can a i3 cpu run most games?

[TurtleCrusher]

I was building the expensive machines at the time, practically sparing no expense, most where in the $2000+ range. I had blue screens, shut offs out of the blue, many issues and it was a while ago, either way it came down to one component the CPU. As i'd usually swap out almost every part to find out the issue except the cpus.

Neither Intel nor AMD have had CPUs that do not work. You didn't troubleshoot properly then. Every single CPU gets pushed through it's paces before being shipped out to you. The fact you say you had "bunch" of systems, all AMD, and that they were ALL defective means you don't know what you're talking about. Unless you assembled them incorrectly, that's statistically impossible. Some fanboys make up some lofty claims but this one takes the cake.

And if the bolded is correct and you wanted video editing performance, a 12-core Magny-Cours or a 6 core Xeon Westmere would have been an extremely better option at those price points. You wouldn't even consider a 4-core or 6-core CPU with that kind of budget and usage.

 

[Lepton87]

Neither Intel nor AMD have had CPUs that do not work. You didn't troubleshoot properly then. Every single CPU gets pushed through it's paces before being shipped out to you. The fact you say you had "bunch" of systems, all AMD, and that they were ALL defective means you don't know what you're talking about. Unless you assembled them incorrectly, that's statistically impossible. Some fanboys make up some lofty claims but this one takes the cake.

And if the bolded is correct and you wanted video editing performance, a 12-core Magny-Cours or a 6 core Xeon Westmere would have been an extremely better option at those price points. You wouldn't even consider a 4-core or 6-core CPU with that kind of budget and usage.

How about P3 1.13GHz or the orginal Phenom and its infamous TLB bug... They had some screw-ups but P2 X6 shouldn't give blue screens on its own if it did we would all know it by know. If any big bugs were found they would errata it like TSX...

 

[Firetrak]

Neither Intel nor AMD have had CPUs that do not work. You didn't troubleshoot properly then. Every single CPU gets pushed through it's paces before being shipped out to you. The fact you say you had "bunch" of systems, all AMD, and that they were ALL defective means you don't know what you're talking about. Unless you assembled them incorrectly, that's statistically impossible. Some fanboys make up some lofty claims but this one takes the cake.

And if the bolded is correct and you wanted video editing performance, a 12-core Magny-Cours or a 6 core Xeon Westmere would have been an extremely better option at those price points. You wouldn't even consider a 4-core or 6-core CPU with that kind of budget and usage.

I'm sorry you feel you have to get rude and insulting. I guess that's your prerogative though.

No idea if you've worked in a media environment, but one machine never does one thing. I built about 20 machines for that company over the years and only the AMD built ones had issues. You're right I never spent days assessing each one, as I had other things to do, but the over riding common factor was the CPU.

Also unless you are working on 4K media a 12core CPU is useless, its the memory and GPU that actually counts as the cuda cores are employed for video rendering, indexing and peak file creation.

I'm also not any kind of fan boy. You really have some strong stereotypes going there.

 

[crashtech]

It's not really his prerogative in the CPU forum, we are supposed to be held to a higher standard here, but the mods are either too busy or just have a high tolerance for insulting BS. Some of the responses have been way off-topic and uncalled for.

The i3 will for fine for you, the only caveat being that you might want to upgrade to an i5 when you finally find a game that needs more cores. I think you know that, though.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

How about P3 1.13GHz or the orginal Phenom and its infamous TLB bug... They had some screw-ups but P2 X6 shouldn't give blue screens on its own if it did we would all know it by know. If any big bugs were found they would errata it like TSX...

Errors in a CPU are known almost immediately and are patched if possible. The Phenom 2 line was rock solid.

I'm sorry you feel you have to get rude and insulting. I guess that's your prerogative though.

No idea if you've worked in a media environment, but one machine never does one thing. I built about 20 machines for that company over the years and only the AMD built ones had issues. You're right I never spent days assessing each one, as I had other things to do, but the over riding common factor was the CPU.

Also unless you are working on 4K media a 12core CPU is useless, its the memory and GPU that actually counts as the cuda cores are employed for video rendering, indexing and peak file creation.

I'm also not any kind of fan boy. You really have some strong stereotypes going there.

Pro-tip: It wasn't the CPU and you're spreading fud. Factoring in whether a CPU is at fault or not is an extremely easy and quick process. If one CPU was defective, the margin or error that the next one is defective is astronomically high. The fact you say that you built a "bunch" of systems that had all defective AMD CPUs, that's completely preposterous. You either were assembling those systems with blindfolds on or you have no clue what you're doing and just assumed it was the CPU.

And again, if you were spending $2000+ each on a bunch of video editing PCs during that timeframe, you made an uninformed choice on what class of CPU to get.

I also know you're spreading fud because if you're offloading the image rendering to nVidia video cards using CUDA, especially then, your CPU usage is practically irrelevant. No those CPUs wouldn't be turning and burning if you offloaded it to the GPU. Especially at that time, encoding with CUDA produced poor results with higher power consumption in nearly the same timeframe compared to mid range CPUs at the time. Again, a Magny-Cours or 6C/12T Westmere would've been much better if you were even using the CPUs.

