Source
r/buildapc•
sinred

[Discussion] Core i3 users with a high-end Graphic card(280x, 960 and or higher), How good is the processor for gaming??

Are there are times you get unbearable fps (20 or lower) when playing AAA games @1080p?? Were those frequent?? I know that an i3 might bottleneck maximum FPS, but i need to know about the minimum fps. Users who swtiched from an i3 to an i5, i7 Can also answer. I'm in a budget where if i switched to an i5 in my build, i would have to spend Way more less on a graphic card. Please don't ask for my budget and things, I'm from Sri lanka and prices are too damn high. Just State your experience. This is more like a build help, But i felt a Discussion tag would be better. Thnx.

Edit: Thanks for all the replies Guys, This sub and ya'll have been a huge support to me. I decided to go with an i5. Thanks again for your feedbacks.

Posted Jun 12, 2015, 4:16 PM UTC · edited

2185
ZeldaNumber17•

I have an i3 4130 with a 970 and it plays everything fine besides gta because that is very CPU bound.

15
sinredOP•

970 with a i3 4130??? You could have gone r9 290+i5 4460.

Edit: Really??? downvoted because i recommended an 290?? I didn't knew it was pre-built one.

-24
ZeldaNumber17•

well not exactly it used to be an old gtx 560 ti and I just upgraded the gpu to a 970.

16
sinredOP•

Wise choice.

5
Monkey079•

I recently bought an i3-4150 with a GTX 960. I play all the games I like on high-ultra settings @ 1080p 60 fps without issues. My game list is typically older or non-intensive games (Starcraft II, World of Warships, CS GO) but I can also play Witcher 3 on high with no discernible dips in performance

10
kn1ckerb0cker33•

My old i3-2100 with a GTX 660 can play the older games (SC2, CS:GO, etc.) without a hitch. I'm not so confident that it'll do well with the newer games like the Witcher 3. It's probably out of my league until I upgrade.

1
SloPr0•

I have an i3-2100 as well, Witcher runs at near constant 60 fps except in the big cities where it drops to mid-30s. (this on an r9-280)

2
kn1ckerb0cker33•

It'll probably be held back a bit, but it sounds like I can upgrade the GPU (to a GTX 970, 290x, etc.) and be fine for a bit until I can do a Skylake upgrade. I mean, I've held out this long and it's not like I "need it" right now.

The only game that's really on my radar now is GTA V and it seems to be a bit more CPU intensive from videos I've seen. Running the game on an i3 with the same card as an i5 or i7 usually results in a 20-30+ fps difference.

1
SloPr0•

Yeah, GTA V ran like pretty poorly, high 40s in the countryside, drops to 30 maybe just under 30 fps in the city... changing settings did nothing, except maybe the AI density which increased the fps by maybe 3 hehe

2
tortillaboy05•

I moved from an i3 to an i5 recently. I was noticing severe dips on GTA V and Arma 3 with the i3. Most games it won't make much of a difference, but the experience is much smoother with the i5 in some games.

8
sinredOP•

Most games it won't make much of a difference

That's the main reason i Thought of getting an i3

but the experience is much smoother with the i5 in some games

And that is the main reason I Thought of getting an i5. :(

7
mixini•

By "most," it means it depends on what kind of games you play. Every game I've tried has been upwards of 20 fps. The only times I wish I would've gotten an i5 is for Battlefield 4 and Guild Wars 2, which are both very CPU intensive due to their multiplayer nature. Even then I am getting ~40-60+ fps.

7
Silentviper92•

And as a tie in to this, my rig is a i5-4590 and a 280x. The 280x is still running it's base clock speeds from sapphire.

In battlefield 4 at ultra 1080 I get lowest of maybe 65 and highs of 85. Average about 72-78 vast majority of the time.

2
sinredOP•

I don't really like when fps dips to <20, sometimes its like Cheating with a Slow-mo mod. :D Thanks for the information.

