Best CPU for single threaded apps on my budget?

D

dany man

Limp Gawd
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I asked this on another site, but it turned out to be a troll pit and I was chewed and and had to delete my account.
Anyway my budget for the CPU is around 120$ and around 75$ for a mATX or ITX motherboard.
I have a GPU, and alot of high end cooling parts.
I only use use my PC to play very old games from the early 00s and back. But I have one new game I play, mount and blade.
M&B is not all to well made and it racks up one core to the point that even some less recent I7's can be bogged down once you mod it or up the battle size count.

Anyway given what my budget is what would you say is the best single threaded performance CPU?
I don't want to skimp there as everything else I do can be done on a rather old CPU. I don't need a good upgrade path as I intend to keep the pc until it brakes nor do I intend to change my uses.

Thanks.
 
Bruh... complicated question...

If you only play old games, the speed of the 'single' thread means nothing. Buy anything modern you'll be fine.

If you have some specific need to max out a single core thread and that's all you care about, get any new unlocked Intel quad or a used Intel dual core and just overclock it as far as you can.
 
For that price point you are in pretty low end territory, but you should still be able to get something decent.

If you can stretch the budget a bit a CPU like https://pcpartpicker.com/product/6mm323/amd-ryzen-5-2600x-36ghz-6-core-processor-yd260xbcafbox is solid and has cores to spare
for the mobo it depends a bit on the features you want but this should do https://pcpartpicker.com/product/wW...sm-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-prime-b450m-acsm

intel CPU's have slightly higher IPC but in that price range their boost clocks are similar and you get a lot less cores/threads for the money (which don't matter that much to you, but you never know a modern game comes out you want to play.)
 
Denpepe said:
For that price point you are in pretty low end territory, but you should still be able to get something decent.

If you can stretch the budget a bit a CPU like https://pcpartpicker.com/product/6mm323/amd-ryzen-5-2600x-36ghz-6-core-processor-yd260xbcafbox is solid and has cores to spare
for the mobo it depends a bit on the features you want but this should do https://pcpartpicker.com/product/wW...sm-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-prime-b450m-acsm

intel CPU's have slightly higher IPC but in that price range their boost clocks are similar and you get a lot less cores/threads for the money (which don't matter that much to you, but you never know a modern game comes out you want to play.)
Click to expand...

Yeah, hard to beat a Ryzen 2600/2600x at that price point. 2600 is $140 right now which is pretty crazy low.
 
Intel i5 9400F is on sale right now, $135 at Microcenter, $144 Amazon, $150 Newegg. In games that are poorly CPU-optimized and need that brute force single-thread perf I think that would be your best bet. Ryzen 2600 is a very nice CPU and a great deal right now but is unlikely to match the 9400F in CPU-bound gaming scenarios. The Ryzen 3000 series is a different story but the entry point for those is $200.

Keep in mind that you'll need DDR4 memory which is an additional cost. If you have DDR3 now and want to reuse that to save money, your best option would probably be a used 4000-series i5.
 
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You can get better single core frequency if you go lower core count then an 9400F. Some quads will get you more than 2.9GHz.
 
OFaceSIG said:
You can get better single core frequency if you go lower core count then an 9400F. Some quads will get you more than 2.9GHz.
Click to expand...

WIth a good motherboard, you can enable multicore enhancement and run all cores of the 9400F at the turbo speed of 4.1 GHz. And even without MCE, single-threaded workloads are probably going to run at the turbo speed.
 
I probably don't have the best advice but I was researching once on low-end CPUs and I found the latest-generation Intel Pentiums (like the G5400) can still play modern games. However, a step up would be the Ryzen 3 3200G (integrated GPU) or Intel i3-9100F (no graphics). (The Intels I mentioned take a series 300 LGA 1151 motherboard.) (Of course the i5-9400 and Ryzen 3 3400G are superior.)
 
An update for everyone. I bought a msi z370 board for under my budget. This will give me an extra 15$ to go to the cpu
upload_2019-9-3_12-21-26.gif




But so everyone is on the right page

this was posted on anther site. the game I play M&B is extremely poorlymade and realy hits one core hard.



post form OCN said:
I realize OP said best single thread for his budget, both overclocked(i3 9100f vs 3200g)your looking at roughly 8% single thread difference. So is 8% going to offset much real world performance vs overall use of the machine. (g4560 vs 2200g is tied) Given such a tight budget with ram not in the list of budgeted items. I have a feeling hes probably looking at ddr3 solutions.



Honestly after looking it doesn't seem like it's going to matter what cpu single thread he uses, the game is so poorly designed its barely uses a g4560 and 1050ti - and still doesn't push 60fps, so i would imagine with his mods hes looking at very low fps sub 30/20fps range or less. Chances are it isn't going to matter what cpu single thread he gets.



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So yeah I really need something with max single core performance. The system is also striped out from the OS end so having more cores for background stuff is not really needed for me. I would never use more then 4 cores, I never have and I harder ever use more then 2. so getting a 6 core with slightly less single core perofmace is a BAD idea.


OFaceSIG said:
Bruh... complicated question...

If you only play old games, the speed of the 'single' thread means nothing. Buy anything modern you'll be fine.

If you have some specific need to max out a single core thread and that's all you care about, get any new unlocked Intel quad or a used Intel dual core and just overclock it as far as you can.
Click to expand...
You would be amazed, M&B will max out a single core of a 6700 and 7700.
 
The Intel CPU listings seem to be obscure because some of them don't seem to be available, like the G5620 or i3-9300 but I did see a G5600 for $104.94 on Amazon.com. It's only 2 cores but 3.9GHz.
 
Astrowind said:
The Intel CPU listings seem to be obscure because some of them don't seem to be available, like the G5620 or i3-9300 but I did see a G5600 for $104.94 on Amazon.com. It's only 2 cores but 3.9GHz.
Click to expand...
I know, I wanted a 9300 but I ended up getting a 8350k. I snagged it second hand for 80$ :D
 
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