 

[Firetrak]

It's not really his prerogative in the CPU forum, we are supposed to be held to a higher standard here, but the mods are either too busy or just have a high tolerance for insulting BS. Some of the responses have been way off-topic and uncalled for.

The i3 will for fine for you, the only caveat being that you might want to upgrade to an i5 when you finally find a game that needs more cores. I think you know that, though.

Yeah well as much as it irritates me for a while the person acting that way has to live with themselves, so whatever. .

I am honestly leaning towards the I5 now as I know i'll have need for more cores when I do editing or video jobs.

My laptop is a core 2 duo and while it can play most games now even if at low settings, its the speed of the whole setup that drives me more crazy.

Who knows thinking of going to Frys tonight (a local electronic store that matches online prices) and possibly getting my mobo cpu and psu.

 

[Firetrak]

Errors in a CPU are known almost immediately and are patched if possible. The Phenom 2 line was rock solid.



Pro-tip: It wasn't the CPU and you're spreading fud. Factoring in whether a CPU is at fault or not is an extremely easy and quick process. If one CPU was defective, the margin or error that the next one is defective is astronomically high. The fact you say that you built a "bunch" of systems that had all defective AMD CPUs, that's completely preposterous. You either were assembling those systems with blindfolds on or you have no clue what you're doing and just assumed it was the CPU.

And again, if you were spending $2000+ each on a bunch of video editing PCs during that timeframe, you made an uninformed choice on what class of CPU to get.

I also know you're spreading fud because if you're offloading the image rendering to nVidia video cards using CUDA, especially then, your CPU usage is practically irrelevant. No those CPUs wouldn't be turning and burning if you offloaded it to the GPU. Especially at that time, encoding with CUDA produced poor results with higher power consumption in nearly the same timeframe compared to mid range CPUs at the time. Again, a Magny-Cours or 6C/12T Westmere would've been much better if you were even using the CPUs.

Well thank god thats sorted then. Want a biscuit?

 

[jacktesterson]

Simple answer:

You will be fine.

 

[Firetrak]

Simple answer:

You will be fine.

Cheers

 

[escrow4]

I wouldn't game on less than 4 cores in 2015. The writing is on the wall, its like Core 2 vs Core 2 Quad. You could upgrade, but why not spend an extra $60 now? Even on a locked i5?

 

[Firetrak]

I wouldn't game on less than 4 cores in 2015. The writing is on the wall, its like Core 2 vs Core 2 Quad. You could upgrade, but why not spend an extra $60 now? Even on a locked i5?

Yeah I am leaning that way myself, its a better deal to go with 4 core I think.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

My laptop is a core 2 duo and while it can play most games now even if at low settings, its the speed of the whole setup that drives me more crazy.
.

Solid state drives, check 'em out.

 

[Firetrak]

Solid state drives, check 'em out.

Yeap something i'll prob do to keep it running, my kids mostly use it for minecraft now or watching bbc iplayer via dns

 

[john5220]

I have seen benchmarks where an i3 with HT disabled the pentium G gets 30 fps in battlefield 4. And the i3 with hyper threading gets 60 fps and guess what an i5 also gets about the same.

The thing about games especially like BF4 and 3 is that it just need a CPU to do 4 threads it does not really matter if its slow. It just needs to get some stuff done on 2 extra threads and the fps goes up butter smooth. To best explain it is like 2 threads has to go from Florida to Russia, but 4 threads you can leave the 2 entity in Russia so no matter how much slower it is in Russia, its going to be night and day difference regardless.

 

[Firetrak]

Actually kind of looking at the AMD FX-6300 Vishera 6-Core 3.5GHz now basically same price as the I3 but its 6 cores. Anyone have experience with this cpu?

 

[Yuriman]

Actually kind of looking at the AMD FX-6300 Vishera 6-Core 3.5GHz now basically same price as the I3 but its 6 cores. Anyone have experience with this cpu?

Tons of experience, it's a commonly discussed CPU. It's a great value if you overclock.

See here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1281?vs=1197

i3 has 50-60% higher single threaded performance, while the FX-6300 is around 20% faster than intel's dual if you load up all 6 threads. Stock vs stock I'd take the i3, but you can often get 20-25% more performance out of an overclocked 6300.

 

[Lepton87]

Actually kind of looking at the AMD FX-6300 Vishera 6-Core 3.5GHz now basically same price as the I3 but its 6 cores. Anyone have experience with this cpu?

Basically you trade ST performance for MT performance, choose whatever is more important to you. Of course also remember that you do pay the price of more power consumption by going with more cores on a bigger node.

http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1281?vs=1197


it seems that ST penalty by going with AMD is bigger than MT penalty by going with Intel

 

[escrow4]

I have seen benchmarks where an i3 with HT disabled the pentium G gets 30 fps in battlefield 4. And the i3 with hyper threading gets 60 fps and guess what an i5 also gets about the same.