1
tortillaboy05•

You have to ask yourself a couple of questions. What games are you planning to play? How do you expect them to perform? Will you be satisfied if your experience is slightly less than what you expected? Honestly, from first hand experience, the i3 is one speedy little chip. I bought it as a placeholder until I could afford an i5, and I was blown away at how fast it was. I was so impressed by it, I decided to keep it, and I did. For nearly 4 years. It wasn't until I figured out it was bottlenecking (in Arma 3, GTA V) that I was no longer satisfied with it's performance. That all being said, I wish I would have saved a little more and gotten the i5 from the get-go, because an ivy-bridge i5 would still be plenty powerful at this point in time, and therefore I wouldn't have needed to upgrade at all.

3
sinredOP•

What games are you planning to play

I'm planning to play Anything that i can get. :D

How do you expect them to perform

I wanted to know how an i3 would perform. My expectation depends on that. I don't Have a certain standard atm.

Will you be satisfied if your experience is slightly less than what you expected

thats what i'm trying to find on this discussion.

i5 is the greatest for gaming, but i need to find how i3 manages in these times.

1
tortillaboy05•

There are plenty of benchmarks out there that compare CPU power in games. The one I linked shows how little difference it makes in most games. I would get the i3 and get the better GPU.

1
dragonitetrainer•

I mean, it depends dude. Are you willing to shell out more for the i5? I thought $130 was about as much as I'd do for a cpu, so I just got a 4330, but if you're willing to spend more than just do it

1
sinredOP•

if i shell out more for the i5, i'd have to buy a low/mid range card. If i need to buy a High end graphic card, i must choose a i3. Damn..

1
elcanadiano•

What are you trying to play? What is your overall budget in your local currency (if you are not from the United States)?

2
dragonitetrainer•

What do you define as low/mid versus High?

1
tamarockstar•

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

TypeItemPrice
CPUIntel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor$163.95 @ SuperBiiz
Video CardSapphire Radeon R9 280 3GB Dual-X Video Card$149.99 @ Newegg
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total (before mail-in rebates)$333.94
Mail-in rebates-$20.00
Total$313.94
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-06-12 18:22 EDT-0400
0
Odetodistractions•

Because of the landscapes and constant events occurring in both of those games, they take quite a bit more processing power. I'm not sure of GTA V, but Arma 3 is one of the few games that is optimized for multiple cores.

0
Katagon•

Depending on pricing you could always go the amd route (860k/fx 6300). If you plan upgrading I would go with the pentium/i3.

3
sinredOP•

AMD processors are a no-go. Mobos are hard to find in Sri lanka. Thnx for the tip btw. Also I don't think i will upgrade until few years.

6
RockTripod•

I have a 4340 and a 7970. Nothing has brought it to its knees yet. The most cpu bound games I've played would be the elder scrolls series, and battlefield 3. No problems at 1080p. Crysis 3 and Metro play damned well too. In any recommendations I make, an i3 is an excellent budget choice.

3
jnxjnx•

average fps is good. just might dip sometimes in the really intensive areas. buy the cheapest other components that are available and the best cpu/gpu that you can get.

2
Dasangrypanda•

buy the cheapest other components that are available

That's a bad idea... If you get a terrible 30 dollar PSU & MoBo, you're gonna have a bad time...

7
jnxjnx•

for the mobo. how much you pay makes 0 difference (assuming it has the features you need).

for the psu, it's more of an issue, but not as big as the ones people make it out to be. 80+ is a minimum bar, you'll weed out nearly all of the shit psu's that blow up as soon as you put any load on them. even if it's not 80+, most of the times unless you're pulling extremely heavy loads, they'll still work fine.

3†
Dasangrypanda•

You're right on the board front, but what I'm getting at here is that the attitude "buy the cheapest components you can find, then get a nice cpu/gpu" is a bad mind set that will leave someone really unhappy with their performance, or pissed off when their 30 dollar PSU fails.

5
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
jnxjnx•

none of the other components outside of gpu/cpu affect performance. yes, parts failing is an issue, but any part can fail. unknown brand psu's just get a bad rap. for lighter loads like say <300w, most psu's will handle that no problem. it's just on higher loads the unknown brands do very very poorly.

