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.

We learned a lot about Intel's 15 to 28W notebook-oriented Broadwell-U processor line-up at the Consumer Electronics Show last month. For a list of launch models and specifications, check out Intel Reveals Details On Broadwell-U At CES. While we haven't put together a proper review yet, Lenovo was gracious enough to give us some benchmarking time with the company's freshly-minted ThinkPad X250 and W550s laptops, facilitating the first benchmarks on Intel's Broadwell-U Core i5-5200U And i7-5600U. By now, we expect a lot from Intel's regular processor cadence, including improved power usage coupled with better performance. Broadwell-U does not disappoint, as those test results show. 

Speaking of Intel, the company's online prices remained fairly stable through January. All that we noticed were $5 price drops on the $63 Pentium G3240 and $120 Core i3-4160, along with $10 reductions on the $200 Core i5-4690S, $230 Core i5-4690K and $300 Core i7-4790.

As usual, AMD's portfolio demonstrated more significant changes. The $84 A8-5600K and $100 A10-5800K dropped by $5. The A4-6400K, A8-6600K and FX-6300 shed $10 to $53, $85 and $100, respectively. The FX-8370E became $15 cheaper at $185. The A10-6700 and A10-7850K both benefited from a $20 price cut to $128 and $150, respectively. Conversely, the A4-6300 is $5 more expensive than last month at $45, and the FX-8320E and FX-9370 gained $10 to $150 and $220.

None of these price changes affect our recommendations, although some of the listed products are slightly cheaper than last month.

In other CPU-related news, ARM Announced ARMv8A-Based Cortex-A72, 16nm FF+ Process, Mali-T880 GPU. While this isn't an x86-based chip, it's interesting to note that ARM claims it boasts a 75-percent reduction in energy consumption across the same workloads compared to last year's devices, and frequencies of up to 2.5GHz.

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. Remember to check out our new performance per dollar comparison page, where you can overlay the benchmark data we’ve generated with pricing, giving you a better idea where your ideal choice falls on the value curve.

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.               

Entry-Level Gaming

We've long suspected that a low-priced, multiplier-unlocked, Haswell-based processor could rock the enthusiast world, and we were right. Intel's Pentium G3258 enables incredible performance and overclocking headroom, despite its $70 price point. This is a dual-core CPU without Hyper-Threading technology, but it still challenges the quickest Core i3s once you tune it up.

Budget Multi-Core Gaming Alternative

The FX-6300 fares well in gaming tests, presumably thanks to better multi-core utilization and optimization for AMD's architecture over time. While Intel's Core i3-4160 offers slightly more performance in your favorite titles, you'll have a difficult time telling the difference. Meanwhile, the FX-6300 costs $20 less, sports an unlocked ratio multiplier and features six integer cores that improve performance in threaded desktop applications.

Budget Gamer's Pick

Intel's Haswell-based CPUs are very capable in games, though we're increasingly seeing dual-core Pentiums lagging behind in our favorite titles. Conversely, benchmark data makes it clear that the company's Hyper-Threading technology is effective in helping improve the performance of Core i3 CPUs in those same blockbusters. Although a locked multiplier limits overclocking to a few-megahertz bump in BCLK frequency, we still consider Intel's Core i3-4160 to be a good starting point for gamers who might upgrade to a faster LGA 1150-based processor in the future.

High Performance Gamer's Pick

Intel's Core i5 processors are well-known for their high-end gaming prowess at reasonable prices. We look to the new i5-4460 for its balance between price and performance at $190. Although this CPU's multiplier is locked, you don't need aggressive overclocking to achieve excellent frame rates with it.

CPUs priced over $230 offer rapidly diminishing returns when it comes to gaming performance. As such, we have a hard time recommending anything more expensive than the Core i5-4690K, especially since this multiplier-unlocked processor is easy to tune up to 4.3 GHz or so with the right cooler. Even at stock clocks, though, it matches or beats the old $1000 Gulftown-based Core i7-990X Extreme Edition in our benchmarks.

We have seen a small handful of titles benefit from Hyper-Threaded Core i7 processors, though. Because we believe this is a trend that will continue as developers optimize their software, we're including the Core i7-4790K as an honorable mention, now selling for $340. In a vast majority of games, the Core i7 won't demonstrate much advantage over the Core i5. But if you're a serious enthusiast who wants some future-proofing and values highly-threaded application performance, this processor may be worth the extra money.

