A lot of questions and raised eyebrows arrive as soon as someone asks my opinion on what CPU I would recommend. The first thing I usually delve into is the purpose of your computer, gaming capable systems are a common request, but not necessarily for every modern title. So if you’re playing most recent titles at just 1080p, I’m not always going to recommend a super Quad core 3.9GHz monster and this usually causes some concern. Most applications today run perfectly, even on a dual core processor such as the Pentium G3258, and depending on what your future prospects are, this is a great CPU and chipset for a startup build. The reason being is; in a lot of scenarios this little monster can outperform processors at more than twice the price and their are numerous upgrades to choose from. The point I’m trying to get across is the number of cores and clock speeds aren’t going to determine the performance of your system, it goes much deeper than this.

Source: ElectronicDesign.com

The first main issue is how many cores do your applications use, in everyday multitasking, video encoding, rendering and other desktop applications the extra cores will make the experience a lot more seamless. If you are going to use it as a general media or gaming device, the extra cores start to become obsolete and you find yourself losing out on frame rates on certain games or application stability if your clock speeds are lower. Your average modern game at 1080p can run flawlessly on a dual core processor, given the fact that it hits a reasonable clock/performance rate. This does not mean a dual core from 8 years ago is going to run modern applications, with every new generation comes a more efficient processor and can result in a Pentium outperforming an i5 for example. Intel year upon year improve CPU performance per clock by 5-10%, one generation may have a chip running at 3ghz; the next iteration of that processor range will run equivalent to .3ghz faster with certain applications/instruction sets. When it comes to picking a new CPU; think about why made this choice and what you’re going to use it for. The common dilemma is choosing whether or not to upgrade your current hardware, Digital Foundry recently ran some benchmarks for Skylake CPUs and unless you plan to overclock, the improvements are barely visible.

Source: Digital Foundry – http://goo.gl/3b5XY1

You will notice that the 4 thread i5 is tailing very closely to the 8 thread i7 and this is a result of games not fully utilising the i7s eight logical cores. You will also notice cache for CPUs as a major specification, larger cache size is used for heavy workload situations; Photoshop and 3D rendering are prime examples of memory heavy workloads and cache can be vital for these scenarios. 8 core processors with 16 threads are primarily designed for applications just like these and are almost completely unnecessary otherwise.

A very common debate is the brand war between Intel and AMD; I am not one to pick sides and the only way to win me over is when hardware actually serves its purpose within my budget. There were always CPUs, GPUs and computer hardware that fit into their particular category. The major competition occurs when two similar products fight over the same category. I haven’t seen this occurrence since the AMD Athlon 64 and Core 2 era sadly and if you were to ask me which I prefer, I would say both. They still gave the consumer what they wanted based on their requirements and I believe this has usually been the case.

AMD APUs however, I believe they are a bit off the mark; they don’t offer outstanding efficiency and they don’t offer great performance within a certain price range. I believe the PS4 and Xbox One are great architectural achievements and if this kind of hardware was on the consumer market for system builders that would be a game changer. I believe that this type of hardware would fill a gap in the market, it wouldn’t have a direct contender, you would ideally be able to have an all in one solution at a decent price that can handle a lot more applications than current NUCs and living room mini PCs. Shared GDDR5 memory between the CPU and GPU is something that I can not wait to get my hands for a desktop PC. As for AMD Zen, AMDs upcoming CPU architecture and the roadmap that AMD is laying out seems like a promising one. I always like competition and more variety in the market results in better choice for the consumer (me!).

Z170A Motherboard from Asus, Source: Legit Reviews

Given the fact that Intel is a force to be reckoned with in the CPU category especially, they have handled it incredibly well, they keep up with their promises every year and deliver something new and exciting even when they don’t need to. People do complain about their prices but, if you add it all up, you always end up with “you get what you pay for”.

I also thought I would share a few recommendations while I’m at it –

Budget CPUs

Intel G3258

This CPU is vicious, overclocking out of the box with stock cooler straight to 4.2ghz and playing Metal Gear Solid V on high settings at 60fps? How can you complain when you’ve only spent 50 pounds for that. Only issue is that it is limited to 2 cores, when using multithreaded applications you start to see noticeable drops in performance.

AMD Athlon 860k

The underdog, this guy has a lot to offer, the only issue is he isn’t going to tell you about it and nor will AMD for that matter. You get 4 cores and with a third party cooling solutions such as the CM Hyper Evo 212, this CPU can go a long way and play all the latest games with little issue. However, I don’t want to get your hopes up too high, the G3258 in a lot of cases will outperform the 860k thanks to its performance per clock (and some people are lucky enough to get the G3258 to a frightening 4.8ghz core clock). My most recommended CPU for AMD at this moment in time thanks to the FM2+ motherboard chipset.

Current Favourites

i5 6600k

The best price performance CPU on the market, throw a real life rhino at this thing and it will compute it into a digital unicorn. Apologies for getting carried away, Skylake CPUs not only have the best performance per clock at this moment in time and people are overclocking this demon to 5ghz. It comes with all the LGA 1151 chipset benefits as well, dedicated NVMe PCIE lanes for super fast storage without compromising your dual GPU set up, USB 3.1, U.2 socket and the latest when it comes to motherboard features. The only issue for me is my wallet, which I don’t use since I can’t fill it!

AMD FX 8350

You can not for the life of you get rid of these CPUs, they fit in a very pleasant price range and they perform exceptionally well for modern gaming and countless applications. The only issue is the outdated motherboard chipset, PCIE 2.0 resulting in dual GPU configurations becoming bottlenecked, no M.2 socket support, low RAM speeds and no USB 3.1. It’s the only reason this CPU isn’t my go to on a lot of budget builds (also because cheaper alternatives still deliver on the budget side of things).

I think I will end on this note, this is another general post and I hope you found some of this information helpful. If there is anything you would like to discuss further feel free to leave a comment and I will keep updating this blog as much as I can. Thanks again!