Gaming CPU for $250

[SatanMcPenguin]

I am looking for a new CPU for around $250. The CPU will be used for mainly gaming, but also be able to have multiple tabs open in chrome, as well as other applications (Discord, antivirus, wireshark, photoshop etc) Mainly looking for an Intel CPU, but open to AMD as well. 

 

My current setup is as follows

MSI 970a sli krait edition

x2 R7 360's (CrossFire)

AMD FX(tm)-6350@4.2ghz

10gb ddr3 ram

 

 

[Hip]

I would recommend you a Intel i5 4670k. You can overclock it aswell if needed when you get the "k" version. But is that a AM3+ mainboard???

[SatanMcPenguin]

3 minutes ago, Hip said:

I would recommend you a Intel i5 4670k. You can overclock it aswell if needed when you get the "k" version. But is that a AM3+ mainboard???

It is indeed, I will be getting a new MOBO with the processor as well, I probably should've put that in the post.

[Hip]

5 minutes ago, SatanMcPenguin said:

It is indeed, I will be getting a new MOBO with the processor as well, I probably should've put that in the post.

Ah Ok, so maybe you should get a newer CPU than the one I told you. Maybe you should wait for the new generations with other sockets and pick one of these?

But for current ones I would advice you buying the Intel i5 6600k (1151 Socket).

Costs around 250 $ and has some nice specs imo.

 

Well these are the specs:

http://ark.intel.com/de/products/88191/Intel-Core-i5-6600K-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz

[matexoza]

x5670 60$ very good cpu with a  1050 ran tomb raider at 250fps

[typographie]

1 hour ago, SatanMcPenguin said:

It is indeed, I will be getting a new MOBO with the processor as well, I probably should've put that in the post.

Do you mean the $250 has to include a motherboard as well?

 

If you have $250 for just a CPU, the obvious choice is probably the i5-6600K, though you might be able to find last-gen/low-clocked/locked i7 or Xeon for around that price as well if you value Hyperthreading over clock frequency. I'd lean toward an overclocked 6600K for the tasks you've listed, though.

 

If you need to fit a motherboard into that budget as well, I'd recommend pulling together an extra $10–20 and get a i5-6500 for $200 and a $60–70 B150 motherboard. You'd give up several hundred MHz versus a i5-6600K (more like 1 GHz+ vs. an overclocked 6600K), but that's still a big upgrade from an FX-6350.

[UrdnotGrunt]

I would suggest an i5 6600(k) with a Z170 series board. I myself have the i5 6600(k) along with an MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon at Frys. The CPU costs around 260 before tax and the board was roughly 170. I personally wouldnt want to cheap out on the board part. However you would need to get a set of DDR 4 RAM for them as well. There are a few RAM sets for a tad over 100 for 16GB 2133mhz. Plus you should seriously consider upgrading that R7 to an RX 4XX series GPU

[Princess Luna]

My suggestion lays in cheapening out on the motherboard and get a i7 6700 (locked) it'll save you the trouble and cost of overclocking the i5 6600k for the same performance and yet adding HT which will come handy on the future.

[smokefest]

4 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

My suggestion lays in cheapening out on the motherboard and get a i7 6700 (locked) it'll save you the trouble and cost of overclocking the i5 6600k for the same performance and yet adding HT which will come handy on the future.

overclockin a 6600k will never perform equal as a 6700....

6700 is i7, 4 core 8 thread, and has more l3 cache, higher single core performance etc....


Even tho I agree 6700 would be the best but its way more than 250$...


If buying new, I would say get 7600k kaby lake when its released, with a z270 board,

If buyin used, get a 4790k i7 with a z97 board

[Princess Luna]

1 minute ago, smokefest said:

overclockin a 6600k will never perform equal as a 6700....

6700 is i7, 4 core 8 thread, and has more l3 cache, higher single core performance etc....


Even tho I agree 6700 would be the best but its way more than 250$...


If buying new, I would say get 7600k kaby lake when its released, with a z270 board,

If buyin used, get a 4790k i7 with a z97 board

I know that, it is the way I went, I thought a lot about i5 6600k+z170+evo 212, and in the end I chosen i7 6700 (stock cooler) with the h110m for the same price and I did not regret any tiny bit, the performance is awesome in gaming+multi tasking also considering the HT gives more future-proofness to it, while not having to deal with any overclocking headaches. If he can wait for Kaby Lake sure might be even better deal however considering Skylake will remain up-to-date till 2020 most likely it ain't such a wrong turn. 

[Guest]

6600k if $250 is for just the CPU

 

6400/6500 + h110 for combined budget. 

 

I paid $220 for my 6500 and h110 and previously had a 8320 @ 4.7 GHz. Some games perform better, some worse (most all perform better). But I now have a small form factor PC consuming half the power and doing so quietly. 

