Is a i3-2100 too weak to drive an HD 6950 1GB?

[OCNewbie]

I'm in the process of buying parts for my friend to put together a system. I'm currently only lacking a motherboard and processor. I have already purchased him a Radeon 6950 1GB. Fry's will have i3-2100's for $80 tomorrow, so I'm thinking about picking one of those up, and hopefully a cheapie motherboard to go along with it.

So, will the i3-2100 be able to sufficiently drive the 6950 1GB @ 1920x1080?

I'm getting close to his budget cap, so it's going to be really difficult squeezing in a i5-2500k AND a decent motherboard without a Fry's or Microcenter within ~7 hours of where I live, so I'm thinking maybe the i3-2100 should suffice for now. I have a friend that "might" be able to get to a Fry's for me, so that's why I ask.

 

[Absolution75]

I'm pretty sure that the i3-2100 beats the AMD quad core 965 in almost all (except highly threaded) benchmarks, so I would assume it would be sufficient.

You'll likely be GPU limited at that resolution anyawy.

 

[Necc]

Get it for him, if he does feel the cpu is limiting his 6950 he can swap it for a i5 2500 anytime (a.k.a he has an upgrade path).

It would be also very helpful to know what kind of games does he play(?)

 

[OCNewbie]

As of now, should mostly be WoW. He may get into Left for Dead, and he'll definitely play Diablo 3 when it comes out. He's playing WoW right now on a Dell i1564 laptop with an Intel GMA accelerator. Needless to say, it runs like doggy poo. So far I've got about $355 ($335 if he gets a $20 rebate back) into it, and his budget is around ~$600. So I have approx $250 to spend on a mobo + cpu.

 

[Zap]

Get it for him, if he does feel the cpu is limiting his 6950 he can swap it for a i5 2500 anytime (a.k.a he has an upgrade path).

This was my first thought.

As of now, should mostly be WoW. He may get into Left for Dead, and he'll definitely play Diablo 3 when it comes out. He's playing WoW right now on a Dell i1564 laptop with an Intel GMA accelerator. Needless to say, it runs like doggy poo.

I have a good idea of how his WoW experience is like. I've "played" WoW (as in ran it, hit CTRL-R and laughed) on my Atom-without-ION netbook, as well as my Intel CULV-with-IGP notebook I'm typing this on. Painful.

His WoW experience should shoot through the roof with a Core i3 2100 and Radeon 6950. It should also handle the other games mentioned with aplomb.

 

[Necc]

His WoW experience should shoot through the roof with a Core i3 2100 and Radeon 6950. It should also handle the other games mentioned with aplomb.

I 2nd that.

 

[Bateluer]

His WoW experience should shoot through the roof with a Core i3 2100 and Radeon 6950. It should also handle the other games mentioned with aplomb.

This. An i3 and 6950 will handle WoW without breaking a sweat.

 

[BFG10K]

That processor is absolutely fine; it has a high clock speed and a high IPC due to its Sandy Bridge architecture.

In the vast majority of games of it’ll be faster than an i5 750; even in some newer titles it’s faster: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-2120-2100_5.html#sect0

 

[frozentundra123456]

Cant argue with any of these posts. I really dont understand how the i3 performs so well with only 2 physical cores though. But apparently it does based on the benchmarks.

Personally, if I got a new comp, I would want a quad core for future proofing. However, like someone said, I guess he could upgrade the CPU later though.

 

[Zap]

Cant argue with any of these posts. I really dont understand how the i3 performs so well with only 2 physical cores though. But apparently it does based on the benchmarks.

1) HyperThreading for pseudo quad cores.

2) Most games do not scale well or require more than two cores, so unless you were doing some monster multitasking while you game....

Basically it is like not understanding why games don't magically run "better" on a system with 16GB RAM versus an otherwise identical system with only 4GB RAM.

 

[Spikesoldier]

get the i3 K model and OC the sheet out of it. the i3 is a cool cpu so you can hit 4.0 or 4.2 on the stock cooler with ease.

my older i3 530 @ 4.4 played everything but BFBC2 and Metro 2033 nearly the same as my i5 750 @ 4.0.

 

[OCNewbie]

get the i3 K model and OC the sheet out of it. the i3 is a cool cpu so you can hit 4.0 or 4.2 on the stock cooler with ease.

The i3-2100 is $80 at Fry's now, so that's why I was leaning towards purchasing it =) I'm assuming the "K" variant is not the same price, or even available yet, is it?

 

[Zap]

There is a rumor of Intel potentially releasing a Core i3 2120K or something like that. So, no, it is not available for sale at this time. However, if it ever sees the light of day, it would probably be the most epic dual core CPU ever!