed how well GTA V played for me disabling two cores in my Xeon E3-1231v3 to simulate a hyperthreaded i3 at 3.8 GHz, though an i3-41xx has only a 3MB L3 cache whereas my Xeon has 8MB, so I'd expect something like 8% less performance or so based a benchmark I saw but whose source I cannot remember. But it was smooth and framerates were 55-75 fps for the most part. It bottlenecked my GTX 970 to mostly around 85% usage, but with a GTX 960 I think it would have been perfect.

 

When it comes to building a AAA gaming system I really think it makes sense to spend as much of your budget as you can buying the GPU + CPU with the constraint that it's a balanced setup (so i5-4440 + GTX 960 for $370 is better than Pentium G3258 + GTX 970 for $370 for example). I think it makes sense to skimp on the case since that's something that doesn't have a lot of impact on performance (unless you're going with something really highend that generates a lot of heat) and is easily replaceable later on. I think it makes sense to skimp on the motherboard since a lot of expensive features like overclocking, multi GPU support, M.2 support, etc don't make any sense when one is on a tight budget. I think an SSD is a waste of money for someone on a tight budget trying to squeeze the most gaming performance for AAA games out of his system, since (1) it doesn't improve framerate (2) it's easy to add later (3) SSD prices keep steadily falling in price. For power supply you cannot skimp on quality since a bad one can take down your system, but you can skimp on luxuries like modularity. Cable management can be a bitch with a non-modular power supply, but spending an extra hour tidying the cables up is worth it to be able to upgrade a little on the GPU or CPU when you're on a tight budget.

 

Now for playing games like LOL, CS:GO, Minecraft, TF2, etc that are easy to run I would throw that advice out the window and instead wholeheartedly recommend a good SSD at the expense of a better GPU. Even if you're into shooters like Battlefield that are easier to run than RPGs (which tend to be the hardest to run, see Witcher 3 or Dragon Age Inquisition) or heavy duty open world games like GTA V, it might make more sense to go with an SSD for the load times when you don't need a higher end GPU. But for AAA gaming I think it really makes sense to focus as much of your budget as you can on GPU+CPU at the expense of other areas of the build.

[iHardware Shelden]

Get the i5 or go AMD...

I agree but most people on this forum recommend dual cores over AMD... I always say Athlon x4 or FX 6300 but if you can afford it then an i5 and up. i3 is just not worth the cost for what it is even if single core performance is better.

[Nena Trinity]

I agree but most people on this forum recommend dual cores over AMD... I always say Athlon x4 or FX 6300 but if you can afford it then an i5 and up. i3 is just not worth the cost for what it is even if single core performance is better.

Yep I guess a Pentium and upgrade later is a option to but then you may struggle while using it...

[iHardware Shelden]

Yep I guess a Pentium and upgrade later is a option to but then you may struggle while using it...

Exactly, if you plan on upgrading soon then go with that but I see people go with the Pentium or i3 and don't plan on upgrading any time soon. I got my 6300 because I knew that would be the case and when I go Intel I want a nice board and CPU.