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.