Have I made a terrible decision ? G4400

[Andrew9205]

Ok guys,first of all ,I'm glad to join the community and look forward to be a part of it.

So,here's the deal.I had to get a  CPU,a Mobo and some dedotated wam for some kids of a friend.

I got to a point where I had to choose between the G4400 (Because the guys on the specif webside did not have the G4520 or G4500 and I a discont code) and the obvious X4 860K.

The PC is mainly going to be used for gaming and office stuff. As the title says i went with the G4400 and I feel it in my guts that I did something stupid.

All the  " Skylake is newer ,14 nm, upgrade path"  and that kind of stupid sheet messed with my mind,and a main part in my decision was this guy with his tests.

 

So I bought it with a  ASROCK H110M-DVS/D3 which by all means has no future for upgrade-ing or for overclocking considering that it uses DDR3 Memory and the H110 Chipset,and Kingston HX318C10F/8, 8GB DDR3, 1866MHz (I think it will run at 1600).

 

Anyway ,the GPU will be an old HD4770 which did a good job for me  some   years ago. 

 

I could have gone with a 3258 and a z97 anniversary or x6 860K and some FM2+ mobo. 

Of course I dont expect them to play the latest games to date but at least  it handle some 3-4 year old titles...right?

I'll recommend them to upgrade to a 750 Ti at least.

I usually take allot of time to make my mind and usually make the right decision but this.....

 

The question is,did I mess up that bad going with the G4400 and the DDR3 Ram mobo?

[VinsinityKT]

Well, the ram won't even work with the motherboard so I guess yeah?

[MageTank]

Ok guys,first of all ,I'm glad to join the community and look forward to be a part of it.

So,here's the deal.I had to get a  CPU,a Mobo and some dedotated wam for some kids of a friend.

I got to a point where I had to choose between the G4400 (Because the guys on the specif webside did not have the G4520 or G4500 and I a discont code) and the obvious X4 860K.

The PC is mainly going to be used for gaming and office stuff. As the title says i went with the G4400 and I feel it in my guts that I did something stupid.

All the  " Skylake is newer ,14 nm, upgrade path"  and that kind of stupid sheet messed with my mind,and a main part in my decision was this guy with his tests. 

 

So I bought it with a  ASROCK H110M-DVS/D3 which by all means has no future for upgrade-ing or for overclocking considering that it uses DDR3 Memory and the H110 Chipset,and Kingston HX318C10F/8, 8GB DDR3, 1866MHz (I think it will run at 1600).

 

Anyway ,the GPU will be an old HD4770 which did a good job for me  some   years ago. 

 

I could have gone with a 3258 and a z97 anniversary or x6 860K and some FM2+ mobo. 

Of course I dont expect them to play the latest games to date but at least  it handle some 3-4 year old titles...right?

I'll recommend them to upgrade to a 750 Ti at least.

I usually take allot of time to make my mind and usually make the right decision but this.....

 

The question is,did I mess up that bad going with the G4400 and the DDR3 Ram mobo?

I would have personally gone with the 860k. I own the Pentium G4400, and had mine clocked to 4.75ghz with 3200mhz DDR4 memory, and while it was amazing for older games and MMO's, a lot of the newer AAA titles stuttered, or were unplayable entirely. This is with me using a GTX 770 and playing at 1600 x 900 resolution. 

 

With low clocked DDR3 memory, your friend's minimum framerate will be even worse than mine, and will likely stutter harder due to the fact that it cannot be overclocked. 

 

Evidence of my clock and memory speeds:

 

 

 

Well, the ram won't even work with the motherboard so I guess yeah?

It will. That board supports DDR3 just fine. 

[Darkseth]

Not really, but i personally would have prefered at least a DDR4 board.

 

DDR3 runs at higher Voltages, and if you are VERY unlucky, it might damage your CPU's memory controler (Linus made a Video about it).

 

But.... well. Your penitium is by FAR faster than an AMD on fm2+.

