What is the most budget CPU for gaming?

[harveylong26]

Linus did a video on the $150 gaming PC with the server board and CPU. I want something like that, what is the cheapest CPU and motherboard that's old but still has potential. Any old board with old quad core CPUs. I wanna put together a super budget build. Like a Intel Core i5-3470 or something.

[TheRandomness]

How budget is 'super budget'?

[Ykno]

Intel Pentium Dual Core G3258 @ £55

bargin on a really tight budget due to it can be overclocked very well!

[Morgan MLGman]

4 minutes ago, Ykno said:

Intel Pentium Dual Core G3258 @ £55

bargin on a really tight budget due to it can be overclocked very well!

Nope... Athlon X4 860K/880K is a much better choice for the same price.

[WLB91]

Recently I bought a Xeon X5450 for £1 from a scrap shop. They aren't much more on eBay. These are socket 771 but will fit into a 775 motherboard with some modifications, look for videos on YouTube. The board I paired it with took DDR3 so I bought a job lot of RAM that had a couple of DDR3 sticks in it, worked out at about 20p a stick.

 

tl;dr

 

CPU: Xeon X5450 Quad Core @ 3.0 GHz - £1

Mobo: LGA775 generic w/DDR3 support - £15

RAM: Salvaged from job lot, 4GB DDR 1333 - £4 for all sticks or 20p each

 

So you can get started for about £20 or $26

[Ykno]

Just now, Morgan MLGman said:

Nope... Athlon X4 860K/880K is a much better choice for the same price.

true but i have blinkers on and only see blue! ha lol

[Morgan MLGman]

Just now, Ykno said:

true but i have blinkers on and only see blue! ha lol

I've also got an Intel CPU, but an Athlon X4 880K is really a much better choice. 25-30% faster across all cores, and comes with a 20$ worth cooler that allows for some overclocking and got LEDs.

 

[manikyath]

11 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

I've also got an Intel CPU, but an Athlon X4 880K is really a much better choice. 25-30% faster across all cores, and comes with a 20$ worth cooler that allows for some overclocking and got LEDs.

it does hugely depend on the kind of games he plays, if the majority of the games he plays are perfectly happy on a dual core, chances are the pentium is gonna be the better pick:

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-G3258-vs-AMD-Athlon-X4-880K/2434vsm121029

[Morgan MLGman]

Just now, manikyath said:

it does hugely depend on the kind of games he plays, if the majority of the games he plays are perfectly happy on a dual core, chances are the pentium is gonna be the better pick:

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-G3258-vs-AMD-Athlon-X4-880K/2434vsm121029

Same chances are that he's going to play games that won't even run on the Pentium...

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Same chances are that he's going to play games that won't even run on the Pentium...

thats why i said it depends

[Morgan MLGman]

Just now, manikyath said:

thats why i said it depends

Though still overall, I'd sacrifice a few FPS for less stuttering (Those dual-core pentiums are known for that), more futureproofness, a good stock cooler (Wrath one) and running all of the games, there's pretty much no new game that doesn't support 4 threads, which is why a 30% faster Athlon in that regard should be his choice imho

[xc3ll]

I've got an used i3-2120 on ebay for ~35 bucks. With mainboard and a recycled air-cooler I paid 75. Wouldn't say, you can play everything on that system, but most of my games run quite well. Since the i3 has hyperthreading, I would prefer it over the G3258.

And if you factor in the cost for a mainboard, that supports overclocking, the G3258 is just unreasonable...

 

I wouldn't buy a 775-based chip or an Athlon X4 for "general gaming", since some games will really suffer from the poor single thread performance. At least for me, it is more important, that the system can run a wide variety of games somewhat well, than a few games a little better but bunch of them not at all.

[SLAYR]

4 minutes ago, xc3ll said:

I've got an used i3-2120 on ebay for ~35 bucks. With mainboard and a recycled air-cooler I paid 75.

If you get a really cheap OEM board you can do it even cheaper I paid $40 for an i3 2120, $15 for a dell t1600 board, and $5 for the cheapest air cooler at microcenter, overall it does well with the 6950 I put with it, but  even the AMD 845 beats the i3 in multithreaded, and matches it in singlethreaded performance.

 

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i3-2120-vs-AMD-Athlon-X4-845/m2227vsm84491

 

 

[harveylong26]

4 hours ago, WLB91 said:

Recently I bought a Xeon X5450 for £1 from a scrap shop. They aren't much more on eBay. These are socket 771 but will fit into a 775 motherboard with some modifications, look for videos on YouTube. The board I paired it with took DDR3 so I bought a job lot of RAM that had a couple of DDR3 sticks in it, worked out at about 20p a stick.

 

tl;dr

 

CPU: Xeon X5450 Quad Core @ 3.0 GHz - £1

Mobo: LGA775 generic w/DDR3 support - £15

RAM: Salvaged from job lot, 4GB DDR 1333 - £4 for all sticks or 20p each

 

So you can get started for about £20 or $26

 

Isnt the Xeon X5450 a socket 771?

[SLAYR]

2 minutes ago, harveylong26 said:

Isnt the Xeon X5450 a socket 771?

Look up lga 771 to 775 mod, really it isn't worth it unless you have a decent working 775 board.

[Sreno1]

To be more specific than OP, what server board + cpu is recent enough for the newer games? I want to spend less than $100 for the cpu(s) and motherboard. 

 

If using a dual server xeon setup gives less performance per dollar than the newer budget CPU's I don't want to do either.

 

 

[System Error Message]

for gaming get a dual core at least. the more cores the better. Some games will play at 1 fps on single core.

[SLAYR]

2 hours ago, System Error Message said:

for gaming get a dual core at least. the more cores the better. Some games will play at 1 fps on single core.

Pretty much any cpu made in the last 10 years in going to at least be dual core, or higher, but for gaming quad core is pretty much almost a minimum now due to stuttering problems with dual cores.