Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: February 2013

Six new processors are available since our update last month. In addition, AMD's flagship FX-8350, based on the Piledriver architecture, underwent a significant price reduction. How do these changes affect our recommendations? See for yourself!
If you don’t have the time to research benchmarks, or if you don’t feel confident enough in your ability to pick the right processor for your next gaming machine, fear not. We at Tom’s Hardware have come to your aid with a simple list of the best gaming CPUs offered for the money.

February Updates: 

AMD

Of the six new processors that launched this month, only one is from AMD: the A10-5700. In essence, it's an underclocked A10-5800K with a locked multiplier and a lower 65 W TDP. The APU's base clock rate is 3.4 GHz, and Turbo Core technology takes it up to 4 GHz under the right thermal conditions. In comparison, the A10-5800K starts at 3.8 GHz and works its way up to 4.2 GHz. Moreover, the -5700's on-die graphics engine with 384 shaders operates at 740 MHz instead of 800.
At $129, the -5700 sells for one dollar less than the A10-5800K. You're basically paying a premium for that lower thermal ceiling. Unfortunately, that makes the new chip a lot less interesting to us in a gaming-oriented machine. In a cruel twist, AMD's A10-5700 shares the same frequencies as the unlocked and graphics-free Athlon II X4 750K we've been waiting for. We keep hoping to see it pop up for sale in the U.S., but it still hasn't.
You've also probably seen news of a Piledriver-based FX-4130, which, unfortunately, is not true. The FX-4130 launched last year employing AMD's Bulldozer micro-architecture. In the last month, the company dropped its price on the -4130 to match what the -4100 used to cost. It's still a 125 W processor, and it still runs at 3.8 GHz with a 3.9 GHz peak Turbo Core clock rate. AMD claims this chip uses less power at idle than the FX-4100, and it similarly comes with a better cooler than the -4100.
Though not new, AMD's flagship FX-8350 recently dropped to $180 on Newegg. Frankly, this is where this processor should have been priced right from the start, and where we see it offering maximum value against Intel's Core i5 family in threaded applications. Unfortunately, the FX line-up continues to trail less expensive options from Intel when it comes to gaming, so it doesn't make it onto our Best Gaming CPUs for the Money recommendation list.

Intel

We see five new chips from Intel this month. Unfortunately, four of them are low-budget dual-core parts without Hyper-Threading technology, which we've already mentioned wouldn't receive recommendations moving forward (read Gaming Shoot-Out: 18 CPUs And APUs Under $200, Benchmarked for more on why). The $60 Celeron G1620 operates at 2.7 GHz with a 2 MB shared L3 cache, and is rated for a 55 W TDP. The $50 G1610 shares the same basic specs at a 2.5 GHz clock rate. The $100 Pentium G2130 and $65 Pentium G2020 are similarly rated at 55 W, but feature larger 3 MB third-level caches. They run at 3.2 and 2.9 GHz, respectively. All of these lower-end parts employ Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture and use up to 10 W less than the Sandy Bridge-based models they replace.
A $130 Core i3-3210 does enable Hyper-Threading, promising better gaming performance than Intel's Celeron and Pentium chips. But it also fails to excite us. After all, a 3.2 GHz clock rate represents a 100 MHz drop from the Core i3-3220 at the same price.
We're also seeing more news about Intel's next-gen Haswell-based parts; leaked slides suggest this chip will surface at this year's Computex, in Taipei. It'll employ the same 22 nm manufacturing technology as the Ivy Bridge architecture, and is said to offer substantial graphics performance improvements, too.

Some Notes About Our Recommendations

This list is for gamers who want to get the most for their money. If you don’t play games, then the CPUs on this list may not be suitable for your particular needs.
The criteria to get on this list are strictly price/performance. We acknowledge that there are other factors that come into play, such as platform price or CPU overclockability, but we're not going to complicate things by factoring in motherboard costs. We may add honorable mentions for outstanding products in the future, though. For now, our recommendations are based on stock clock speeds and performance at that price.
Cost and availability change on a daily basis. We can’t offer up-to-the-minute accurate pricing information in the text, but we can list some good chips that you probably won’t regret buying at the price ranges we suggest (and our PriceGrabber-based engine will help track down some of the best prices for you).
The list is based on some of the best US prices from online retailers. In other countries or at retail stores, your mileage will most certainly vary. Of course, these are retail CPU prices. We do not list used or OEM CPUs available at retail.  

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