Gadgetory

okay guys here's the situation you're looking at building a brand new gaming read with the objective of spending as little as possible but still want to receive a decent level of performance I've done a heap of videos that look at which GPU delivers the best bang for your buck but what about budget processes the choice isn't quite as simple as just picking AMD or Intel both companies have a multitude of options in the sub $100 category to make things simple I'm going to quickly eliminate a good number of them you might have noticed that Intel still pushing their Haswell processes out the door but for a brand new build I recommend avoiding these processes the LGA 1150 platform is going out of fashion fast moreover there's just one standout processor in this price range anyway is the fully unlocked pentium Anniversary Edition g3 - 5 8 for $70 looking to intel's current sky pentium lineup we find a g 4400 at $60 and a g40 $590 while the g 45 20 is pushing $100 few months ago I would have said don't bother with these processes and instead get the highly overclockable G 32:58 as the ability to push this process over four gigahertz makes it a much better value proposition Intel's budget skyleigh processors became considerably more attractive once motherboard makers such as asrock bio star and Super Micro started developing support for non key overclocking Super Micro has even gone one step further an engineer's special H 170 overclocking motherboard which I'll be reviewing shortly now the ability to push the 3.3 gigahertz 4400 all the way to 4.6 gigahertz it's become our new favorite budget Intel processor on the other side of the fence we find AMD and their small army of extremely affordable quad core processors most notably the FX 4350 at $90 and the athlon x4 860 k and it almost impossible to refuse $75 supporting FM 2 plus motherboards started a little over $40.00 but if you want to go the full hog and get yourself an A ATX motherboards expect to shell out at least $60 at another $40 for an 8 gigabyte ddr3 memory kids and you have yourself what looks to be a very capable $175 combo meanwhile budget Intel shoppers opting for the G 4400 we need to spend $60 on the CPU and around $100 on his dad 170 motherboard if they wish to overclock the asrock z170a x1 can be hope for $95 add in another $45 for a ddr4 2400 a gigabyte kit and the total bill comes to 205 dollars now I know it seems a little bit crazy to spend so much more on the motherboard than the processor but the overclocking potential of this combo is enormous still if you don't plan to overclock then an H 110 motherboard will drop the total price just 155 what I want to know is how these two processes compare in the latest games games such as Just Cause 3 Rhema succeed Star Wars Battlefront fallout 4 and more in an effort to find out which is the best value option for gamers I'll be testing both the athlon x4 860 K and Pentium G 4400 at their standard clock speeds as well as maximum overclocked frequency since these are sub $100 CPUs I felt it prudent to pair them with a realistic graphics card for testing so not a tight necks instead I'll be testing with to GPU configurations one with the Radeon r9 380 and another with the geforce gtx 960 both cost $200 or less using the gtx 960 we find that both the 860 K and G 4400 able to push the graphics card to its limits before any overclocking takes place now if the I 9 380 we see that while overclocking these processors makes little difference the G 4400 offers a slight performance advantage of the 8 PK again we find that overclocking these processors provides no additional performance with the gtx 960 there's a g 4400 does again have a slight performance advantage over the 8 X 2 K moving to the i 9 380 providers with similar results and again the G 4400 is able to slightly edge our AMD's budget quad-core the call of duty black ops 3 results are interesting though not significant the G 4400 is able to max out the gtx 960 it just 3.3 gigahertz or the 860 KS we have up to 4 point 4 gigahertz and even then the minimum frame rate is slightly lower now the black ops 3 results with the r9 380 are genuinely interesting for the simple fact that the age 60 K gets hammered when looking at the minimum frame rate just to be sure I even should we'll check these results it was noticeable lag spikes when using the 860 even went overclocked and this wasn't the case with the G's 4400 which appeared very smooth this fallout four test takes part when exiting the vault and in this section of the game using the gtx 960 both the g 40 486 TK deliver acceptable frame rates though intel's dual-core processor does have a small performance advantage using the r9 380 the minimum frame rate takes a huge dive on these budget processes and the 860 kevin struggles when looking at the average frame rate which went over clocks was just over 50 fps meanwhile the overclocked G 4400 was good for almost 70 FPS now as we move into the city of Boston for some more fallout for benchmarking we find very different results neither CPU allows for particularly impressive performance when benchmarking the gtx 960 the g 4400 is considerably faster than the 860 k using the i9 380 you provided some very mixed results in the fallout 4 boston test the stock g 4400 tanked with massive stuttering as a drop down to 11 FPS overclocking the g 4400 seemed to cure this problem but with a minimum frame rate of just 21 FPS it wasn't exactly smooth gameplay the 860 K on the other hand played better than a non overclock G 4400 but much worse than the overclock G 4400 Just Cause 3 is known to play rough with low-end hardware but we were surprised by how well it played on the lowly G 4400 and GTX 960 combo granted performance wasn't stellar but with a minimum frame rate of 37 FPS the game was playable despite noticeable input lag when driving the eight-six UK on the other hand was noticeably laggy almost all the time