-4
sinredOP•

well, I've used 3 computers since 2003. first 2 had mercury power supplies and i currently own a 450W "symbol" power supply(Can't even find a website for that company). all 3 were not 80+ and Never had an error with the first 2(Never used a GPU with them). but when i installed a Sapphire R7 250x in my current 450W PSU, I Got plenty of BSODs and restarts on my PC. when i removed the 250x it worked flawlessly. Don't really know if it was the PSU or the Dust abundant house which i have. I also have a poorly ventilated casing with terrible cable managemnt.

2
jnxjnx•

most people on this subreddit have no idea how electronics actually work, and believe what reviewers tell them.

unfortunately reviewers use the terms good and bad to judge products. when instead it should be, good enough, better, or you're wasting money buying this.

-2
UnclaimedUsenameX•

Well no.

  • Your motherboard could take your CPU, GPU, or RAM with it if it dies. Maybe even your peripherals.

  • Your PSU could take your motherboard (and all the parts connected to it) and your drives as well

  • Your drives will lose all your data if they fail randomly

  • Cheap cases can be hell to work in

Make no mistake, your CPU and GPU should be the focus of your build, but don't just grab the cheapest junk for the rest of your computer.

3
jnxjnx•

Your motherboard could take your CPU, GPU, or RAM with it if it dies. Maybe even your peripherals.

there's like a < 1% chance of this happening.

Your PSU could take your motherboard (and all the parts connected to it) and your drives as well

< 1% chance of this ahppening.

Your drives will lose all your data if they fail randomly

well yeah, but there's not major statistical difference in reliability between "cheap" hdd's and "expensive" hdd's.

Cheap cases can be hell to work in

cost is the most important factor here, so who cares about 1-2 hours of inconvenience.

people always think that "cheap" means "unreliable", that's not the case.

0
UnclaimedUsenameX•

I suppose a case can be made for the other components, but for the power supply, buying a shitty brand and trying to run a decent processor and graphics card off of it is a recipient for disaster.

2
jnxjnx•

yes, my general recommendation is 80+ is good enough to weed out most of the bad candidates.

but i have run i7 and 280x on shitty psu's and they've worked. some shitty brands are better than others.

1
TRD099•

I have a second itx build with an i3/8gb/960 and it's okay when the gpu is the first one to run out of juice but there are games where the i3 just can't deal with.

2
mmencius•

I don't know why people say "in most games it makes no difference" between i3 and i5. That's just not true. In Tomb Raider it doesn't make any difference at all. Even in a game like Bioshock Infinite it makes a difference... just look up benchmarks.

And then when you get to GTA 5 and Arma 3 an even bigger difference.

2
SolidCake•

I have an i3 4160 and a 970. It maxes out Witcher 3 and GTA V at around 60fps. GTA V can have microstutter but its very rare. Witcher 3 hasn't dropped below 55 so far

2
JonF1•

Hi, I have an i3 4370 but only a GTX 750 Ti (FTW) but I hope I can help you out here.

My i3 can handle everything from the very ST focused Skyrim to the demanding multithreaded titles such as BF4. Emulation is very fast too.

However, it has its limitations. Since its only a dual core it only has so much resources to work with. While performance in BF4 is high, my CPU is loaded up to 90%. You must use hardware encoders to record or you're FPS is going to tank. Also, you can't play intensive titles while downloading large files due to the resources it takes up.

Something worth brining up is AMD's DX11 driver overhead. NVIDIA cards are recommended for i3s because their drivers are much more lightweight than AMD's. With i3s, resources are scarce so sometimes even a 270 is going to perform worse than a 750 Ti.

2
sinredOP•

Pretty useful info. I actually thought skyrim would not perform good in 4 threads. Can you tell me your lowest and highest fps?? This is in 1080p resolution??

1
treefroog•

All the games I play the lowest I experience is 40fps in high intensity areas

1
sinredOP•

Can you Tell me some of those Games?? playing them @1080P ??

4
treefroog•

Skyrim, fallout (both modded), GTA V, And JC2 are the main ones

1
Mundius•

I run a stock G3258 for now (mobo lied, it can't overclock shit) with an overclocked 7950 (to 1000/1300) and honestly, the CPU is a limitation, but I can have any graphics cranked with very little penalty to my CPU. Just have to live with it until I get a better processor. Honestly, it's not too bad since it's better than what I used to run.

