Reasons to go i3 or higher over a Pentium?

[RustyZombie]

A few people have suggested that I go i3 or i5 over a Pentium, but have neglected to say why.  I don't do anything CPU intensive or play games, and I usually find the speed of my 7 year old 2.2 GHz single core Celeron to be satisfactory.  So what benefits would I realize by going for an i3 or i5?

 

And while on the topic of CPU's, several people have recommended that I go with Haswells instead of Skylakes, citing the cost to performance.  At least on Newegg, the price difference between Pentium/i3 Haswells and Skylakes are marginal, and the Skylakes have signficantly better iGPU's.  And yes, you'll have to go with the newer LGA 1151 socket and DDR4 RAM, but for a first build it seems to me the way to go.  I don't have any older motherboards or DDR3 RAM sitting around, and the 1151 socket and DDR4 are going to become the standard.  It may cost more now, but I think it would be cheaper in the long run to get what I'll actually be able to upgrade for longer.  If I wanted the cheapest in the short term, I would just get a pre-built.  Thoughts?

[Prysin]

better performance in games

better performance in everything

better performance

longer relevance before it is shit.

[ThinkWithPortals]

 

More cores, more threads, more performance

[Amazingasian]

A few people have suggested that I go i3 or i5 over a Pentium, but have neglected to say why.  I don't do anything CPU intensive, and I usually find the speed of my 7 year old 2.2 GHz single core Celeron to be satisfactory.  So what benefits would I realize by going for an i3 or i5?

 

And while on the topic of CPU's, several people have recommended that I go with Haswells instead of Skylakes, citing the cost to performance.  At least on Newegg, the price difference between Pentium/i3 Haswells and Skylakes are marginal, and the Skylakes have signficantly better iGPU's.  And yes, you'll have to go with the newer LGA 1151 socket and DDR4 RAM, but for a first build it seems to me the way to go.  I don't have any older motherboards or DDR3 RAM sitting around, and the 1151 socket and DDR4 are going to become the standard.  It may cost more now, but I think it would be cheaper in the long run to get what I'll actually be able to upgrade for longer.  If I wanted the cheapest in the short term, I would just get a pre-built.  Thoughts?

2 HT cores or 4 cores are far better than 2 cores.  Pentiums are toys basically. 

[ben dover kid]

better in everything. thats why

[PaFFs]

If you find your old CPU to be fine then a new Pentium will blow you away. The higher models do have better performance, but if you dont use that performance you have wasted your money.

[-iSynthesis]

Some newer games will only start with 4 or more cores, that's where the HT of i3's and upwards helps. Also obviously better overall performance

[dizmo]

Well, what exactly are you going to be doing with the computer?
A lot of people here just seem to be saying the obvious; may more money, get more performance.
This forum is also so gamer focused that most of the time they will suggest things without actually looking at the posters use case, just thinking "oh he'll want to game so he'll need this".

Are you going to be going with integrated graphics, or are you going to use a dedicated GPU?
What exactly are you using it for?

[dizmo]

Some newer games will only start with 4 or more cores, that's where the HT of i3's and upwards helps. Also obviously better overall performance

Not everyone games..

[-iSynthesis]

Not everyone games..

I didn't only talk about games, but many on this forum do. 

[Enderman]

just performance

 

if you dont need it, stay with a pentium

[RustyZombie]

Well, what exactly are you going to be doing with the computer?

A lot of people here just seem to be saying the obvious; may more money, get more performance.

This forum is also so gamer focused that most of the time they will suggest things without actually looking at the posters use case, just thinking "oh he'll want to game so he'll need this".

Are you going to be going with integrated graphics, or are you going to use a dedicated GPU?

What exactly are you using it for?

 

Besides the casual computer stuff such as web browsing, word processing, etc., my computer will also be my music player and DVD player.  I will also be using the integrated graphics.

[MageTank]

A few people have suggested that I go i3 or i5 over a Pentium, but have neglected to say why.  I don't do anything CPU intensive, and I usually find the speed of my 7 year old 2.2 GHz single core Celeron to be satisfactory.  So what benefits would I realize by going for an i3 or i5?

