Four Threads or Go Home

When Intel's new Pentiums bowed over a year ago, many budget gaming enthusiasts were excited. A cheap, overclockable pair of Haswell cores that fit on 1150-socket motherboards, offering a great upgrade path? It seemed as if Intel had a serious player in the value-CPU segment (previously dominated by AMD).

Fast forward in time, and the new Pentiums - and when I say Pentiums, my point of reference is the Pentium G3258 - are not looking so rosy after all. Their performance is beyond question. Intel has been smacking AMD around in CPU benchmarks for a few years now. The problem with the Pentiums does not come from any performance shortfalls. The problem comes from the number of processing threads the CPU has: two. Two cores, no hyper-threading. Two.

There have been a lot of recommendations on websites all over the internet (such as here, here, here, and many more) that the Pentium is the best bargain CPU on the market for performance-to-cost ratio. Not only does it have better performance per CPU core than many AMD CPUs (even the FX-series), the purchaser would have the option to upgrade the CPU to and i3, i5 or i7 in the future without swapping out the motherboard. One user even recommended the Pentium G3258 over an FX-6300.

Here's the issue.
More and more games are utilizing multiple CPU threads. How does this affect the Pentiums? Because more and more games are requiring multiple CPU threads - like, four. Which immediately hampers the Pentium. Want to play Dragon Age Inquisition on a Pentium G3258? You can't. Need four CPU threads, bro. What about Watch Dogs or Grand Theft Auto V? Still need four threads. Far Cry 4? Four threads.

This discussion is frequently couched in an Intel vs. AMD dichotomy, but that is really beside the point. People build computers to do jobs. If someone is building a budget gaming computer, its job is TO PLAY GAMES. Maybe at a reduced resolution and low graphical settings, but that is still the point of the build. And everyone who built a budget system with a Pentium thinking they would be able to play the latest games are either upgrading sooner than they expected or are stuck playing "old" games (not knocking old games, I love them).

The situation is not as bad as depicted in this article from PCWorld.com: "Far Cry 4 woes with dual-core processors point to a bleak future for budget PC gamers." The author seems to associate budget gaming exclusively with Intel and the Pentium CPUs, which is misguided and narrow-minded to say the least. He even refers to the Far Cry 4 situation as shouting "game over" at budget gamers (first line of section 3, entitled "The Beginning of the End?"). Seriously? No budget gaming without Intel's Pentiums?

What bothers me is that many people are still recommending the Pentium CPUs, despite the fact that more and more games are requiring multiple cores (some flaming in this thread - you have been warned).

Here's the deal:
AMD has currently won the budget gaming war with the Athlon 860k. It is reasonably fast, overclockable, and is PCI-e 3.0 compatible. And most importantly, it has four CPU threads / cores for the same cost as a Pentium G3258 (the prices fluctuate).

Want to build a budget Intel gaming rig for the sake of the upgrade path (performance is roughly comparable with the Athlon 860k)? Get a Core i3, which has hyperthreading and 4 CPU threads. Currently an Intel Core i3 is about $40 than an Athlon 860k. That's a value judgment that the builder / buyer would have to make. Either CPU will let the purchaser play the latest games. As I said earlier, it's not about AMD vs. Intel. It's about building the right computer for the specified job within the specified budget. If the Core i3 fits within that budget, great. If the Athlon 860k is the most a buyer can afford, that's fine too. They're both capable. Paired with the right graphics card, either one can handle The Witcher 2 or Assassin's Creed IV on medium settings @1080p without bottle-necking. Either one can be the solid beating heart of a computer that a budget gamer needs.

But let's stop pretending the Intel Pentiums are a budget gamer's dream, okay? Jeez.