1
dbr1se•

What motherboard do you have? Even my cheap ASRock H81M HDS overclocks the Pentium just fine.

1
Mundius•

ECS B85H3-M. It was $15 cheaper than the next 4 RAM slot motherboard at the time, and it shows.

1
Doctoko•

I have a G3258 paired with a 970 and it's overall a great setup. I notice severe stuttering and low frames on Cities but I'm nearly locked at 60fps in Witcher 3 at 1080p and the CPU is at ~50% load. I also play skyrim at 4k locked at 60fps without any dips. So, for CPU intensive games you'll likely have issues but barring that, you'll have a great experience.

1
SolidCake•

to be fair skyrim only uses 2 cores. an i5 wouldn't improve you at all

2
Whimby•

Most games only use 2 cores

2
SolidCake•

That's true, but more and more are using 4 so I'd recommend getting an i5 for high end builds. i7s are still stupid

1
Azthioth•

But doesnt the hyper threading on the i3 make up for its lacking in cores? At least a little bit?

1
LeeNolan•

I threw a hand-me-down GTX 780 in my HTPC, which has an FX-6300 @ 4.6GHz. Runs max settings GTA V consistently above 60 fps. As a generalization, most single player games aren't as significantly bottlenecked by the CPU. Trying to run modded ARMA 3 on that system is another story (20-30 fps). So you can get away with a low end CPU depending on what you're planning to play.

1
sinredOP•

ARMA 3 is famous for that. :D as i said before AMD Processors are a no-go in my country, but thanks for the info btw.

1
nonameowns•

forget i5, go with xenon. it's a i7 without integrated graphics with the price of a i5.

1
sinredOP•

Here i am, Trying to Find about the i3 performance and you recommend a xeon. :D xeon was my first choice. Budget canceled that out.

1
nonameowns•

but you will eventually upgrade in the future thus costing more since you gonna buy 2 processors and maybe recoup some money from selling the weaker one

when I think of a budget, it's just impatience to save up more money

i3 is only great for single tasking and shit games

0
TibbTobb•

If your going with an i3 go with an Nvidia card. AMD drivers mean that CPU bottlenecks are a problem with their cards.

0†
sinredOP•

AMD drivers mean that CPU bottlenecks are a problem with their cards

Source??

6
Stiev0Kniev0•

I've seen benchies on this too here and there. AMD cpus paired with AMD gpus can have slightly more microstutter or lower fps than paired with an nvidia card...

From what I've gathered the difference is negligible, this was also BEFORE amd Omega drivers were released so that may have helped AMD video drivers a bit.

There's a video on youtube where a guy did a comparison of a pentium g3258 vs athlon x4 860k and mentioned u/TibbTobb 's comment. There was also a comparison on pclab.pl where amd drivers tended to favor higher single threaded performance of the intel CPUs. Though the overall difference was negligible.

TL;DR: Apparently this IS a thing, but the difference is negligible.

6
A1phaBetaGamma•

Have an I3 4160 and an r9 270x on the 14.12 omega drivers, can run BF3 unltra settings with no AA @1080p @100fps average on campaign, the multiplayer might have lower scores because I'll be cpu bound yes but that's irrelevant to AMD's GPU drivers.

EDIT: Should probably mention that it rarely ever dips below 60 too, hell I was getting maybe 95 fps in the part where the earthquake makes a building fall over you

3
TibbTobb•

Eurogamer digital foundry are the main people to find this. They find this in a few hardware reviews for specific games as well. This video is one example of the problem.

[Andantech also find that AMD has the same problem with DX11.] (http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph8962/71451.png)

I think part of the problem is that most review sites do not look at CPU and GPU combinations, and they just look at average fps not the actual experience. In real gameplay you care more about consistency than averages. A 90 fps moment does not make up for a 30 fps dip.

1
sinredOP•

Exactly. reviews of Tom's hardware shows both the average and minimum fps. But Most of the time they review reference cards.

1
Hi-Fi_Jacob•

I had an i3-4 and the games I played seemed to be limited by the AA settings which is GPU intensive so I think that it was plenty adequate.

-1