I3 2100 vs 960T vs FX4100

[Lycan_89]

Hy there guys,


I'm going to build myself a new rig so I'll need your help with choosing from these 3 budget CPUs: i3 2100 or 960T or FX4100 😱 . My choice is limited to these 3 CPUs.


The target is a Diablo 3/DoTa 2/Darksiders 2/Warcraft 3 and some other old games mainstream gaming rig/internet browsing PC.

I don't really know how to OC but I will learn quickly if I feel the need to get some more juice out of those AMD CPUs. I know that the i3 CPU will not be able to get OCed.

I want my build to last for at least 5 years. I'm going to play ONLY the games mentioned above about 5-6 hrs a week (not really a gamer)

The display will be a BENQ 22" FullHD LED monitor.




The store is www.emag.ro and my build so far looks like this:

http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/4433/123tov.jpg



PS: now I work and play on an ASUS notebok:

Intel Core i5 2430M 2.40GHz, 4GB DDR3 1333 MHz, WD 750GB SATA2 HDD, nVidia GeForce GT 520MX 1GB

 

[Gamer Dude]

That was probably the funniest thing ever. It was already funny, because he thought that chart was a benchmark, and this was just the icing on the cake. Now all he can do is spew insults everywhere until he gets modded

The chart just was updated today yesterday it was a different story this is a case in point proof in the making that Intel fanboys cannot claim there is no upgrade path for AMD when PC times change day to day tomorrow there could be an upgrade path for Intel and AMD etc.

 

[sarinaide]

Well in this instance the OP can move up to a sandybridge i5 or i7, alternatively an ivy bridge cpu when released. FX yes you can go up to a Piledriver, and according to AMD's in house representatives it will be better than Bulldozer.

Stop being such a brand pony and buy what is better for your buck, Intel chips are better right now.

 

[Gamer Dude]

Well in this instance the OP can move up to a sandybridge i5 or i7, alternatively an ivy bridge cpu when released. FX yes you can go up to a Piledriver, and according to AMD's in house representatives it will be better than Bulldozer.

Stop being such a brand pony and buy what is better for your buck, Intel chips are better right now.

The point is that logic you have stated is a fail do to things change day to day and I hardly think anyone is going to buy an core i3 or any CPU for that matter as an upgrade today only to upgrade again the next day but it will likely be a year or more down the road at which point anything goes.

 

[rds1220]

The point is that logic you have stated is a fail do to things change day to day and I hardly think anyone is going to buy an core i3 or any CPU for that matter as an upgrade today only to upgrade again the next day but it will likely be a year or more down the road at which point anything goes.

You might not think that but plenty of other people think differently. Most who do research will end up buying an I3 over a Bulldozer once they see how bad the Bulldozer is. Noone buys I3's huh, I've done more office builds with an I3 than a Bulldozer.

 

[sarinaide]

i3 builds are great for office builds or budget line rigs, it gives the owners a chance to upgrade to the higher end chips on both the SB and IB architectures a year or so down the line. Why is that flawed, it is a fact of life you may not have funds now, upgrade later when you have.

 

[rds1220]

i3 builds are great for office builds or budget line rigs, it gives the owners a chance to upgrade to the higher end chips on both the SB and IB architectures a year or so down the line. Why is that flawed, it is a fact of life you may not have funds now, upgrade later when you have.

It's good even with a cheap gaming build. If you don't have the money a dual core will be good enough for at least a little while until you can upgrade. Games still use only two or three cores so an I3 will work. It will be limited in CPU intensive games but again it will work fine. I agree I don't see how it's flawed it's good enough for gaming and fine for home/office work. I would take an I3 in a build over a Bulldozer any day.

 

[Robi_g]

and only 65W tdp from the i3 compared to 95W before OCing of the 960t

 

[carbonstyle72]

I've allways been a bit of an AMD fanboy, my current rig being a 1090t &6970. at the moment, I would definitely reccomend the i3, and a Z68 motherboard. It'd mean that you wouldn't have to buy a new board if you want to get something faster in 3 years- You'd get a Ivy Bridge i7, and be laughing.