In addition, there's certainly an argument to be made for using LGA 2011-v3 as the ultimate gaming platform. Haswell-E -based CPUs have more available cache and as many as four more execution cores than the flagship LGA 1150/1155 models. Additionally, more bandwidth is delivered through a quad-channel DDR4 memory controller. And with up to 40 lanes of third-gen PCIe connectivity available from Haswell-E-based processors, the platform natively supports two x16 and one x8 slot, or one x16 and three x8 slots, alleviating potential bottlenecks in three- and four-way CrossFire or SLI configurations.

Although they sound impressive, those advantages don't necessarily translate into significant performance gains in modern titles. Our tests demonstrate fairly little difference between a $240 LGA 1150 Core i5-4690K and a $1000 LGA 2011 Core i7-4960X, even when three-way graphics card configurations are involved. It turns out that memory bandwidth and PCIe throughput don't hold back the game performance of existing Sandy Bridge-, Ivy Bridge-, and Haswell-based machines.

Where we do see the potential for Haswell-E to drive additional performance is in processor-bound games like World of Warcraft or the multiplayer component ofBattlefield 4. If you're running a three- or four-way array of graphics cards already, there's a good chance that you already own more than enough rendering muscle. An overclocked Core i7-5960X or -5930K could help the rest of your platform catch up to an insanely powerful arrangement of GPUs.

To summarize, while we generally recommend against purchasing any gaming CPU that retails for more than $240 from a value point of view (sink that money into graphics and the motherboard instead), there are those of you who have no trouble throwing down serious money on the best of the best, and who require the fastest possible performance available. If this describes your goals, the following CPUs may be for you:

What about this other CPU that’s not on the list? How do I know if it’s a good deal or not?

This will happen. In fact, it’s guaranteed to happen because availability and prices change quickly. So how do you know if that CPU you have your eye on is a good buy in its price range?

Here is a resource to help you judge if a CPU is a reasonable value or not: the gaming CPU hierarchy chart, which groups CPUs with similar overall gaming performance levels into tiers. The top tier contains the highest-performing gaming CPUs available and gaming performance decreases as you go down the tiers from there.

This hierarchy was originally based on the average performance each CPU achieved in our test suite. We have since incorporated new game data into our criteria, but it should be known that any specific game title will likely perform differently depending on its unique programming. Some games, for example, will be severely graphics subsystem-limited, while others may react positively to more CPU cores, larger amounts of CPU cache, or even a specific architecture. We also did not have access to every CPU on the market, so some of the CPU performance estimates are based on the numbers similar architectures deliver. Indeed, this hierarchy chart is useful as a general guideline, but certainly not as a one-size-fits-all CPU comparison resource. For that, we recommend you check out our CPU Performance Charts.

You can use this hierarchy to compare the pricing between two processors, to see which one is a better deal, and also to determine if an upgrade is worthwhile. I don’t recommend upgrading your CPU unless the potential replacement is at least three tiers higher. Otherwise, the upgrade is somewhat parallel and you may not notice a worthwhile difference in game performance.

There you have it folks: the best gaming CPUs for the money this month. Now all that’s left to do is compare their performance to your budget before you decide which one is right for you. We even put in the work to help find the best prices.

Also remember that the stores don’t follow this list. Things will change over the course of the month and you’ll probably have to adapt your buying strategy to deal with fluctuating prices. Good luck!

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In an effort to further illustrate the performance you get for every dollar spent on our recommendations, we chart out the hierarchy of processors in our column. The green, blue, black, and red bars represent average frame rates in StarCraft II, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Far Cry 3, and an aggregate of all three titles. The orange line indicates cost. Mousing over the bars gives you a pop-up with performance statistics relative to Intel's Core i7-4930K, our 100% ceiling. Mousing over the dots on the orange line pops up a price that's easily attainable. Clicking a bar or dot gives you the option of shopping for a specific CPU, taking you to a link of our choice in that category. Often, our picks are priced lower than the number displayed.

Price and performance generally scale along a similar upward trend as we look down the chart, not including the pricey Core i7 options. Budget-oriented gamers should pay attention to the significant performance increase available when you step up from the $70 Pentium G3258 to the $120 Core i3-4160, though. The $190 Core i5-4460 looks great, offering performance close to more expensive options that cost well over $200.

After that, the speed-ups are more subtle, while the premiums are far greater (particularly as you look to the $590 Core i7-5930K). Frankly, if value is an important consideration, there's little reason to spend $190 on a Core i5-4460 (or even more on a Core i7) unless you want to overclock it for a better experience in some of your other apps. The Core i5-4460 is a clear performance-per-dollar winner, demonstrating no weaknesses in any of the games we've tested.