[Microsoft Master]

Get a Core I5 6600K It is basically an un overclockable core i7

[typographie]

20 minutes ago, smokefest said:

overclockin a 6600k will never perform equal as a 6700....

i5's and i7's tend to perform roughly identically when at the same clock speed anytime you're running software that doesn't multithread well, regardless of the minimal cache difference. That isn't to say that you have to be running software that strictly uses four or fewer threads, just anytime the software cares more about the raw performance of those cores than the number of cores in use.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1544?vs=1554

There are plenty of wins and draws for the 6600K here, and that's at stock. A lot more than I'd expect for a CPU that can "never" match the other, anyway.

 

I'm not sure why you think the 6700 has "better single core performance" when it is exactly the same architecture with exactly the same IPC. Are you saying that because of the cache?

[Princess Luna]

16 minutes ago, typographie said:

i5's and i7's tend to perform roughly identically when at the same clock speed anytime you're running software that doesn't multithread well, regardless of the minimal cache difference. That isn't to say that you have to be running software that strictly uses four or fewer threads, just anytime the software cares more about the raw performance of those cores than the number of cores in use.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1544?vs=1554

There are plenty of wins and draws for the 6600K here, and that's at stock. A lot more than I'd expect for a CPU that can "never" match the other, anyway.

 

I'm not sure why you think the 6700 has "better single core performance" when it is exactly the same architecture with exactly the same IPC. Are you saying that because of the cache?

The overclocked i5 6600k seems to be the mainstream for high end gaming  as we seen in this topic and also true to most similar topics it is what the majority advice, nevertheless like I stated I took a different approach with the locked i7 6700 keeping the same pricing thanks to the not requirement of more fancy mobo and cooling system and I can state it is as much as good approach if not better:

Being able to multitask while running a game or simply alt+tab while having a heavy game running to browse something real quick in the internet is much more smooth with the i7 and that is nice to take into consideration, another considering point is the not requirement of OC'ing to reach its full potential, reducing headaches with silicon lottery and cooling systems etc, while their performance in games will not be too much different at the end:
 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Being able to multitask while running a game or simply alt+tab while having a heavy game running to browse something real quick in the internet is much more smooth with the i7 and that is nice to take into consideration, another considering point is the not requirement of OC'ing to reach its full potential, reducing headaches with silicon lottery and cooling systems etc, while their performance in games will not be too much different at the end:

I don't recall task switching when I had an i5 to be "rougher" than the i7 that I have now.

 

It's also kind of hard anyway to squeeze the extra 20% that Hyperthreading has been known to offer at its best. If the game is using all of the execution resources that your web browser wants, it's not going to run anyway until the next scheduling slice.

[typographie]

12 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Being able to multitask while running a game or simply alt+tab while having a heavy game running to browse something real quick in the internet is much more smooth with the i7 and that is nice to take into consideration, another considering point is the not requirement of OC'ing to reach its full potential, reducing headaches with silicon lottery and cooling systems etc, while their performance in games will not be too much different at the end:

I admit I don't have an i7, so I'm unsure how much more smooth it is, but I do have an i5-6600K and I can say switching into/out of games is never un-smooth enough to bother me. I'm always running several background applications and Chrome tabs, and sometimes a Netflix or Youtube video, or music player. I've never really had a problem with any of it.

 

Since the 6700 is locked I don't see the 6600K reaching it's full potential as being a requirement at all. All you need is 4 GHz to reach parity, and anything beyond that is a core-for-core advantage.

[Princess Luna]

4 minutes ago, typographie said:

I admit I don't have an i7, so I'm unsure how much more smooth it is, but I do have an i5-6600K and I can say switching into/out of games is never un-smooth enough to bother me. I'm always running several background applications and Chrome tabs, and sometimes a Netflix or Youtube video, or music player. I've never really had a problem with any of it.

 

Since the 6700 is locked I don't see the 6600K reaching it's full potential as being a requirement at all. All you need is 4 GHz to reach parity, and anything beyond that is a core-for-core advantage.

If clock speed was the only matter shouldn't the 6600k heavily out perform the 6700 on that quick Wither 3 benchmarking there? Considering the i7 actually seems to maintain a little higher while only having 3,7ghz on each core while the 6600k is running at 4,6ghz

[DutchTexan]

3 hours ago, SatanMcPenguin said:

It is indeed, I will be getting a new MOBO with the processor as well, I probably should've put that in the post.

Wait a few months for the next line of CPUs from Intel and AMD

[XenosTech]

6600k's are only worth buying if on sale... Not gonna pay a premium price for 200 MHz in base clocks an OC potential. 6500 still stands as the best of the i5's when it comes to price to performance and an i7 6700 will still mop the floor with a 6600k

[Princess Luna]

15 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

6600k's are only worth buying if on sale... Not gonna pay a premium price for 200 MHz in base clocks an OC potential. 6500 still stands as the best of the i5's when it comes to price to performance and an i7 6700 will still mop the floor with a 6600k

Thank you, I very much agree with you, I was not in any way trying to start a debate whether the 6700 is noticeably stronger or not compared to the 6600k, solely meaning that from my personal experience the Overclocking concept seems to make better sense only in the higher end tier, 6700k higher, since the days of any mobo OC'ing your core 2 duo for free higher performance is over.

