Total War CPU

[CompleteChaos50]

I am in the process of building a budget gaming computer, and have come to a fork in the road. I play mostly Total War games, including older one like Medieval 2 total war. I originally planned to go with a core i3 due to my budget, but with the release of Ryzen 3, I am now unsure of which Cpu to choose.

 

 

Keeping in mind my budget, can you guys give me some advice?? Thanks!

 

 

[zzzzzzzhhh]

Ryzen 3.

[Brooksie359]

[Brooksie359]

http://www.pcgamer.com/amd-ryzen-3-review/ here is the review from pc gamer that also shows the i3 vs the R3. honestly if you can afford it i would opt for the R5 1400.

[Swealteek]

AMD got the victory for now but did not won the wor yet.

 

Ryzen 3. 2 more cores yes it's a little bit slow but the value is true the roof here

[sazrocks]

If you can, go for the r5 1400. Otherwise go r3 1200, get a good b350 board (not biostar and make sure it has heat-sinks on the vrms), and you will be able to upgrade to zen2 r7 in a few years.

[NoMercy]

G4560, otherwise save up more for R5 1400. The whole r3 and i3 are mediocre. They cant perform well yet they are not real cheap.

[Zyndo]

27 minutes ago, CompleteChaos50 said:

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You should let us know your overall budget and the other hardware you will be using in your system. an R5 1500x or R5 1600 would probably be a good fit for you, and they're not a whole lot more expensive than the R3's and R5's are if we can trim a bit of the unnecessary spending from other parts of your build. The increased cache on these CPU's, even beyond their core count advantages, will give a pretty meaningful performance boost to your gaming minimums, resulting in less stuttering overall.

 

But assuming you just do not have ANY additional funds to spend, the R3 should be a better investment both in the short and long term for you in the total war series. I3's would perform better in the older variations of the TW series, but going forward the series will begin scaling more and more and more with the additional core counts (as it already has begun to do with Warhammer here). if you're able and willing to overclock, I would recommend the 1200 and just overclocking it to get the most out of it, as it will perform pretty much the same as the 1300x at that point (assuming both are overclocked as hard as you can, they land right around the same frequency).

[SCHISCHKA]

I play total war. The older medieval one does not require a high end CPU but the newer ones do. Definitely get a CPU that you can over clock which means on a budget get a ryzen.

[CompleteChaos50]

36 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

You should let us know your overall budget and the other hardware you will be using in your system. an R5 1500x or R5 1600 would probably be a good fit for you, and they're not a whole lot more expensive than the R3's and R5's are if we can trim a bit of the unnecessary spending from other parts of your build. The increased cache on these CPU's, even beyond their core count advantages, will give a pretty meaningful performance boost to your gaming minimums, resulting in less stuttering overall.

 

But assuming you just do not have ANY additional funds to spend, the R3 should be a better investment both in the short and long term for you in the total war series. I3's would perform better in the older variations of the TW series, but going forward the series will begin scaling more and more and more with the additional core counts (as it already has begun to do with Warhammer here). if you're able and willing to overclock, I would recommend the 1200 and just overclocking it to get the most out of it, as it will perform pretty much the same as the 1300x at that point (assuming both are overclocked as hard as you can, they land right around the same frequency).

I am looking to spend 500-550 on the build overall. I plan getting a 1060 once etherium dies down, and getting a decent yet not too expensive mobo. Also, I have picked up a good case with a 500w power supply. At the moment, I plan on getting 8gb of ram and then upgrading in the future. If I recall correctly, TW games can only take advantage of a certain amount of ram, however this may be false.

