Alternatives for i3-2100 for gaming.

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amithkallupalam

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Hey guys!

I was planning on getting an i3-2100 for my new budget gaming pc(30k) with the intel dh67bl.

But since i3 is dual core, im afraid it might not be great for games that utilize quad core. So are there any good quad core pc's in the same price range? And would getting an i3-2100 be better than getting any other quad core in that price range?
 
^^ #amithkallupalam Sire, stick to the Core i3 2100 it is good enough for most games and should serve you well for atleast two years before it starts showing its age, also the thermal dissipation and power draw are far superior compared to the AMD Phenom II line-up --> http://www.anandtech...duct/186?vs=289 [compare what this dual core does in gaming vs. AMD's quad cores].

Most games are at maximum currently bound to single OR dual thread situations, quad cores are still not fully utilized. AMD's weaker single core architecture is another pitfall at the moment compared to Intel's improving light thread optimization.

Hope this helps, Cheers!!
 
i3 2100 also has HT so the games you play and OS will see 4 cores. Sadly right now AMD has no competition at all for intel this little i3 is raping AMD's entire lineup on the gaming front.
 
^^ HT has little impact on gaming prowess of a processor, as well as if you go for real world tests which stress individual cores of the CPU, a HT enabled dual core CPU comes out worse than a true quad-core design.

But to each his own and yes the Core i3 is definitely a better gaming oriented CPU vs. AMD Phenom IIx4, but for a person dedicated to overall performance and on a tight budget the Phenom IIx4 / x6 still offer the best value for money.
 
Don't judge the i3 2100 just because it's a dual core. It's an awesome CPU for gaming and beats the AMD Phenom II quad core line up in gaming. You can check the benchmarks yourself here:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/186?vs=289

The x4 only manages to beat the i3 only in situations that demand additional cores, but it also comes at a cost of much higher power consumption.

The next worthy option would be an i5 2320/2400 but it might be out of your budget.
 
Yep and notice there its a 3.1ghz dual core beating a 3.5ghz quad ..... and I dont think there would be any difference even if it was faildozer ..... AMD tech is just too dated to be considered imo. All this talk of value .... its like buying a brand new maruti 800 sure its cheap and great value but it was also designed when the dinasours were still around.

I think barring some strategy games and city builder type games like Starcraft 2 Anno 1800 or whatever stuff doesnt really use more than a couple of cores. Those games have a shit load of objects and units that keep moving and so they take advantage of more cores and need more cpu power (possibly also because the in game physics is done on cpu but im not totally sure on that )
 
ALPHA17 said:
Most games are at maximum currently bound to single OR dual thread situations, quad cores are still not fully utilized. AMD's weaker single core architecture is another pitfall at the moment compared to Intel's improving light thread optimization.

Hope this helps, Cheers!!
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This is incorrect. There are no new games which are bound to single cores so iam not sure which games you have in mind. Most new games require a dual core at the very least. And if you are a battlefield 3 or bad company 2 player then quad core is the way to go.

But i agree with the rest of your statements. The core i3 2100 is much faster than its equivalent competition in games that require just 2 cores. Else he can consider the phenom x4 for games which are multithreaded. Battlefield beautifully uses whatever cores you throw at it .
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chiragsthakur said:
For games needing more cores to run more smoothly, a Phenom X4 is better than I3 2100
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There are very few games that use quad-cores fully and saturate every core so that we can justify that the game is optimized for running on as many cores as possible, this was only true for one game till now FarCry 2 which ran on the Duniya Engine --> http://www.pcgamesha...hmarks/Reviews/ / http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-scaling,2742-5.html.

Patches have reduced the CPU utilization in Far Cry 2 though.

indus said:
This is incorrect. There are no new games which are bound to single cores so iam not sure which games you have in mind. Most new games require a dual core at the very least. And if you are a battlefield 3 or bad company 2 player then quad core is the way to go.

But i agree with the rest of your statements. The core i3 2100 is much faster than its equivalent competition in games that require just 2 cores. Else he can consider the phenom x4 for games which are multithreaded. Battlefield beautifully uses whatever cores you throw at it .
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Click to expand...

Here are a few links which will explain my stand better -- http://www.techspot....ance/page7.html.

