Budget Gaming CPU

[TheLunarHero]

Hey everybody, how well would the core i3 4160 perform in modern games? I know it's only a dual core but it features hyper threading allowing it to operate like a quad core. (I don't know much about CPU architecture so go easy). Can I expect decent performance? Thanks.

[Vacsol]

it will be fine for most games. it might bottleneck in some CPU-intensive games like Arma 3.

[Ahaber]

You might be better off with a Pentium G3258 what other parts are you going to use in your computer?

[mousetrapsful]

It depends on the other parts in your computer. If you have 2-way SLI gtx 980's then there will be bottlenecking, but if you have something a lot less like an r9 270, you should be fine.

[Fate]

i3-4160 is great for modern titles as long as you don't have something over ~280x/770 for your graphics card.

[Dabasepc]

Intel Pentium G3258 is the oen you looking for

[TheLunarHero]

You might be better off with a Pentium G3258 what other parts are you going to use in your computer?

I plan on pairing it with an Asus R9 280x

[TheLunarHero]

Intel Pentium G3258 is the oen you looking for

I've considered that CPU but with no hyperthreading the two cores could really be a problem.

[Ahaber]

I've considered that CPU but with no hyperthreading the two cores could really be a problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJACZ5iStWw This LTT video shows that for gaming you won't really see much of a diference when using the G3285 vs other higher end cpus so it should be fine for you.

[Hieb]

I've considered that CPU but with no hyperthreading the two cores could really be a problem.

 

Good choice. The G3258 struggles to play a lot of newer games. Can't play many newer Ubisoft titles smoothly, and it can't even launch Dragon Age Inquisition. Plus the i3 seems to frequently match or outperform it even in games that are largely single-threaded.

 

The i3-4160 is a good buy. It might hold back the 280X somewhat in more demanding titles but should still be a very good experience overall. You might want to turn down things like Effects quality or HBAO in games since these add to CPU load. It's also worth considering an Nvidia GPU. Their drivers have better DX optimizations and result in less CPU overhead than AMD's. Any bottlenecking would be lesser with something like a GTX 960 or GTX 770, but it will still play great with a 280X.

[SteveGrabowski]

I plan on pairing it with an Asus R9 280x

 

Bad combination there. An i3 bottlenecks the hell out of midrange and higher AMD cards.

 

 

Eurogamer.net recommends going no higher than R7 265 if you want to pair an AMD card with an i3. This video is pretty eye-opening, where a GTX 750 Ti + i3-4130 combo outperforms an R9 280 + i3-4130 combo.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

 This LTT video shows that for gaming you won't really see much of a diference when using the G3285 vs other higher end cpus so it should be fine for you.

 

Nah, that's wrong; there is a night and day difference between gaming on my quadcore Xeon E3-1231v3 vs gaming on my 4.4 GHz Pentium G3258. The quadcore completely blows the dual core out of the water. I can lock to 60FPS in most games with my Xeon, whereas the only games I could do it with my Pentium were Bioshock Infinite and then old games from the Core 2 Duo era like Modern Warfare 3 and older. Lots of really annoying framerate oscillations between 40-60 FPS in everything else, and this isn't even counting multiplayer or really CPU intensive games like Crysis 3 that the Pentium absolutely chokes on.