 

[sarinaide]

It's good even with a cheap gaming build. If you don't have the money a dual core will be good enough for at least a little while until you can upgrade. Games still use only two or three cores so an I3 will work. It will be limited in CPU intensive games but again it will work fine. I agree I don't see how it's flawed it's good enough for gaming and fine for home/office work. I would take an I3 in a build over a Bulldozer any day.

I have used, built and seen what the i3 is capable of, the problem is that people have dual core myopia. There is a sentiment that 4 cores is legitimately better than a dual core with SMT. That is probably only 50% correct notwithstanding the fact that the said dualcore gets through more work per clock in comparison to the older quads. The major driver for my i3 recommendation is that the i3 offers newer technology at a cheaper price and you have a upgrade path to contemporary quads down the line, the age of the dual core is far from dead.

 

[jessterman21]

I've allways been a bit of an AMD fanboy, my current rig being a 1090t &6970. at the moment, I would definitely reccomend the i3, and a Z68 motherboard. It'd mean that you wouldn't have to buy a new board if you want to get something faster in 3 years- You'd get a Ivy Bridge i7, and be laughing.

+1

$125 CPU that delivers top-tier gaming + a drop-in upgrade to the current strongest quad down the road = NO BRAINER, even for an AMD fan like myself.

 

[rds1220]

I have used, built and seen what the i3 is capable of, the problem is that people have dual core myopia. There is a sentiment that 4 cores is legitimately better than a dual core with SMT. That is probably only 50% correct notwithstanding the fact that the said dualcore gets through more work per clock in comparison to the older quads. The major driver for my i3 recommendation is that the i3 offers newer technology at a cheaper price and you have a upgrade path to contemporary quads down the line, the age of the dual core is far from dead.

I agree. To many people suffer from "more cores is better." They think they NEED atleast a four core CPU to do whatever they need to do with their computer. The I3 might not be the greatest Sandy Bridge CPU but it's still an all around a very good CPU. Like I said it can do office home work, play movies (for home theatre) and play most games just fine.

 

[noob2222]

If you just OC the 960t it will be better than the i3.

That list of games isn't good, they are not all on Intel's payroll. you can only use Intel sponsored games for testing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havok_(software)

http://game-on.intel.com/eng/games/default.aspx

Anything not on either list is not a valid game, the others are 100% fake.
Batman, L4D, Mafia II, Resident evil 5, Stalker, AvP, Battleforge, Metro 2033, lost planet 2, hawx 2, civ V, Dirt 3 TW:showgun 2, F1 2010 and Dues ex are not allowed to be benchmarked.

You can use crysis, farcry 2, world in conflict, wolfenstein, and just cause 2.

 

[noob2222]

Right keep telling yourself that. Yea it has to be a giant conspiracy against AMD. Next you'll be telling us aliens are real or 9/11 was an inside job. Or my favorite the Holocaust never happened. All of the above are about as dumb as what you said.

http://funnydemotivationalposters.c...nal-poster-vpdr2gau2f-CONSPIRACY-THEORIES.jpg

who said anything about a conspiracy? Intel openly admits it. I am just saying we should only test with Intel games to speed things up. It will be the nail in AMD's coffin, GO BIG BLUE.

 

[rds1220]

Ok. You made it sound like you were saying that Intel pays off gaming companies and benchmark websites (like anandtech, as people have suggested here many times). So many times people have made dumb comments like gaming developers make games to favor Intel's archit on purpose. Another one I like is Intel pays off benchmarking websites like anandtech to skew benchmark results in favor of Intel.

 

[sarinaide]

So now we are accusing games for AMD's performance problems, first it was windows now the joy that is games.

Is it just me or is it sad that AMD are trying to throw muscle quads and beyond to try and prove that the i3 is worse off, I am sure sooner or later a 1.2 billion transistor or more chip will blow away a i3 and the world will be normal again.

 

[rds1220]

Who are you talking to sarinaide?

 

[sarinaide]

I think it was Noob, whoever was talking about games favoring intel chips

 

[noob2222]

I think it was Noob, whoever was talking about games favoring intel chips

not games favoring intel chips, games designed by Intel at the helm, there is a difference, about 20 fps or more.

