How much of a gain would an Intel i3 be over an AMD X2 6000?

[JEDI]

Microcenter has Intel Core i3 2100 3.1ghz Processor (boxed) & MSI H61M-E33 Motherboard for $99.99.

I current have an Amd X2 6000 (3ghz).

my purpose in upgrading: To play Diablo III

How much of a gain would it be?

 

[Vesku]

Pretty significant, http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/28?vs=289

Though I'd bump it up to one of the quad-core Sandybridge models if you can afford it.

 

[JEDI]

Pretty significant, http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/28?vs=289

Though I'd bump it up to one of the quad-core Sandybridge models if you can afford it.

thx!

i want best bang for the buck upgrades. i dont think i can beat $99 for i3 SandyBridge AND mobo.

of course is the upgrade even neccessary to play Diablo III?

 

[Arkadrel]

of course is the upgrade even neccessary to play Diablo III?

I doubt it... Blizzard are usually good about minimum settings.
I dont think you ll need to much in the sense of a GPU either.

ofc this all depends on wheater you play at 1680x or at 2560x resoultions?
(gpu wise atleast)



How high can you Overclock it? 3.5ghz? or so... even though its a dual core, its probably enough to play DIABLO 3

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/amd_6000/18.htm

What speed was I able to achieve that was prime stable without having to envenom too many volts, lower the multiplier and decrease the HT? That was FSB 230 x 15, HT5, NB 1.25v, SB 1.55, HT 1.3v. At these settings the system was prime stable for 24 hours. Overclocking did make a difference in performance in some benchmarks and in others not enough to talk about.

 

[VirtualLarry]

How high can you Overclock it? 3.5ghz? or so... even though its a dual core, its probably enough to play DIABLO 3

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/amd_6000/18.htm

Can't overclock the SB i3's.

 

[Arkadrel]

@VirtualLarry

I ment his older AMD cpu, the "Amd X2 6000 (3ghz)".
A small overclock to 3.5ghz probably wouldnt do wonders, but it could help abit.


Question is if "Diablo III" needs more than a AMD ~3.5ghz dual core.
*IF* it does, he ll need to buy a new cpu to play the game,
*IF* it doesnt, maybe he can get by with the cpu he currently has.

How much of a gain would it be?

No idea... dont think there are system spec requirements by blizzard for Diablo III yet, or any benchmarking tools. At best people could speculate based on cpu vs cpu in other benchmarks and hope, diablo III would show simular gains.

 

[VirtualLarry]

@VirtualLarry

I ment his older AMD cpu, the "Amd X2 6000 (3ghz)".
A small overclock to 3.5ghz probably wouldnt do wonders, but it could help abit.

Those X2 6000+ are already running at the limit of thermals and power. They don't have any headroom, that I know of.

 

[toolbag]

Microcenter has Intel Core i3 2100 3.1ghz Processor (boxed) & MSI H61M-E33 Motherboard for $99.99.

I current have an Amd X2 6000 (3ghz).

my purpose in upgrading: To play Diablo III

How much of a gain would it be?

Are you sure that's not just the cpu cost? $99 for the cpu in store only pick up is what I see.

Adding a motherboard to that would seem impossible marketing wise.

 

[tweakboy]

I big time noticeable gain in performance. Do the upgrade you will thank yourself. wow 99 dollars for mobo and cpu lol, wow dats the deal of the decade lol gg and gl

 

[ChappedStick]

Are you sure that's not just the cpu cost? $99 for the cpu in store only pick up is what I see.

Adding a motherboard to that would seem impossible marketing wise.

Look closer...when you buy both you get a discount that covers the cost of the motherboard and $40 off of the cpu.

 

[aigomorla]

u ever intend to sli or xfire?

because the intel platform will allow both if u have 2 pci slots.

If you never scale cards, go with the cheaper and spend the most possible on a single gpu.

That will make your gaming experience a ton better.

 

[spacejamz]

deal is sold out in my neck of the woods...(Dallas)...would love to have this a secondary system...

 

[BD231]

Yeah I'd actually pay someone to pick up this deal for me if they were close to a store, good grab for sure.

