I’m talking about the mid-range stuff, not just the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel where Intel dominates everything under $167.
But yeah, AMD would need to drop some seriously heavy hitters in the budget tier if they ever want to actually overtake the Pentium. Honestly? Probably won't happen anytime soon.
Jack Smith4 said:I think Intel still holds the monopoly here. Unless AMD pulls off some massive surprise this season, I’m sticking with the first half of that sentence. 😬
That's not true. There are plenty of cheap AMD quad-cores on the market; the issue is they aren't actually good—they're performing at the level of a Pentium or Celeron. It's an outdated tech problem. I expect the next generation of AMD processors targeting Intel's mid-to-high range will eventually drop down to where the Athlon sits now. We'll see it play out first with the Zen APU, where we'll basically get cheap quad-cores once you factor in the integrated graphics.
It’ll be a dual-core processor. Duals are always going to be cheaper than quads, and honestly, you don't really need a quad for most stuff when a dual with hyperthreading gets the job done just fine. That said, I doubt they'll actually hold a candle to a true quad; we'll just end up getting much better deals on quad cores once the manufacturing processes mature and drive the prices down.
I never actually said it would be $117, just that we’ll eventually see a quad-core i3 or a Pentium—or at least some kind of quad-core from Intel—landing in the same price bracket where the current i3 and Pentium sit now.
Sooner or later, we're going to get a Zen APU that'll likely be a quad-core, and after a while, there should be a CPU-only version of that too. It only makes sense if it stays below $333, which would force Intel to finally bump up their core counts, since they've been stuck at 2 cores in this segment for years.
A 2.4 GHz 8-core Zen could end up priced somewhere between an i5 and an i7, eventually squeezing the current i5 prices down.
Timothy Kim60, yeah, but we haven't seen any real shift from the other side over the last six years, specifically from AMD. Now, looking at the quad-cores, we have the Athlon sitting below the $333, which aren't actually any better than an i3—they're basically just competing with Pentiums in terms of market positioning. Sooner or later, maybe in a year or two, some new quad-core (without SMT) will drop below the $333. Once that happens, prices are going to have to tank, forcing Intel to offer a quad-core at that price point. We'll see a quad-core i3 or a Pentium, and eventually, we might see something similar for closer to $50 than $100 (obviously, I'm talking about budget chips with low clock speeds)
Jack Smith4 said:I’m basically waiting ten years for a 2.8GHz Celeron to hit the market at $100 prices, just so it can finally compete with what an i5 4440 does today. 😁 That would be the ultimate best buy. Just like how my G1840 sits right next to the Q8300. 😁 I guess I'll just have to grit my teeth and wait, but it'll be worth it. 🙂
don't think we'll actually need to wait a decade to see a quad-core Pentium that performs like a modern i5
An upgrade isn't exactly urgent, but it would definitely extend my PC's lifespan. The catch is that the 3350p is $65 without tax, and if I can snag an i3 3220 for around $35-$167, that sounds like a solid move.
Driving out to > costs money, and I'm not about to buy a CPU without seeing it running first.
For running Win 10, unless you're obsessing over who's watching your every move—which is a bit much, honestly.
Timothy Kim60 said:Posting this video just for educational purposes
Pentium G4560 : The Ultimate gaming benchmark Guide
Top-tier benchmark. Here's what we're looking at:
- how various CPUs behave with different tiers of GPUs (1050Ti, 1060, 1080) - how performance gaps shift when you bump up the resolution (1080p vs 1440p) - game anomalies—basically, every single game and its engine is its own special beast.
I reckon you could squeeze another 10% or so of performance out of that EVGA version if you unlock it, since they don't run all the cores straight from the factory.
Timothy Kim60 said:A basic quad-core just isn't cutting it anymore if you're pairing it with anything above a 980ti or a 1070. Honestly, sometimes even those cards struggle with it.
It's not "ideal," sure, but it's not a massive bottleneck either—assuming you're fine with staying at a minimum of 50FPS. The real issue is that 1080p just doesn't do these GPUs justice.
Timothy Kim60, I hear you, but we're looking at a total mismatch between the hardware and the monitor here. Look, I agree some games are absolute CPU killers that’ll redline your stats through these threads, but saying everything is hitting 100% load just to maintain 60FPS? That doesn't pass the smell test.
Are these titles actually pinning your CPU at 1080p/60fps, or is it more than that? My guess is a GTX 1070 at 1080p is pushing way more than 60FPS in something like GTA V.
100% usage? Please. Maybe one or two cores if you're lucky, but there isn't a single game out there optimized well enough to pin four cores at 100% all the time.
Look, the Pentium isn't going anywhere. Just hang tight and grab a Ryzen instead. Since we aren't getting any dual-core Zen chips, this is probably going to be the new best value for just about any mid-range build.