 

[sarinaide]

This has been common in games that are either Nvidia or ATI/AMD supported, this however doens't detract from the fact that AMD have a weak performing chip, slower than the ones they replaced. Essentially excuses can be made but AMD are as responsible for not allowing choice in the market.

It has been said before, if you buy because of a brand regardless of performance, it makes you a diehard, that is not a justification to others to change what they use or prospective buyers that want bang for buck to support "Big Red" because we want to stop this "Big Blue" monolith. At some point you have to draw a line and say it is the obligation on AMD to give the public a high performance chip relative to the competition. Instead they run off into the GPU arena. This is why I want the Nvidia cards to be amazing.

AMD is a processor company they should stop milking ATI while pandering around with GPU's when they ought to be making performance desktop chips.

 

[sarinaide]

Back to the topic, of the choices I would eliminate the 960T on the basis of old architecture, going back to go forward is not a good option that leaves the i3 2100 and FX 4100.

The FX 4100 is priced right, has the best price/performance ratio of the FX chips and has all the modern features of chips today, with the bonus of unlocked multipliers.

The i3 2100 may be limited but the fact it cannot be unlocked, that doesn't detract from the fact that it is the best performing chip of the two with far better efficiency ratings.

It all comes down to choice, whatever makes you happy at the end.

 

[esrever]

Im not sure why the architecture's age matters when the chip is still good.

the 960t will out perform the fx in just about everything.

the 960 will be better at multithreaded programs than the i3 and worse at less threaded programs.

If they made a p4 that ran efficiently at 100ghz, it wouldn't matter if the architecture is old, it would still beat any chip on the market right now.

 

[Goldengoose]

This thread is crazy. Great read however.

 

[noob2222]

This has been common in games that are either Nvidia or ATI/AMD supported, this however doens't detract from the fact that AMD have a weak performing chip, slower than the ones they replaced. Essentially excuses can be made but AMD are as responsible for not allowing choice in the market.

It has been said before, if you buy because of a brand regardless of performance, it makes you a diehard, that is not a justification to others to change what they use or prospective buyers that want bang for buck to support "Big Red" because we want to stop this "Big Blue" monolith. At some point you have to draw a line and say it is the obligation on AMD to give the public a high performance chip relative to the competition. Instead they run off into the GPU arena. This is why I want the Nvidia cards to be amazing.

AMD is a processor company they should stop milking ATI while pandering around with GPU's when they ought to be making performance desktop chips.

So youd rather amd only play ball with a multi-billion dollar corrupt company that doesn't and will not play fair? how can amd make a chip that performs well on intel's software? Intel won't allow it, pain and simple, and we are back to "look at this game, how well it does on intel, don't pay attention to the games that show equal performance or slight favor to AMD"

Thats not something AMD can win, ever. Why do you think they "aren't competing with Intel" anymore. They dang sure can't afford another lawsuit.

 

[sarinaide]

Thats a shock, you think that a multi billion corporate monolith will get anywhere without being ruthless or underhanded, thats new to me. Did you expect them to be nice to everyone with party hats, balloons and champaigne, ITS BUSINESS and its SERIOUS. AMD had there chance when parading around their super chips when Intel had ponies, yet AMD neglected the main market namely business/office and home PC segment which is pretty much lost to them now, made worse by the fact they cannot get reasonable performance in comparison to their competitor, yet now they spend most of the resources in the GPU market, considering they did force ATI to sellout.

Intel software, I don't really know what you mean by that, intel motherboards will support written firmware but I don't recall intel making software. If you are refering to Microsoft, there is another cut throat multi billion dollar monolith. Is it microsofts fault for Bulldozer not working properly, at the end of the day it is just another excuse. Its a sad plight but I don't in anyway feel obligated to intel, amd, nvidia or ATI/AMD, I just buy whats best for my budget.

 

[sarinaide]

Why is anyone still here responding to noob's posts?

You guys are getting trololololol'd

I didn't realize that, guess after reading the entire thread it makes sense now. Only a troll could be so blindly inlove with AMD.