

If you're really willing to dig deep the i5 4690k or the i7 4790k are the way to go. When overclocked, its Dolphin performance compares similarly to the 4970k at stock. Don't let the Pentium label deter you it's using the newest Haswell architecture.

It's one of the best price per performance processors - I believe it is around $60. The Pentium has a solid single threaded performance which will certainly play Project M at full speed. My recommendations on the budget intel side (which will have vastly higher single threaded performance but inferior multithreaded performance ) are the Pentium G3258 and the i3 4130. Just let them know you're on a budget and provide the games you'd like to play. They're very good at recommending budget setups. If you want to build a budget computer that will play on NetPlay, you should head over to the Dolphin Hardware Subforum.