Going through the trouble to OC the 6600k will cost you the same money it would go with the 6700 due to mobo/cooling and taking silicon lottery into count while giving up on the Hyper Threading benefit and other things the i7 throws at the table, the performance of the 6700 regardless of its Turbo Booster being of only 4ghz still is higher than a normal 4,5ish Ghz OC'ed i5 6600k, if you're in the i5 budget I would advise the 6500 anytime and if you want to save a couple of dollars more for better performance jumping straight to the 6700 feels a better deal.
 

However, not the case in here as everyone kept it polite but in some cases advising someone to go this approach will result in you being quite crucified by the i5 6600k defenders

[typographie]

20 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

If clock speed was the only matter shouldn't the 6600k heavily out perform the 6700 on that quick Wither 3 benchmarking there? Considering the i7 actually seems to maintain a little higher while only having 3,7ghz on each core while the 6600k is running at 4,6ghz

I didn't say clock speed was all that mattered. I said it had a core-for-core advantage when overclocked, which it does. The Witcher 3 does seem to reward Hyperthreading pretty well, and therefore I wouldn't be surprised to see an i7-6700 do really well there.

 

Although if you're talking about the benchmark I'm thinking of, it was conducted using an i7-6700K and an i5-6600K each at around 4.6 GHz, and the two differed by something like ~10 FPS (in favor of the 6700K) once they were both already at 70+ FPS. I'm unsure if a 6700 at stock would truly do that much better than an overclocked 6600K in that game. I haven't seen a benchmark showing that particular scenario.

 

Let's keep in mind this all started because I was replying to someone who said an overclocked i5-6600K could never match an i7-6700. That isn't what you seem to be saying. I've already conceded there are plenty of scenarios where a 6700 would do as well or better.

[XenosTech]

2 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Thank you, I very much agree with you, I was not in any way trying to start a debate whether the 6700 is noticeably stronger or not compared to the 6600k, solely meaning that from my personal experience the Overclocking concept seems to make better sense only in the higher end tier, 6700k higher.

Going through the trouble to OC the 6600k will cost you the same money it would go with the 6700 due to mobo/cooling and taking silicon lottery into count while giving up on the Hyper Threading benefit and other things the i7 throws at the table, the performance of the 6700 regardless of its Turbo Booster being of only 4ghz still is higher than a normal 4,5ish Ghz OC'ed i5 6600k, if you're in the i5 budget I would advise the 6500 anytime and if you want to save a couple of dollars more for better performance jumping straight to the 6700 feels a better deal.
 

However, not the case in here as everyone kept it polite but in some cases advising someone to go this approach will result in you being quite crucified by the i5 6600k defenders

Good luck trying to crucify me lol. I would never tell anyone out right buy an unlocked i5. What would be the point ? You're gonna notice it being slower faster than the i7 faster and then to OC it too means you have to spend extra on proper cooling so it maintains that stable overclock.. i5's aren't ment to last as long as i7's. Just like mainstream and budget gpu's aren't meant to last the say amount of cycles as their high end/enthusiast counterparts.

[DutchTexan]

21 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

6600k's are only worth buying if on sale... Not gonna pay a premium price for 200 MHz in base clocks an OC potential. 6500 still stands as the best of the i5's when it comes to price to performance and an i7 6700 will still mop the floor with a 6600k

All the more reason to wait a few months for the next generation 

[XenosTech]

1 minute ago, DutchTexan said:

All the more reason to wait a few months for the next generation 

well kabylake sucks and ryzen is an unknown atm but yeah wait for the next gen cpu's to see what's worth buying... Though there really isn't any point in upgrading to kabylake for skylake users or 2 generations prior to skylake

[Princess Luna]

7 minutes ago, typographie said:

I didn't say clock speed was all that mattered. I said it had a core-for-core advantage when overclocked, which it does. The Witcher 3 does seem to reward Hyperthreading pretty well, and therefore I wouldn't be surprised to see an i7-6700 do really well there.

 

Although if you're talking about the benchmark I'm thinking of, it was conducted using an i7-6700K and an i5-6600K each at around 4.6 GHz, and the two differed by something like ~10 FPS (in favor of the 6700K) once they were both already at 70+ FPS. I'm unsure if a 6700 at stock would truly do that much better than an overclocked 6600K in that game. I haven't seen a benchmark showing that particular scenario.

 

Let's keep in mind this all started because I was replying to someone who said an overclocked i5-6600K could never match an i7-6700. That isn't what you seem to be saying. I've already conceded there are plenty of scenarios where a 6700 would do as well or better.

Yes now I can fully agree with you, just to add before I leave this thread, I haven't had a single issue with CPU performance with my locked 6700, it has kept desirable high end performance paired with my Titan X in a way I honestly feel it was the best cost-benefice here for what I do. In the end though I reckon that either of ways you go you'll be fine enough until 2020 which is around when I expect to build a new system considering the market offers today.

 

Cheers!