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Before we discuss the individual CPU performance tests, let’s just take a quick look at how the[/font]AMD FX-4100 processor[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] scales when testing between 2GHz and 4GHz. When paired with the single-GPU GeForce GTX 580 the average frame rate goes almost untouched. This suggests to us that Battlefield 3 is not very CPU demanding, at least not enough to max out a quad-core processor, which is precisely what the CPU utilization data above suggested.[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The minimum frame rate does improve as clock speeds are steadily ramped up. At 2GHz we saw 63fps which was eventually increased to 68fps at 4GHz, a relatively small 8% increase for a 100% increase in operating frequency.[/font]
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ALPHA17 said:
There are very few games that use quad-cores fully and saturate every core so that we can justify that the game is optimized for running on as many cores as possible, this was only true for one game till now FarCry 2 which ran on the Duniya Engine --> http://www.pcgamesha...hmarks/Reviews/ / http://www.tomshardw...ing,2742-5.html.

Patches have reduced the CPU utilization in Far Cry 2 though.

Here are a few links which will explain my stand better -- http://www.techspot....ance/page7.html.
Click to expand...

You have picked up one game i mentioned and posted a link to benchmarks for that particular game. I extensively play bad company 2 on a triple core and all the cores are maxed out during intense game play. I mentioned battlefield 3 since it uses the frostbite engine similar to bc2. But from the article it isnt that CPU dependent it seems.

The article concludes that a quad core is better since the dual cores maxed out in the game. That is the point iam making. Iam not recommending an 'intel' or 'amd' quad core, just that a quad core will be better. And no where did it mention that all 4 cores are not utilised properly as if to say that there is a design flaw which doesnt permit the game to make use of all 4 or 8 cores. If a game does not use all cores to 100% then it is a good thing. The CPU has some breathing space. This is not equal to 'cannot use all cores properly'.

Anyways, since the OP thread title clearly mentions alternatives for the i3 2100, he surely wont go wrong with the phenom quad cores since most sites recommend it as an alternative.
 
^^ Look #indus Sire, the fact is at the price point ~6500/- you have the Intel Core i3 vs. AMD Phenom IIx4 now as you said let us take a broader consensus on what all OP intends to do with his PC, he primarily said gaming [benches] --> http://www.anandtech...duct/102?vs=289, in the benchmarks apart form highly core-intensive workloads like CPU rendering and video encoding the quad-core AMD Phenom IIx4 is hard pressed to defeat its lighter opponent the Core i3, with its better architecture and faster processing of individual process threads the Intel processor shines in gaming to [~5 -- 15fps lead depending on the game].

Now it does all this and isn't to shabby for day-to-day tasks, draws lesser power [65W vs. 125W TDP] and overall is a better product choice for me, in-fact if you are the video encoding types who isn't very picky about quality use Intel Quick-Sync to encode videos while you can play games parallel to this task --> http://www.intel.com...eo-general.html / http://www.anandtech...3-2100-tested/8.

Now tell me is it better for OP to buy a Phenom IIx4 which he wouldn't fully utilize[I mean in every task] OR the fact that the Core i3 will do everything the AMD quad does at a lower hit to the monthly electricity and thus will be a better deal for him.

And yes till date there is no game other than FarCry 2 that has been used as benchmark for CPU utilization beyond the 1024 x 768 resolution [all other benches lean to this resolution because till this resolution the software is limited to the CPU's crunching power and ability to send data to the graphics card].

Hope this clarifies my stand, Cheers!!
 
You are still talking about the superiority of the intel core architecture, and iam not even arguing about it.

All your points are valid. I guess i dont need to upgrade my CPU now to play BF3.

nn
 
indus said:
You are still talking about the superiority of the intel core architecture, and iam not even arguing about it.

All your points are valid. I guess i dont need to upgrade my CPU now to play BF3.
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Sire I'm not arguing, I'm sorry if I present myself that way, but yes I was forwarding the superiority of Intel's micro-architecture and how unfortunately AMD has not been able to keep pace [I use a Phenom IIx4, it'll be 2 years old come Jan 24[sup]th[/sup]], I'm just saying that currently in OP's position and for something as balanced as gaming I'll go for a dual core processor and a decent graphics card [sure it'll be maxed out but he is under a tight budget and isn't going over-clock] the Intel processor is the best deal for him.
Cheers!! and \m/ Peace \m/
 
Ok guys! Wow i thought this thread died weeks ago! Anyway, I think Im gonna go with the i3-2100 because, it seems to better that the Phenom II x4 in almost everything it does. I have one more question guys. If I add like 4k more ill get the i5-2400, which is pretty awesome a future proof. So Is it worth the extra 4k? Or should I spend extra money on gpu? Thanks.
 
^^ #amithkallupalam, Spend the extra 4000/- quid on a better GPU, in place of the ageing HD 5770 / 6770, get the HD 6850 / 70 ~ 9500/- / 11500/- OR nVidia GTX 560 [non-Ti] ~ 10900/-.

And for this you'll need a slightly beefier SMPS, preferable the Seasonic S12II 520W ~ 3500/-.

Hope this answers you queries, Cheers!!
 
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