CPU consideration question

[Elmarnieh]

Budget (including currency): 650 USD

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Star Citizen

Other details I like doing budget builds for people wanting to play Star Citizen.  (I've played it for years on a 4820k and for a while worse than a 1080 FE).  I buy used a ton to make this fit and I recently found I could get an i3 10100 for the same price as my standard go to of a 4930k.  

Knowing that SC love's those cores wondering if the thoughts here would be which would be best as I'd rather not experiment for something someone else would be using and I don't want to setup two just for comparison sake.

 

Much thanks for any thoughts and feedback.
 

4930 has more cores(6 v 4), greater max bandwidth (59.7 vs 41.6) and is quad channel and double the cache (12 v 6
i3 is half the TDP (65 vs 130), greater base speed (3.6 vs 3.4), and is a generation better on memory (DDR4 vs DDR3), higher bus speed (8 v 5) 

Both are capped at pcie 3, I don't care about their on chip graphics because I'll obviously be using a dedicated GPU

Also hi everyone, first time posting.

 

[Dedayog]

What is the boost speed of each CPU.  Base speeds mean all sorts of absolutely nothing.

[Elmarnieh]

Just now, Dedayog said:

What is the boost speed of each CPU.  Base speeds mean all sorts of absolutely nothing.

4.3 for the i3 and 3.9 for the 4930k

 

Isn't boost time limited on the older chips?

[Kid.Lazer]

Boiling all their vast differences down, they're going to have nearly identical performance, with the biggest change being power draw. If you're targeting this low-end spec, I'd take the newer 10th Gen CPU as it can actually be upgraded to something better down the line, something not really doable with the ancient 4930k.

[Jurrunio]

Looking at Cinebench R23 scores their multithread score are both around the 5.5k mark, which makes the superior single thread speed of the 10100 the winning factor.

 

That said won't the iGPU-less 10100F and 10105F be cheaper? the 10400F is actually the best deal of its generation with 6 cores instead of 4 and only a bit more expensive than the 10100 which has iGPU. 

 

Another thing to consider is price, to go for 10th gen you need to buy a new motherboard and DDR4 which can be had for cheap especially in the used market but is now getting replaced by DDR5, assume you do have an X79 board if you will go with a 4930k. That said because X79 is a lot older, it's more vulnerable to software issues that go unfixed for a long time or hardware failures. Overclocking can be done on the 4930k, but this will make hardware reliability issues worse considering their age.

[PDifolco]

32 minutes ago, Elmarnieh said:

Budget (including currency): 650 USD

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Star Citizen

Other details I like doing budget builds for people wanting to play Star Citizen.  (I've played it for years on a 4820k and for a while worse than a 1080 FE).  I buy used a ton to make this fit and I recently found I could get an i3 10100 for the same price as my standard go to of a 4930k.  

Knowing that SC love's those cores wondering if the thoughts here would be which would be best as I'd rather not experiment for something someone else would be using and I don't want to setup two just for comparison sake.

 

Much thanks for any thoughts and feedback.
 

4930 has more cores(6 v 4), greater max bandwidth (59.7 vs 41.6) and is quad channel and double the cache (12 v 6
i3 is half the TDP (65 vs 130), greater base speed (3.6 vs 3.4), and is a generation better on memory (DDR4 vs DDR3), higher bus speed (8 v 5) 

Both are capped at pcie 3, I don't care about their on chip graphics because I'll obviously be using a dedicated GPU

Also hi everyone, first time posting.

 

$650 and you get a 10100 that cost $70??

[Elmarnieh]

32 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Looking at Cinebench R23 scores their multithread score are both around the 5.5k mark, which makes the superior single thread speed of the 10100 the winning factor.

 

That said won't the iGPU-less 10100F and 10105F be cheaper? the 10400F is actually the best deal of its generation with 6 cores instead of 4 and only a bit more expensive than the 10100 which has iGPU. 

 

Another thing to consider is price, to go for 10th gen you need to buy a new motherboard and DDR4 which can be had for cheap especially in the used market but is now getting replaced by DDR5, assume you do have an X79 board if you will go with a 4930k. That said because X79 is a lot older, it's more vulnerable to software issues that go unfixed for a long time or hardware failures. Overclocking can be done on the 4930k, but this will make hardware reliability issues worse considering their age.

Right now I'm just limited by what I can find in my price range on the used market and that usually means Ebay because of their price refund policy if it is bad.

 

The cost of board and ddr4 vs ddr3 is a big factor and I haven't looked to price out a 650 possible build with ddr4 because my go to was 4930k and ddr3 which is dirt cheap.  I've played the game on both my older 4820k, my upgraded old system (4930k) and my new 12900k system and the errors in the alpha of Star Citizen are almost all if not all on their side (alpha after all).

I don't do any OC really on these budget machines unless someone asks and is willing to take the risk because most of the stuff is old and/or used.

[Elmarnieh]

37 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

$650 and you get a 10100 that cost $70??

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=i3+10100&_sacat=0&rt=nc&LH_BIN=1

 

All over the place, unless you mean why I spend only that much on the component.  It is because I know it is enough and I'd rather throw more into a graphics card and ram for this particular game.  It is also a game that loves cores which makes the 4930k a great price point because it dips to 50 dollars in the used market occasionally and 32G of ddr3 in quad channel is cheap.  I'm literally building it for the focus of one pretty persnickity game.

[Elmarnieh]

1 hour ago, Kid.Lazer said:

Boiling all their vast differences down, they're going to have nearly identical performance, with the biggest change being power draw. If you're targeting this low-end spec, I'd take the newer 10th Gen CPU as it can actually be upgraded to something better down the line, something not really doable with the ancient 4930k.

That's a good point.  The extra price of dd4 might be saved in a slightly lower PSU.  The big difference to me for SC performance (which is greatly improved by core count) is 4930 is 6 cores and quad channel capable which really helps mitigate some of the ddr3 to dd4 concerns.

[PDifolco]

9 minutes ago, Elmarnieh said:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=i3+10100&_sacat=0&rt=nc&LH_BIN=1

 

All over the place, unless you mean why I spend only that much on the component.  It is because I know it is enough and I'd rather throw more into a graphics card and ram for this particular game.  It is also a game that loves cores which makes the 4930k a great price point because it dips to 50 dollars in the used market occasionally and 32G of ddr3 in quad channel is cheap.  I'm literally building it for the focus of one pretty persnickity game.

I won't buy a 10 year old chip or the weakest from 3 years ago even for a non that demanding game

Benchmarks still shows game is 3x faster on a hi end chip than a crappy one, and $100 on the CPU will change way much things than $100 on a GPU

In your shoes I'd get a 5600 and a 6600, it'll work way better all around that a 4930 and a 6600XT or such...You may even run W11  on it

 

 

 

 

 

[Elmarnieh]

28 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

I won't buy a 10 year old chip or the weakest from 3 years ago even for a non that demanding game

Benchmarks still shows game is 3x faster on a hi end chip than a crappy one, and $100 on the CPU will change way much things than $100 on a GPU

In your shoes I'd get a 5600 and a 6600, it'll work way better all around that a 4930 and a 6600XT or such...You may even run W11  on it

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks I might try that build, I'll have to price around but just doing a quick build on pcpartpicker and I'm at a bit over 660 with a 5600 and 6600 with 1TB of storage. Just need to trim a bit off but I think I can ebay the memory to do that.

Thanks, that's a really updated idea and just squeaking the budget lines and a good bang for the buck.