Best $70 CPU for Gaming: Athlon X4 860K vs. Pentium G3258

We received a lot of nifty feedback after recently updating our PC buying guide then building and benchmarking the systems. Our most affordable build, the Budget Box, caught the attending of many readers, costing just ~$500 including a monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse.

This system only has $350 worth of core components but that buys a quad-core CPU with decent integrated graphics, 8GB of high-speed DDR3 memory, a 120GB SSD, an optical drive and a solid case/power supply combo to bring everything together.

The Budget Box is platonic for everyday calculating though it will handle some lightweight gaming. For anything beyond that you'll want to invest in a dedicated GPU such equally the $100 Radeon R7 260X, which offered the Budget Box 355% more than performance in BioShock Infinite in our tests and allowed the game to run at 50fps on ultra quality.

Although the Budget Box is intended for general usage, if yous're building a gaming system, it makes sense to driblet the AMD A8-7650K ($105) for the Athlon X4 860K ($75), with the latter existence not merely cheaper but faster out of the box.

The Athlon X4 860K is substantially the A10-7850K without an integrated R7 (viii CUs), assuasive information technology to be a little over forty% cheaper, non to mention most xxx% cheaper than the A8-7650K, and every cent counts toward an entry-level graphics card.

While the $75 Athlon X4 860K with a dedicated GPU is a smarter pick than the A10-7850K if y'all're looking to game, knowing which processor to buy isn't that unproblematic.

The only reason we picked AMD over Intel for our Budget Box is because AMD's APUs offer a much better residual of CPU and GPU functioning -- it'south a single chip solution that tin can actually handle some casual gaming. However, if you don't plan to run anything 3D-related and so Intel is the way to go, every bit is often the example when installing a discrete GPU.

Afterwards all, for the same price as the Athlon X4 860K you could own a Pentium G3258, the Anniversary Edition chip that overclocks well beyond 4GHz on air. So then, folks looking to game on a ~$500 machine have a choice to brand between AMD'due south FM2+ platform with the quad-core 3.7GHz Athlon X4 860K or Intel's LGA 1150 platform with the dual-core 3.2GHz Pentium G3258.

We dismissed the G3258 to a certain degree when nosotros tested information technology about a year ago considering it'south only a dual-cadre processor and for a flake more money (granted, 60% more), the Core i3-4160 is a safer option cheers to HyperThreading support. Yet, if you're aiming for the least expensive gaming rig possible, then the G3258 is a more than feasible pick than the i3.

Both the Athlon X4 860K and Pentium G3258 are identical cost-wise with supporting motherboards starting at around $twoscore and going upwards to $70 if you lot desire the latest chipset (A88X vs. H97), and you'll exist buying DDR3 memory regardless so there's no cost divergence in that location either.

Your decision volition inevitably boil down to which platform offers the all-time performance where you need it almost. To assistance determine that, we've benchmarked the Athlon and Pentium with the GeForce GTX 960 and Radeon R9 285 in 20 of the most popular AAA titles.

The CPUs will be tested with their stock settings and tested separately with each GPU, which volition drive games at 1080p, the almost popular gaming resolution. For the hell of information technology, we've also included maximum air-cooled overclocking results for both processors.

Examination System Specs

The AMD Athlon X4 860K and Intel Pentium G3258 were both benchmarked at their default operating frequencies equally well as an overclocked 4.4GHz configuration. Based on our overclocked experiences with these processors using air-cooling the Pentium G3258 tin can hands striking 4.4GHz while that's a stretch for the Athlon X4 860K. Nosotros used the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo for cooling, which is a highly pop $35 budget air cooler.

AMD Kaveri Arrangement Specs