and I found driving vehicles for example to be extremely difficult Just Cause 3 performance was a bit of a mess with the r9 380 image processes not even the heavily overclocked G 4400 delivered smooth performance Mad Max caused few problems with the gtx 960 as we found both the g 40 486 EK were able to provide very playable performance the i9 380 provided similar performance trends in Mad Max with our budget AMD and Intel processors here we see Rainbow six siege plays just as well in the 860 K as it does on the G 4400 and with the gtx 960 in use there's no need to overclock even with the r9 380 we find similar results and although that 860 K it has to overclock to match the stock G 4400 it was just 3 FPS in it and at over 70 FPS for the minimum that isn't a significant margin Star Wars Battlefront is another game with 860 K and G 4400 deliver similar performance in overclocking these CPUs does innate performance with the GTX 960 testing again with the r9 380 we find that the standard 860 K is again slightly off the pace of the G 4400 but with just 2 to 3 frames in it the margin isn't substantial the witcher 3 test takes place in the town of novigrad the town known to Slade your core processors yet despite that the G 4400 is found triumphant when using the gtx 960 and by a rather large margin i might add when comparing the minimum frame rate swapping out the gtx 960 for the i9 380 really mixes up the results and here the stock g 4400 really struggles dropping down to just 22 FPS with an average of only 33 FPS making it much slower than the 860 k however once overclocked the g 4400 farms form and returns to its winning ways with a minimum of 39 FPS an average of 48 fps if we take the average minimum frame rate from the 10 games tested the results aren't as expected at least they're not what I was expecting with the gtx 960 handling all the rendering work the 860 case or an average minimum of 43 fps and just 44 FPS once overclocked the G 4400 on the other hand was slightly faster with 48 fps and just 49 fps once overclocked the margin between the 860 KNG 4400 doesn't really change with the r9 380 but we do find that the overclocked configurations provide a more meaningful advantage the 860 K average of 41 FPS minimum of the standard clock speed but was able to match 44 FPS of the GTX 960 once overclocked much the same as spam and using the G 4400 with the r9 380 it averaged a minimum of 45 fps and it's out of the box configuration and went on to average the same 49 FPS minimum once overclocked as it did with the gtx 960 this means without any overclocking the g 4400 was roughly 10% faster than the 860 k with either the 380 or 960 having overclocked with both processors the g 4400 was 11% faster than the 80 ck with both graphics cards it's also interesting to note that the standard three point three gigahertz g 4400 was still I'm cent faster than the overclocked 860 K the gtx 960 and two percent faster with the r9 380 when comparing the minimum frame rate however for me the average minimums don't tell the whole story there were just two instances with a stop G 44 hundredfold hood and they were seen when testing the Boston City section and fallout 4 and novigrad with The Witcher 3 in both instances overclocking fix the performance issues and saw the G 4400 easily outperform the overclocked 286 TK the quad core 860 K on the other hand a process that many would expect to deliver more consistent performance seemed to be all over the place essentially it was only the GPU bound games with 860 K kept is cool games such as Batman Arkham Knight battlefield 4 Mad Max rainbow succeed and Star Wars Battlefront all played nice with the 860 K however the more CPU dependent titles such as fallout 4 Just Cause 3 in The Witcher 3 played very poorly on the 860 cave call of duty black ops 3 was another game there were ran okay with the gtx 960 but not so much with the i9 380 in fact AMD zone r9 380 wreaked havoc on their budget quad core processor and this is the very reason why AMD started pushing low-level api's such as mantle a few years ago the fact that the G 4400 is a dual-core processor in the 860 K is a quad core really doesn't play any significant role in this battle certainly not like many would have you believe however if you could have the clock speed of the G 4400 from the standard three point three gigahertz to one point six five gigahertz and added two more cause it would likely end up being slower in almost all of these games that probably shouldn't surprise anyone but I'm trying to make the point that the more cause aren't necessarily always better at least when comparing different architectures please note that I'm not trying to bash AMD here and I'm certainly not suggesting the clock for clock the 860 K is half as fast as the G 4400 but it has to be said that Intel Skye IPC efficiency is considerably greater than that of AMD steamroller so in this comparison comparing the number of cores is about as useful as comparing megahertz it's not all good news for potential g 4400 buyers though and what is the very slimy move we believe Intel is currently working to disable non K overclocking do this in an update to the processes microcode which will be delivered in the form of a BIOS update this means that those with the overclocking bias will be stuck with a current revision if they wish to keep their overclock this isn't a big deal though and chances are you would only need to update your buyers from this point forward to support a new processor anyway overall both the athlon x4 860 k and Pentium G 4400 deliver impressive performance at well under $100 but we feel the more consistent G 4400 is the better bye thanks for watching another hardware box comparison video I'm your host Matt if you've got any questions at all then please leave them at our forum at Hardware own box comm or in the comment section below don't forget to hit like hit subscribe and we'll see you next time