 

And while on the topic of CPU's, several people have recommended that I go with Haswells instead of Skylakes, citing the cost to performance.  At least on Newegg, the price difference between Pentium/i3 Haswells and Skylakes are marginal, and the Skylakes have signficantly better iGPU's.  And yes, you'll have to go with the newer LGA 1151 socket and DDR4 RAM, but for a first build it seems to me the way to go.  I don't have any older motherboards or DDR3 RAM sitting around, and the 1151 socket and DDR4 are going to become the standard.  It may cost more now, but I think it would be cheaper in the long run to get what I'll actually be able to upgrade for longer.  If I wanted the cheapest in the short term, I would just get a pre-built.  Thoughts?

The pentium will have significant stutters in games that use more than 2 threads, to the point in which it will be unplayable on some newer AAA titles. The i3 has much better gaming performance, even at stock. 

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($129.00 @ Amazon) 

Motherboard: ASRock Z170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($89.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($36.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Total: $255.98

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-09 14:58 EST-0500

 

Now, this is what i suggest to you. It is a Z170 board, capable of overclocking locked Skylake CPU's if you ever have the urge to do so. It also supports overclocked memory, so with enough patience, you could take that 2133mhz memory up to 2800-3200mhz, depending on luck. The board also supports up to a total of 64gb of ram, in case you wanted to use something like Primocache in the future for a write defer scenario, or even a ramdisk. 

 

There are some caveats to non-K overclocking though, such as:

No C-States

No AVX

L1 Cache speed reduced by up to 75%

No iGPU usage

 

If you are okay with these trade-offs, then an overclocked 6100 will beat even a core i5 4460 quite handily. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

Besides the casual computer stuff such as web browsing, word processing, etc., my computer will also be my music player and DVD player.  I will also be using the integrated graphics.

 

No reason to go any higher than a Pentium then, they're great for that.

[MageTank]

Besides the casual computer stuff such as web browsing, word processing, etc., my computer will also be my music player and DVD player.  I will also be using the integrated graphics.

Didn't even see this part. Ignore my previous suggestion then. A cheap pentium will easily suffice for those tasks.

[dizmo]

Besides the casual computer stuff such as web browsing, word processing, etc., my computer will also be my music player and DVD player.  I will also be using the integrated graphics.

I'd just go with the Pentium then, if it were me I'd just make sure that it was one of the higher mhz ones to make sure there's no slow downs.

Better integrated graphics honestly won't help much. I mean, they will, but not for what you're going to be doing. Most of the time I use a Samsung Series 9 from a few years ago with HD4000 graphics and I can play a decent number of games. Seeing as you won't be doing that, lower level integrated graphics won't affect you at all.

 

As far as the future upgrade debate goes, it depends how far into the future you're looking. If it'll be 3 years from now, you might as well just get the newer socket that will be out at that time; LGA1151 will have likely been replaced 2x over by then. Just save the money and get LGA1150 now.

On the other hand if you're going to upgrade within the next year or so, then go LGA1151.

 

 

 

Because at that budget Athlon 860k is much better option

Those don't have integrated graphics do they?

[RustyZombie]

Because at that budget Athlon 860k is much better option

 

According to the user benchmarks, a the pentium skylake I was looking at is significantly faster as well as having a iGPU that is more or less equal to the Radeon 7.  And Intel generally has an easier upgrade path, not to mention a new socket and DDR4 RAM. 

 

The pentium will have significant stutters in games that use more than 2 threads, to the point in which it will be unplayable on some newer AAA titles. The i3 has much better gaming performance, even at stock. 

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($129.00 @ Amazon) 

Motherboard: ASRock Z170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($89.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($36.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Total: $255.98

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-09 14:58 EST-0500

 

Now, this is what i suggest to you. It is a Z170 board, capable of overclocking locked Skylake CPU's if you ever have the urge to do so. It also supports overclocked memory, so with enough patience, you could take that 2133mhz memory up to 2800-3200mhz, depending on luck. The board also supports up to a total of 64gb of ram, in case you wanted to use something like Primocache in the future for a write defer scenario, or even a ramdisk. 

 

There are some caveats to non-K overclocking though, such as:

No C-States

No AVX

L1 Cache speed reduced by up to 75%

No iGPU usage

 

If you are okay with these trade-offs, then an overclocked 6100 will beat even a core i5 4460 quite handily. 

 

 

I don't game or plan to overclock.  I should have mentioned that earlier, my apologies.

[XDroidie626]

i3s are better in almost all cases except 1, battery.

Unless a system is extremely optimized (Say ChromeOS or a custom Linux variant) the Pentium won't be a good experience unless we are talking about the G3258.

These chips are aimed at low end systems, more so portable machines like Laptops than Desktops.