[Zyndo]

5 hours ago, CompleteChaos50 said:

I am looking to spend 500-550 on the build overall. I plan getting a 1060 once etherium dies down, and getting a decent yet not too expensive mobo. Also, I have picked up a good case with a 500w power supply. At the moment, I plan on getting 8gb of ram and then upgrading in the future. If I recall correctly, TW games can only take advantage of a certain amount of ram, however this may be false.

that is all games. In all games, once you have "enough" RAM, adding more doesn't make any real difference. Since TW is such an "instanced" game for lack of a better word (you have maps, and levels, and units... but its not an open world game so the amount of RAM needed at any one time is quite limited and finite in comparison). 8GB is probably plenty for TW, and its sufficient for most games today.

 

As far as motherboards go, I am a big fan of this B350 board: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/XZCrxr/msi-b350m-mortar-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-b350m-mortar

It has all the modern features a guy could want, and doesn't break the bank to get it. the only drawback is that its a matx board (IF that's even a drawback for you) so if you already have an ATX case with a window on it, you may wish to buy a full sized ATX board otherwise it may look a bit weird. tough to say what you should get exactly though without knowing all of the information and what you're looking for in a board, because as good and cheap as that one is, there are still cheaper ones (which give up on some features)

[CompleteChaos50]

3 hours ago, Zyndo said:

that is all games. In all games, once you have "enough" RAM, adding more doesn't make any real difference. Since TW is such an "instanced" game for lack of a better word (you have maps, and levels, and units... but its not an open world game so the amount of RAM needed at any one time is quite limited and finite in comparison). 8GB is probably plenty for TW, and its sufficient for most games today.

 

As far as motherboards go, I am a big fan of this B350 board: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/XZCrxr/msi-b350m-mortar-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-b350m-mortar

It has all the modern features a guy could want, and doesn't break the bank to get it. the only drawback is that its a matx board (IF that's even a drawback for you) so if you already have an ATX case with a window on it, you may wish to buy a full sized ATX board otherwise it may look a bit weird. tough to say what you should get exactly though without knowing all of the information and what you're looking for in a board, because as good and cheap as that one is, there are still cheaper ones (which give up on some features)

That is perfect, as I have already purchased a Micro Atx case. One last question: Looking at gaming as a whole(as I will be playing other games than the TW series) do you think that I should stick to a Ryzen(with upgradability in mind), or should I be looking at an intel cpu like an i3 or i5, as opposed to an r3? r5. Sorry for all the questions(Im new to the world of pc gaming, if you couldn't tell already). Thanks for all the advice  

[Damascus]

To answer the the bit about i5's,  don't as they are a waste of your money.  Get ryzen 3 or 5 any day.

[Damascus]

Also, @sazrocks where were you a month ago I think I just blew out the vrms on my biostar x370 Gt3 (matx) with 1.37v at 4ghz. (1700)

[Zyndo]

47 minutes ago, CompleteChaos50 said:

That is perfect, as I have already purchased a Micro Atx case. One last question: Looking at gaming as a whole(as I will be playing other games than the TW series) do you think that I should stick to a Ryzen(with upgradability in mind), or should I be looking at an intel cpu like an i3 or i5, as opposed to an r3? r5. Sorry for all the questions(Im new to the world of pc gaming, if you couldn't tell already). Thanks for all the advice  

The short answer is that Intel's CPU's are stronger in gaming workloads than Ryzen CPU's... but the only time you should be considering Intel, even just for gaming, is in the super low price bracket (such as the case with Intel's Pentiums) or the super high price bracket (7600k or 7700k only, and only when paired with at LEAST a GTX 1080 for the purpose of 1080p high refresh rate gaming) in every other instance there is a Ryzen CPU which performs equal to or better than the Intel chips for a better price in gaming since you are almost always going to be limited by your GPU (or monitor) anyway; therefore you should just go with the more affordable line which has better performance in literally everything else... which is Ryzen. You can also go ahead and play around with some overclocking with Ryzen if you wish, whereas Intel doesn't really give you that option.

 

If you do end up deciding to go Ryzen, I do highly recommend getting some 3000MHz or 3200MHz RAM as the unique structure of a Ryzen CPU makes its performance scale with faster RAM, compared to Intel CPU's which only get improved performance from faster RAM as a function of itself.