The thing about games especially like BF4 and 3 is that it just need a CPU to do 4 threads it does not really matter if its slow. It just needs to get some stuff done on 2 extra threads and the fps goes up butter smooth. To best explain it is like 2 threads has to go from Florida to Russia, but 4 threads you can leave the 2 entity in Russia so no matter how much slower it is in Russia, its going to be night and day difference regardless.

Smoothness is when you have an extra core or 2 on deck in reserve. With Crysis 3 the FPS variance was way more stable with a 3930K than a 4770, you could feel a difference in the "smoothness", especially when the game opened up to second level. Right now with these consoles it will be more about cores first than clock speed.

 

[Firetrak]

Great now i'm undecided again, thanks guys haha.

Just looked here and it seems in most scenarios the FX-6300 works better. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/699?vs=1192

Most of what I do is using MT, some stuff in single. But I think overall cost to performance the AMD wins out.

 

[Firetrak]

Smoothness is when you have an extra core or 2 on deck in reserve. With Crysis 3 the FPS variance was way more stable with a 3930K than a 4770, you could feel a difference in the "smoothness", especially when the game opened up to second level. Right now with these consoles it will be more about cores first than clock speed.

Yeah you notice that with phones as well, with the Note 4 going with 8 cores now.

 

[SickBeast]

Great now i'm undecided again, thanks guys haha.

Just looked here and it seems in most scenarios the FX-6300 works better. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/699?vs=1192

Most of what I do is using MT, some stuff in single. But I think overall cost to performance the AMD wins out.

In the OP you asked about games. In games the Pentium G3258 combo for $75 from Newegg is unbeatable. The benchmarks you linked to are really limited and don't reflect what most people would do with a computer.

I really woudn't go with AMD. They haven't had a competitive CPU since before Bulldozer. You will need a bigger PSU if you go with AMD and you will also have way more heat to deal with. AMD CPUs also consume a lot more power. I just don't see the need for AMD. On the low end Intel is killing them with the G3258 and for anything that needs more power you can get an unlocked i5 for ~$200 that will utterly destroy anything that AMD has even dreamed of selling.

Also remember that a 6-core AMD CPU is really a triple core and an 8-core AMD CPU is really a quad core. The AMD cores are really castrated. The hexacore will only have 3 FPUs which really limits the performance, particularly in games.

 

[Yuriman]

I don't think it's quite as bad as SickBeast puts it. For the price, AMD CPUs are not bad.

Keep in mind though, that AM3 is an ancient socket which lacks PCIe 3.0, has slower USB/SATA, and old audio codecs. I'd consider an FX-6300 over an i3 if you plan to overclock, the single-threaded performance of stock AMD CPUs is somewhat lacking and will be noticeable in some games - you can't overclock an i3, so that's what really levels the playing field. An FX-8310 costs about the same as an i3, overclocks as well as an FX-6xxx, and slaughters an i3 in multithreaded performance. An i3 will still beat it in most games (Crysis 3 excluded) and draw less power (1/3 to 1/4 as much), but in encoding and such the FX is a tremendous amount of CPU for $125.

i3's have quicksync and that may swing it back in the other direction though.

 

[crashtech]

AMD presents compelling alternatives on the lower end with the FX-6300 and the 860K, as long as one is willing to overclock. Perhaps there are also a few niche cases where high thread count loads are anticipated and the 83xx series Vishera can shine, but this is not the usual case for the majority of users. Intel is a really safe choice right now, emphatically so for those who don't wish to overclock or who only overclock a little.

 

[Firetrak]

I never overclock. So I think its swinging back to the I3 then in a few months upgrade to the I5, Looked on the Anandtech benchmarks and the I3 and FX6300 are pretty much neck and neck.

But the biggest draw for me with the I3 is that the entire setup will be more scalable.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I don't think it's quite as bad as SickBeast puts it. For the price, AMD CPUs are not bad.

Keep in mind though, that AM3 is an ancient socket which lacks PCIe 3.0, has slower USB/SATA, and old audio codecs. I'd consider an FX-6300 over an i3 if you plan to overclock, the single-threaded performance of stock AMD CPUs is somewhat lacking and will be noticeable in some games - you can't overclock an i3, so that's what really levels the playing field. An FX-8310 costs about the same as an i3, overclocks as well as an FX-6xxx, and slaughters an i3 in multithreaded performance. An i3 will still beat it in most games (Crysis 3 excluded) and draw less power (1/3 to 1/4 as much), but in encoding and such the FX is a tremendous amount of CPU for $125.

i3's have quicksync and that may swing it back in the other direction though.

Yeah, but there's no performance difference between PCIE-2.0 and PCIE-3.0 with any single card out there right now, is there? For SLI/CF I can't remember if it's a bottleneck on 2 cards or 3, but I think there's no difference for 1 card.