 

Also skylake is a much better platform, depending on what machine you are going for (Desktop vs Laptop).

Skylake vs Haswell is not much on Desktop they both work well enough to have a look at, but on Laptop Intel made improvements to skylake for better battery and performance overall, they basically made speed step 2.0 called Speed shift, it seems like a much improve CPU governor with better ramping of the CPU (When you increase clock speed) this means the CPU can better decide what frequency it needs to run at for the task and can then balance its self at that given setting.

Another is of course DDR4, this is faster memory which is also a bit more power efficient, performance is improved for things that need to access ram more often but for basic usage, doesn't matter.

The voltage controller in Skylake was also moved off the chip for lower temps as haswell did have overheating issues if not controlled.

 

The iGPU is also where Skylake got me, its much improved again, by about 20%+ I think in specific tasks, it won't be playing Crysis 3 at ultra, but some older or less demanding games it can run, I still think AMD APUs wipe the floor with these but their power draw and heat output is much higher.

If its casual stuff an i3 will last you a long time, provide a massive improvement and give a decent experience, but adding an SSD to the i3 will make your system feel like a high end one all be it without having hundreds of pounds of extra hardware in it.

 

Get the i3, unless you going for Chromebook then still get an i3 but Pentium/Celeron do well on them devices.

[XDroidie626]

Because at that budget Athlon 860k is much better option

No onboard iGPU...

[MageTank]

According to the user benchmarks, a the pentium skylake I was looking at is significantly faster as well as having a iGPU that is more or less equal to the Radeon 7.  And Intel generally has an easier upgrade path, not to mention a new socket and DDR4 RAM. 

 

I don't game or plan to overclock.  I should have mentioned that earlier, my apologies.

No problem! I don't quite know your budget, but you could do something like this for under $150. 

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Pentium G4400 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($59.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Motherboard: Asus H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($51.98 @ Newegg) 

Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($36.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Total: $148.96

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-09 15:18 EST-0500

 

If you don't need 8gb of ram, you could do this: 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Pentium G4400 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($59.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Motherboard: Asus H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($51.98 @ Newegg) 

Memory: Crucial 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($19.89 @ SuperBiiz) 

Total: $131.86

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-09 15:19 EST-0500

 

However, it would only save you $17. Would personally go for the 8gb. 

 

If you want to do Haswell, here is the cheapest dual core Haswell build i could find: 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Celeron G1840 2.8GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($39.95 @ SuperBiiz) 

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($45.89 @ OutletPC) 

Memory: Mushkin ECO2 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($29.99 @ Newegg) 

Total: $115.83

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-09 15:21 EST-0500

 

Good luck on your build!

[RustyZombie]

I'd just go with the Pentium then, if it were me I'd just make sure that it was one of the higher mhz ones to make sure there's no slow downs.

Better integrated graphics honestly won't help much. I mean, they will, but not for what you're going to be doing. Most of the time I use a Samsung Series 9 from a few years ago with HD4000 graphics and I can play a decent number of games. Seeing as you won't be doing that, lower level integrated graphics won't affect you at all.

 

As far as the future upgrade debate goes, it depends how far into the future you're looking. If it'll be 3 years from now, you might as well just get the newer socket that will be out at that time; LGA1151 will have likely been replaced 2x over by then. Just save the money and get LGA1150 now.

On the other hand if you're going to upgrade within the next year or so, then go LGA1151.

 

 

 

Those don't have integrated graphics do they?

 

That is one thing I didn't think of, the life cycle of these components.  I'm still a newb to this stuff.

 

I've gotten seven years out of my laptop, so probably won't be upgrading until something breaks or I have the need to.

 

i3s are better in almost all cases except 1, battery.

Unless a system is extremely optimized (Say ChromeOS or a custom Linux variant) the Pentium won't be a good experience unless we are talking about the G3258.

These chips are aimed at low end systems, more so portable machines like Laptops than Desktops.

 

Also skylake is a much better platform, depending on what machine you are going for (Desktop vs Laptop).

Skylake vs Haswell is not much on Desktop they both work well enough to have a look at, but on Laptop Intel made improvements to skylake for better battery and performance overall, they basically made speed step 2.0 called Speed shift, it seems like a much improve CPU governor with better ramping of the CPU (When you increase clock speed) this means the CPU can better decide what frequency it needs to run at for the task and can then balance its self at that given setting.

