Which would run BF3 using less power - the i3-2100 or i5-2400?

[janas19]

Hello AT people. This is kind of a specific question, and right now I am too tired to research it myself. So I turn to you.

I'm interested in which CPU, in a very specific scenario of a multi-threaded modern game such as BF3, would use less power. I am NOT asking which one would run COOLER mind you - temps will vary depending on cooling systems. I specifically am looking for input on which one would require less power to perform the computations. Imagine if you had two computers playing BF3 with all the exact same hardware, and with the exact same game settings, and (hypothetically) playing the exact same games, and the only difference was one had an i3-2100, and one had and i5-2400, which of the two machines would have sipped less power off the grid? Would the difference between the total wattage used be, say, less than 5%?

Skipping a whole lot of wordy details about how I draw my conclusions on these things, my guess would be the i3-2100 would actually use less power, because HyperThreading would make use of 2 cores more efficiently than the i5 would with four cores.

Can anyone answer this question?

 

[Blastman]

The i3-2100 will use less power.

If you're rendering a multithreaded job/task that can be finished/completed and the i5-2400 can finish the job faster than a i3-2100, it can match or beat the i3 in power used to finish that task. For eg in this Cinebench test, the i5-2400 completed the task faster than the i3-2100 so it actually used slightly less power to complete the Cinebench task.

But if you're constantly running/loading the processors over time like in BF3, then the i3 will use less power.

 

[janas19]

The i3-2100 will use less power.

If you're rendering a multithreaded job/task that can be finished/completed and the i5-2400 can finish the job faster than a i3-2100, it can match or beat the i3 in power used to finish that task. For eg in this Cinebench test, the i5-2400 completed the task faster than the i3-2100 so it actually used slightly less power to complete the Cinebench task.

But if you're constantly running/loading the processors over time like in BF3, then the i3 will use less power.

Ah, I see. That makes sense. That answers my question perfectly. Thank you.