However... If 4 Cores can be used to its fullest, they can surpass the Pentium.

 

But.  You have the option later, to switch the pentium for an i5 Quad Core, or even i7. While the 860k is already the "best" you can have on that fm2+ board.

 

Skylake indeed was a smarter choice itself.

 

Biggest Problem is, having only 2 Cores. If you Game, the i3 would be MUCH better, because having only 2 Cores will be a huge bottleneck for newer games.

[MageTank]

Not really, but i personally would have prefered at least a DDR4 board.

 

DDR3 runs at higher Voltages, and if you are VERY unlucky, it might damage your CPU's memory controler (Linus made a Video about it).

 

But.... well. Your penitium is by FAR faster than an AMD on fm2+.

However... If 4 Cores can be used to its fullest, they can surpass the Pentium.

 

But.  You have the option later, to switch the pentium for an i5 Quad Core, or even i7. While the 860k is already the "best" you can have on that fm2+ board.

 

Skylake indeed was a smarter choice itself.

 

Biggest Problem is, having only 2 Cores. If you Game, the i3 would be MUCH better, because having only 2 Cores will be a huge bottleneck for newer games.

It has nothing to do with luck. DDR3 in and of itself won't damage a CPU's IMC. vDIMM is NOT dangerous to a CPU at all, as it is supplied from the board to the memory itself. The only danger would be if he loaded a DDR3 XMP profile that required too much VCCIO/VCCSA voltages, and damaged his IMC that way. Though, I agree with you on the DDR4 aspect. Part of the appeal of Skylake is DDR4. It's where a lot of the improvements in those reviews came from. That "11% faster than Haswell" was in compression, where faster memory bandwidth helps.

 

In this specific scenario, even a G3258 would have been a better idea. The G4400 is only to be used as a stop-gap with Skylake, so a Z170 board should have been purchased. Bonus points if its ASRock or MSI, as you can at least overclock the pentium in the mean time. Now, someone will be stuck with an older memory standard on a locked down board with only 2 memory slots and no good features. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

You bought a Skylake Pentium and then negated the big advantage of Skylake by going with a DDR3 board? Yeah, you screwed up bigtime.

[SteveGrabowski0]

Of course I dont expect them to play the latest games to date but at least  it handle some 3-4 year old titles...right?

 

My 4.4 GHz G3258 sucked on Skyrim and sucked on Tomb Raider 2013. It was great on Bioshock Infinite. It was great on old Call of Duty games. Games written in the Core 2 Duo era are mostly what's going to run well. 2011 and beyond can get dicey.

[VinsinityKT]

I would have personally gone with the 860k. I own the Pentium G4400, and had mine clocked to 4.75ghz with 3200mhz DDR4 memory, and while it was amazing for older games and MMO's, a lot of the newer AAA titles stuttered, or were unplayable entirely. This is with me using a GTX 770 and playing at 1600 x 900 resolution. 

 

With low clocked DDR3 memory, your friend's minimum framerate will be even worse than mine, and will likely stutter harder due to the fact that it cannot be overclocked. 

 

Evidence of my clock and memory speeds:

 

 

 

It will. That board supports DDR3 just fine. 

Hmm I never realized that but what is the point of just half way upgrading to generations by staying with ddr3

[Andrew9205]

That's it ,I screwed up ,I'm going to try to send them back and get the 860k. Or take the g4400 with ddr4 and a z170 board,with only 4gb of ram 2133.

 

The stupid things lasts to max 14 days until they refund.

[MageTank]

Hmm I never realized that but what is the point of just half way upgrading to generations by staying with ddr3

Never said it made any sense, only that it was possible

 

Personally, I would have just got the DDR4 since its cheap enough anyways. 

[Andrew9205]

Never said it made any sense, only that it was possible

 

Personally, I would have just got the DDR4 since its cheap enough anyways. 