Another is of course DDR4, this is faster memory which is also a bit more power efficient, performance is improved for things that need to access ram more often but for basic usage, doesn't matter.

The voltage controller in Skylake was also moved off the chip for lower temps as haswell did have overheating issues if not controlled.

 

The iGPU is also where Skylake got me, its much improved again, by about 20%+ I think in specific tasks, it won't be playing Crysis 3 at ultra, but some older or less demanding games it can run, I still think AMD APUs wipe the floor with these but their power draw and heat output is much higher.

If its casual stuff an i3 will last you a long time, provide a massive improvement and give a decent experience, but adding an SSD to the i3 will make your system feel like a high end one all be it without having hundreds of pounds of extra hardware in it.

 

Get the i3, unless you going for Chromebook then still get an i3 but Pentium/Celeron do well on them devices.

 

It's a desktop that I'm planning to build, so batteries won't be an issue.

 

The main reason I'm interested in the stronger iGPU is because I'll need to upscale the DVD picture to a HD monitor.  And I want to make sure I have a powerful enough iGPU to use some of the more powerful resizing algorithms.

[RustyZombie]

 

No problem! I don't quite know your budget, but you could do something like this for under $150. 

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Pentium G4400 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($59.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Motherboard: Asus H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($51.98 @ Newegg) 

Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($36.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Total: $148.96

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-09 15:18 EST-0500

 

If you don't need 8gb of ram, you could do this: 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Pentium G4400 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($59.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Motherboard: Asus H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($51.98 @ Newegg) 

Memory: Crucial 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($19.89 @ SuperBiiz) 

Total: $131.86

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-09 15:19 EST-0500

 

However, it would only save you $17. Would personally go for the 8gb. 

 

If you want to do Haswell, here is the cheapest dual core Haswell build i could find: 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Celeron G1840 2.8GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($39.95 @ SuperBiiz) 

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($45.89 @ OutletPC) 

Memory: Mushkin ECO2 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($29.99 @ Newegg) 

Total: $115.83

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-09 15:21 EST-0500

 

Good luck on your build!

 

 

I have no particular budget.  But since I need a newer car, and there's also a new guitar I've been eyeing , I want to avoid wasting money by buying more computer than I'll use.

 

Thank you for the suggestions.

[XDroidie626]

That is one thing I didn't think of, the life cycle of these components.  I'm still a newb to this stuff.

 

I've gotten seven years out of my laptop, so probably won't be upgrading until something breaks or I have the need to.

 

 

It's a desktop that I'm planning to build, so batteries won't be an issue.

 

The main reason I'm interested in the stronger iGPU is because I'll need to upscale the DVD picture to a HD monitor.  And I want to make sure I have a powerful enough iGPU to use some of the more powerful resizing algorithms.

Well for that then just go Skylake if you can afford it, the thing is if you want a stronger iGPU you need to start going into the i5/i7 series unless you get a cheap GPU, there cheap enough these days for something decent.

Upscaling shouldn't be too demanding, I can scale 4k from my 1080p screen with Nvidia and it doesn't give me any troubles unless I do gaming, films are no issue.

[RustyZombie]

Well for that then just go Skylake if you can afford it, the thing is if you want a stronger iGPU you need to start going into the i5/i7 series unless you get a cheap GPU, there cheap enough these days for something decent.

Upscaling shouldn't be too demanding, I can scale 4k from my 1080p screen with Nvidia and it doesn't give me any troubles unless I do gaming, films are no issue.

 

The CPU that I'm looking at is the Pentium G4500, which is the cheapest Intel CPU with the HD 530 iGPU.  Even the most expensive Skylake i7 also has the 530 iGPU.

 

I have had issues with decent upscaling on my laptop, but it's also a seven year old laptop with the Mobile Intel Series 4 chipset.  According to the user benchmarks, the HD 530 is 2000% more powerful.

[Prysin]

Didn't even see this part. Ignore my previous suggestion then. A cheap pentium will easily suffice for those tasks.

yeah, for his use a pentium, or a cheap quad core AMD APU is all he ever will need.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD A10-7850K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($119.99 @ NCIX US)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard  ($60.89 @ OutletPC)

Memory: AMD R9 Gamer Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2400 Memory  ($59.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Total: $240.87

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-09 16:19 EST-0500

 

sure, its way more then the pentium setups you suggested.

 

on the flip side. with this, he can play games at 30FPS 1080p no worries.... and its a quad core