Seems like quads are still okay. Like, if you were scrounging together a "just get it working" machine or maybe you're sitting on a quad core machine that you don't want to upgrade, you still have time.
But somehow I really doubt that will hold so true a couple of years from now. To put a quad core in a new gaming machine that you wanna get some years out of just seems questionable to me. It's definitely fine for now. I understand if you're not an enthusiast or whatever and you're looking to spend the minimum you can on a budget gaming setup. But even so, it's going to cost you some good money. The savings difference, to me, isn't enough to offset the fact that you are buying into something that's kind of on its way out. You're jumping on a part that's already starting to lag behind the rest and will only be less suitable as time goes by, and as things are already, it's not going to offer consistent performance from game to game. I don't buy the "It's about the games you play." I just think if you're going to build a gaming rig, you want it to be able to run ALL games well. And besides, how are you gonna know what games you might want to play next year? What if a CPU-heavy AAA title comes out that you really want to play, but the experience suffers as it brings your "good enough" quad-core to its knees? Doesn't matter that you don't usually play those kinds of games. You never know. It's a sad day when you're excited to play this new game, you buy it, fire it up, and are greeted with terrible stutter no matter what you do with your settings.
That's the other thing I find generally true with CPU requirements for games. You can't always do so much to offset it by changing graphical settings, as most of that stuff is now handled by the GPU. It's not always the case that you can ride-out settings tweaks like is often done to keep an old GPU going with new games. The CPU demands are more static. Unless you have a setting that lowers polygon counts, AI actors, or whatever... your CPU is up to what it is up to. CPU bottlenecks are nasty business. If the game needs the threads, it has to have them.
Enthusiast or not, a gaming rig is an extravagant purchase. Hell, I'd argue that if you're spending money on a gaming PC instead of a console, you're already an enthusiast. You buy the PC instead of the console because you want to take things to the next level. Otherwise, you wouldn't even be considering it. You don't need any of it. So my mindset is that if you're gonna spend the money, get as much performance as you can for the money. Just spend the cash. Save up if you gotta. Better to have a machine that's sometimes a little overkill, but always capable than one that in a couple of years is no longer cutting it. Now, if you want to upgrade, you're probably out more money than if you had just paid up for a little more than the bear-minimum standard. I don't see how that could be worth it.
I guess that's what it comes down to for me. Future-proofing is one thing... you can't win that game. But you can make some reasonable assumptions about the future value and viability of a part. My instinct with PC building is to never buy the bear minimum, because it doesn't take an expert to tell you that the bear minimum today is becoming obsolete tomorrow. If it's juuuust good enough today that's great, but where does it go from there? There's going overboard with insane parts, and then there's building a machine from tie-overs. If you like playing games and that's something you're gonna be doing for the foreseeable future, you don't want the tie-over.
I can't see myself ever recommending a cheap quad to someone looking to buy a high-end GPU. I guess if you wanna go cheap all around, that's fine. I still wouldn't recommend it but you could pair a CPU like that with an entry-level or midrange card and that just makes sense. But if you're going to toss almost $1000 at a GPU and then ~$100 a CPU, I really don't understand you at all. I understand money is what it is and maybe that's all you can swing. But if you can save that kind of cash for a GPU and everything else on the rig, why wouldn't you save another hundred bucks and get a 6 or even an 8 core? It's not like you have to go way out there to have a 6-core CPU these days. People are talking about it like the quads are such a better deal, but a hexacore isn't exactly high-end. Good, modern ones can be had for under $200. It'd be one thing if they were really expensive, but they're mid-range, you know? $200 actually buys you a solid 8-core! If you can buy the top-tier GPU, why skimp on the CPU?
I think if you have a quad and it's working out for you, no reason to feel like you need to upgrade. Clearly you don't. But if we're talking about a new machine, 6c/12t is a nice place to be for a good, consistent gaming and desktop experience that is much more likely to hold up long term. It's not like before where all we could say about high core counts was "they're going to be used more one day!" That day is already here, from what I can see.
FPS was good! Frametimes were all over the place
its a hobby not the search for the cure to cancer.