 

So is it really that bad considering there's only a 1% difference between DDR3 and DDR4 ?I dont think it's something that you can feel in games.

[arniks8]

 

So is it really that bad considering there's only a 1% difference between DDR3 and DDR4 ?I dont think it's something that you can feel in games.

It won't make much difference with a powerful CPU, but Pentium should have at least 15 % increase, even i3's see quite a performance gain with faster memory ( skylake i3's can almost catch up with i5 4460 in some scenarios ).

[MageTank]

 

So is it really that bad considering there's only a 1% difference between DDR3 and DDR4 ?I dont think it's something that you can feel in games.

That video is a very poor comparison. It is comparing 2400mhz C11 DDR3 (an 800mhz overclock over its JEDEC 1600mhz) vs 2400 C15 DDR4 (a 266mhz overclock over its JEDEC 2133mhz). You see my bandwidth in that picture i posted above, right? That was on my Pentium. Let me show you the real power of DDR4.

 

 

My kit is a 2133 CL13-13-13-36 kit that i manually overclocked. I paid $46 for it. To get a DDR3 kit to run even at 3000mhz, you will be paying over 10x that amount: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233640&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker,%20LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

 

Whereas with DDR4, you can get a 3200mhz CL14 kit for $130. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232229&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker,%20LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

 

Look at my signature to see what impact memory speed has on gaming, or Youtube DigitalFoundry and watch their Skylake i3 and i5 videos.

[MageTank]

It won't make much difference with a powerful CPU, but Pentium should have at least 15 % increase, even i3's see quite a performance gain with faster memory ( skylake i3's can almost catch up with i5 4460 in some scenarios ).

It doesn't matter how powerful the CPU is. Faster memory will improve performance in situations with high CPU overhead, regardless of the CPU. People have seen performance boosts even with 6 and 8 core Intel CPU's. As for the "Skylake i3 can almost catch up to the 4460" you mean, it beats the 4460, right? Because it does  in pretty much every regard with just faster ram. Combine that i3 with an Asrock or MSI Z170 board, and the puts that 4460 into the ground even more.

[arniks8]

It doesn't matter how powerful the CPU is. Faster memory will improve performance in situations with high CPU overhead, regardless of the CPU. People have seen performance boosts even with 6 and 8 core Intel CPU's. As for the "Skylake i3 can almost catch up to the 4460" you mean, it beats the 4460, right? Because it does  in pretty much every regard with just faster ram. Combine that i3 with an Asrock or MSI Z170 board, and the puts that 4460 into the ground even more.

I haven't seen a skylake i3 beating i5 4460, but I don't doubt that it could.

[NumLock21]

Return board and ram, get a proper board and ram, that's ddr4.

[Andrew9205]

Is this http://www.altex.ro/memorie-desktop-crucial-ct8g4dfd8213-8gb-ddr4-2133mhz-cl15 really that bad considering it's CL15? I cant really get lower than CL15

[MageTank]

Is this http://www.altex.ro/memorie-desktop-crucial-ct8g4dfd8213-8gb-ddr4-2133mhz-cl15 really that bad considering it's CL15? I cant really get lower than CL15

2133 CL15 is the JEDEC standard for DDR4. However, they are also only 1.2V. You can pump voltage up to 1.35, and should easily be able to dial in 2800mhz on any DDR4 ram kit at C15 timings just fine. That alone is enough to get better minimum FPS, assuming you have a board that supports overclocking memory.

[NumLock21]

That's it ,I screwed up ,I'm going to try to send them back and get the 860k. Or take the g4400 with ddr4 and a z170 board,with only 4gb of ram 2133.

 

The stupid things lasts to max 14 days until they refund.

The future is DDR4. A Z170 board will be nice if it can fit into budget, otherwise just grab any that uses DDR4. Don't worry about the technical details like ram timings, cause they won't really care about 2133 in CL15 or CL14.

[Andrew9205]

 I cant do more than that price related.

 

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z170%20Pro4S/