 

[Mugenx]

I would say pretty significant. I just built the MC i3 combo and compared it with my professor/dean Q9650 + REX setup and this i3 DUAL spanks the 775 QUAD everything and both setup at stock.

i3 DUAL over 775 QUAD is pretty significant. Me likey!

Just wow.

Quick general benching is as follow:
FPS and gaming is better with the i3. Compression is better with the i3. Encoding is neck and neck. Snappy system is neck and neck. Multitasking is better with i3.

This is not AMD though like you originally asked for. My last days with AMD was during the 939 days. Sorry if I somehow derailed your topic OP.

 

[tweakboy]

u ever intend to sli or xfire?

because the intel platform will allow both if u have 2 pci slots.

If you never scale cards, go with the cheaper and spend the most possible on a single gpu.

That will make your gaming experience a ton better.

Oh no way,, I can use SLI ? I know I could use Xfire.. Dont I need amd chipset for dat ?

 

[cusideabelincoln]

I doubt it... Blizzard are usually good about minimum settings.
I dont think you ll need to much in the sense of a GPU either.

ofc this all depends on wheater you play at 1680x or at 2560x resoultions?
(gpu wise atleast)



How high can you Overclock it? 3.5ghz? or so... even though its a dual core, its probably enough to play DIABLO 3

It's a Blizzard game so he'll want more CPU power if he wants the best performance. The i3 would be a substantial upgrade, as the game will most likely be heavily influenced by single-threaded performance. And the i3 also has much better multi-threaded performance to boot, so it's a lot faster in both areas.

And he would be lucky to overclock his current chip to 3.2 GHz. Not many Athlon X2s went beyond 3.2 Ghz. 3.5 GHz, for all intents and purposes, simply isn't possible.

 

[nenforcer]

You can't SLI or Crossfire on an MSI H61M-E33 since its a MicroATX board with only a single PCI-E x16 slot.

Also, Diablo ]I[ isn't expected to be out until this fall, correct? Despite the temptation to upgrade now, I wouldn't bother until the game is actually out so you can see the performance comparisons.

 

[StinkyPinky]

The i3 is way ahead. $99 is a no brainer imo. What a deal.

 

[SmCaudata]

That board is farily limited in a number of ways, but hey, it's free.

In all honesty though, if you are waiting for Diablo III I'd wait. Blizzard is notorius for delays and I expect Q1-Q2 of 2012 for Diablo III.

MC has had free AMD motherboards (or $40 off of a nice one) for a while. My guess is that by the time Diablo III launches $99 will get you quite a bit more. Who knows, maybe Blizzard will make the game scale very well with cores and you will want the $99 4 core part instead (Phenom 840 currently at MC in that price range.)

The upgrade itself is huge and the deal is good, but I just thought I'd put in some other food for thought. MC did have bundle specials with the SB launch that had motherboards $50 less than newegg prices. They may run future Intel bundles as well.

 

[infoiltrator]

You can't get a decent old board and CPU for a $100, though long gone by now.

 

[magomago]

FYI: the X2 6000+ has very limited headroom based on my experience. I couldn't even get 100mhz more out of mine. However, I had a relatively junk board so that may have been it. There was only a 6400+ after that, but performance was basically identical to the X2 6000+.

However it was a great CPU and I sat on that system for a long time before moving to an i5.

IMO if you don't want to spend money, I would wait until you find out what it takes to TRULY run D3. These deals always come around. For the period of time in which they are released they are unbeatable, but if history is any indication in this market, you will see that by the end of the year there will be other similar great deals.

 

[byteman99]

It should be a very large gain. But I think you should wait on upgrading if you dont need to do it right now. Diablo 3 might not even get released this year and by that time you could probably pick up a better set up for the same price. But if you have the itch now I dont think you can go wrong with that.


Also those Athlons are horrible at overclocking. I could only get mine up to 3.4ghz and that was one of the highest i seen people getting.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Considering going from an x2 @2.4ghz to a Q8200 at stock 2.33ghz was a huge upgrade, and the i7 arch being much faster than Core2, I'd guess it's probably about 70-100% faster clock for clock. Maybe more in some cases.