Best Gaming CPU for $300

Which provides the best value for mid to high end gaming?


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  • Poll closed .
9900K at microcenter is down to 299, so, that's a great cpu for the $300 price point, imho.
 
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I guess it depends on what platform you have already because having to buy a new MoBo with that $300 cpu is not a deal .. I bought my B550 MSI Mortar early on and I finally got me the 5600x .. I was only testing with it a RX 570 8Gb and seems to keep the 144fps cap nailed at 1080p Med very well for that 144Hz display .

 
At $230, the 10700F has to be the ultimate gaming value right now.

https://www.techpowerup.com/278430/...-cpus-in-bid-to-claw-market-from-amd#comments
The 10400F is $147 and would perform essentially identically in games at 1440p or higher. You lose 2 cores and 500Mhz top turbo, but it's much cheaper. That money would be best spent on a GPU for gaming, if you can actually find one.

If I was buying for myself I'd go for the 10700 or even 10850, as I'm not particularly price-sensitive (I'm typing this on a 5950X, natch) but they offer much worse value.
 
The 10400F is $147 and would perform essentially identically in games at 1440p or higher. You lose 2 cores and 500Mhz top turbo, but it's much cheaper. That money would be best spent on a GPU for gaming, if you can actually find one.

If I was buying for myself I'd go for the 10700 or even 10850, as I'm not particularly price-sensitive (I'm typing this on a 5950X, natch) but they offer much worse value.

Considering the price of the entire system, it is not that much cheaper and you lose over 25% cpu power.
 
I think that processor´s role in gaming is exaggerated. Basically you only need many cores, if you play strategy games such as Civilization VI (because computer turn time is reduced the more cores you have). I recently broke my old 8 core i7 5960x Asus X79 -motherboard, but I had one 1151-mobo laying about with Celeron G4930 processor in it. I played Witcher 3 without any problems on 4k with my RTX 2080 and Celeron G4930 without any problems on 60-66 fps. It is only problem, if you want to play with 1080p, you will get into trouble for getting 200 fps on high (BTW my screen is only 144 Hz, so forget about it anyway), because a lot of work is done in the processor level to move data between memory and GPU and you will bottleneck, BUT WHY WOULD YOU PLAY IT IN 1080P, because the game is absolutely beautiful in higher res.
 
I think that processor´s role in gaming is exaggerated. Basically you only need many cores, if you play strategy games such as Civilization VI (because computer turn time is reduced the more cores you have). I recently broke my old 8 core i7 5960x Asus X79 -motherboard, but I had one 1151-mobo laying about with Celeron G4930 processor in it. I played Witcher 3 without any problems on 4k with my RTX 2080 and Celeron G4930 without any problems on 60-66 fps. It is only problem, if you want to play with 1080p, you will get into trouble for getting 200 fps on high (BTW my screen is only 144 Hz, so forget about it anyway), because a lot of work is done in the processor level to move data between memory and GPU and you will bottleneck, BUT WHY WOULD YOU PLAY IT IN 1080P, because the game is absolutely beautiful in higher res.

It's game and engine dependent. MSFS2020 for example zen 3 is worth 20% over zen 2 even at higher resolutions with ultra settings.
 
It's game and engine dependent. MSFS2020 for example zen 3 is worth 20% over zen 2 even at higher resolutions with ultra settings.
OK. I don't know about that. My Celeron G4930 has a passmark of little over 2000. I have heard that AMD A6, which is about 25 % slower can bottleneck with GTX 1080ti, which in gaming i.e. Battlefield 1 is 6,5% slower than my RTX 2080. Who knows maybe my Witcher 3 would run over 100 fps in 4k, if I had Zen3, but I think that framerates depend more on the GPU than CPU. Basically I think that processor is needed for the enemy AI and copying the necessary texture files from system memory/SSD to GPU. I heard that texture files in 4k games can be somewhere north of 200 GB, but you have to understand that overall copying speed of that 200 GB to GPU can be a fairly long time in the game time. I think my game time 'til the end of Witcher 3 was somewhere around 300 - 400 hours. So if you can do 0,5 GB in one hour without bottlenecking (for example in Witcher 3's new HD reworked project), then you are fine. In 4k games the bottleneck can be your SSD transfer speed especially in fast moving driving games with big texture files, if you don't have over 200 GB RAM. I think my computer installed the 30 GB installation file of Witcher 3 in little over 15 minutes, so I think that my computer would even run the new Witcher 3 reworked project with my G4930. Witcher 3 transfers texture files only during the travelling from i.e. Velen to Kaer Morhen, because I think that they have to have the whole texture pack of one location inside the memory, when you can ride with Roach between different locales inside Velen or Kaer Morhen.
 
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Plopped in an AMD 5600x, replacing my ryzen 2600 and it doubled my FPS in valorant without any change in GPU.
 
This is the best path in parts right now, IMO. Start off with a 10400(F) for value builds, then 3600, then 5600x and upwards on the Ryzen tier if you can get them.
 
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