Is the i3 4170 much better than an OC G3258?

[Guest]

I'm on a tight budget and I'm wondering if the i3 is worth it. Does hyperthreading affect gaming performance drastically?

[Amazingasian]

I'm on a tight budget and I'm wondering if the i3 is worth it. Does hyperthreading affect gaming performance drastically?

Most games won't run on a G3258 so yea.  The i3 is better.  If gettting the i3 will take the budget away from other parts like the GPU or PSU, get an AMD Athlon X4 860K instead and put more money towards the GPU and PSU.

[TheRandomness]

Title and post question: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssssssssssss

[The Official Czex]

The two extra cores (although virtualized) will have a large impact on gaming.

 

For a cheaper alternative, an Athlon X4 860K would suffice.

[Philcat101]

Some games deny to run without 4 threads, so the i3 would be a safer bet.

[Guest]

The two extra cores (although virtualized) will have a large impact on gaming.

For a cheaper alternative, an Athlon X4 860K would suffice.

Unfortunately I already have a msi h81 p33

[FruitBasketSilex]

Most games won't run on a G3258 so yea. The i3 is better. If gettting the i3 will take the budget away from other parts like the GPU or PSU, get an AMD Athlon X4 860K instead and put more money towards the GPU and PSU.

One game. (That I know of) Far Cry 4. And it's got a fix.

[SteveGrabowski0]

I'm on a tight budget and I'm wondering if the i3 is worth it. Does hyperthreading affect gaming performance drastically?

 

It affects it enormously. I had a G3258 at 4.4 GHz and it was straight dogshit with my GTX 970. When I replaced it with a Xeon E3-1231v3 and turned off two cores but left HT on to simulate a 3.8 GHz i3, Grand Theft Auto V ran beautifully on my 970. When I turned off HT though and left only two cores on the game was borderline unplayable, terrible oscillation in framerates and lots of stuttering. I haven't played GTA V on my actual G3258 though since I replaced it with the Xeon before GTA V came out on PC.

 

@i_build_nanosuits did a comparison of a simulated 4.5 GHz G3258 and a simulated i3-4150 with his i7-4770k by disabling cores and/or hyperthreading, and the difference was night and day. I trust his results because his simulated 4.5 GHz G3258 and GTX 780 closely resembled my experience with an actual 4.4 GHz G3258 and a GTX 970. The i3-4170 is night and day better than the G3258.

 

I wasn't getting full GPU usage with my simulated i3 in GTA V; it was more like 85% on my 970 most of the time, but it was still enough to keep over 60 fps 95% of the time and to only have drops into the 52-55 fps range for the most part. I was really impressed by how well two cores with HT on ran GTA V on my system with a GTX 970, and GTA V is a very cpu heavy game. It was a really enjoyable experience, whereas gaming on a 4.4 GHz G3258 was mostly a frustrating experience with wildly oscillating framerates. Most new games run badly if you don't have at least 4 hardware threads. A few like Crysis 3 run badly if you don't have at least 4 physical cores, but for the most part an i3 is a very solid gaming cpu. It's not an i5 but it's worlds better than a Pentium at any reasonable 24/7 overclock you could get.

 

Also, get an Nvidia GPU. AMD gpus don't run well with the i3 due to AMD driver overhead (Digital Foundry has established this over and over). Nvidia's drivers handle i3s beautifully.

[Amazingasian]

One game. (That I know of) Far Cry 4. And it's got a fix.

But Far Cry Primal is coming out in a few months...

[CarterDavison]

One game. (That I know of) Far Cry 4. And it's got a fix.

It either runs like shit on Triple A games or doesn't run at all in most cases.

 

Don't bother trying to defend it.

[Gio Perez]

Yes, the i3 has hyper threading. Games like far cry 4 won't even run on dual cores (maybe with some tweaking but not well), expect new games to be the same.

[MoonlightSylv]

I'm on a tight budget and I'm wondering if the i3 is worth it. Does hyperthreading affect gaming performance drastically?

Yes, that's why I didn't get a G3258 and I'm glad.

[i_build_nanosuits]

I'm on a tight budget and I'm wondering if the i3 is worth it. Does hyperthreading affect gaming performance drastically?

yes it's worth it and yes hyper-threading especially on a dual core processor will help your gaming experience tremendously

@SteveGrabowski0 is absolutely right in his post everything he said is legit here are the videos he's talking about the first one i'm playing demanding games on dual core no hyper-threading overclocked to 4.5ghz you can see those games stutter like hell most of them are unplayable:

And here is dual core with hyper-threading at much lower clockspeed i don't have all the games tested but you can see that CPU is keeping up in BF4 on ultra settings and it will play all the other games of the previous video at a much greater level of smoothness:

[Prysin]

yes it's worth it and yes hyper-threading especially on a dual core processor will help your gaming experience tremendously@SteveGrabowski0 is absolutely right in his post everything he said is legit here are the videos he's talking about the first one i'm playing demanding games on dual core no hyper-threading overclocked to 4.5ghz you can see those games stutter like hell most of them are unplayable:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub3lzTplYxMAnd here is dual core with hyper-threading at much lower clockspeed i don't have all the games tested but you can see that CPU is keeping up in BF4 on ultra settings and it will play all the other games of the previous video at a much greater level of smoothness:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrOe0xO33no

got to give it to ya mate, one of the best posts ive seen from you in ages. +1 for that!!

@Bobby_Joe_90

if money is an issue, you can go with a AMD FX 6300, it is sort of a "wildcard", but in general it performs between an i3 4130 and an i5 4460 depending on the game.

However, i would reccomend the i3 6100 with a Z170 board and 2666MHz+ RAM.

it is really strong, and they are now possible to overclock through baseclock without wrecking the whole system.

in terms of what i personally reccomend, it must be the i3 6100 with FX 6300 coming second. the Skylake i3 is a bit expensive, but worth it. The FX is a bit old and there will not be much of a upgrade path for it. However it will perform respectably for the price.

In all honesty, you get what you pay for, and FX being cheaper then the Skylake i3 6100, it is going to perform less.