Is Intel's Core i3-530 Fast Enough For Performance Gaming?

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]ram1009[/nom]The title of page 2 is: " Two $350 platforms". What form of math are we using when the GPU costs nearly that much?[/citation]

Did you look at what's on the page? Motherboard CPU RAM

 

[marraco]

A former article showed that altougth then Nvidia had the fatest cards with the i5/i7, the ATI ones performed better with slower processors.

Is time to repeat it with Geforce 4xx and ATI 5xxx

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Crashman,

So, to answer the question of this topic, is the answer yes?

 

[11adnan]

Impressive article,I think this may change budget plan for gamers.So HEY GAMERS.........from world wide you will spend less but performance feel will be high-end like.

 

[astrodudepsu]

My only comment would be to have tested more CPU intensive games, but it's been said already.

 

[brennon7]

EYEFINITY BENCHMARKS FROM NOW ON. JUST DO IT ALREADY.

 

[nashvilleninja]

This article just convinced me to purchase an i3 system

 

[thegreathuntingdolphin]

Great article! It shows that gamers on a budget should avoid the more expensive CPUs. I have seen far too many people build a cheaper gaming rig (with little intensive cpu use) and use a core i5 750 or core i7 and then get an ATI 5770...fail.

 

[murdoc]

[citation][nom]abhishekk89[/nom]if ur sole purpose is just gaming i'd go for a dual core... but since i do a lot more than just gaming quad's my way..[/citation]


I concur. It depends on the game that you're playing. In games like Battlefield Bad Company 2, having 4 cores really matters. I'm on an E8400 3.84ghz, 4gb ram with Sapphire 5850 1gb and my frames at MOST is 65 at resolution 1680 x 1050. Under heavy battle environments my frames drop to as low as 25 which literally causes stuttering. The Quad helps the physics rendering which I hope will bring my frames up to a minimum of 50 frames so I can get smooth frames no matter what the conditions are.

 

[C00lIT]

Dont like the benchmarks because by the end of 2010 most new games will take advantage of quad's therefor the I3 will expire quickly...

I would have love to seen the Athlon II 630 into it and 2 additional benchies Bad Company2 and GTA4

 

[xxicrimsonixx]

It saddens me that these games do not appear to have quad core support -.-

Guess I am sticking with my q9550 for another 3-5 years -.-

 

[popcornmachine]

Yes it is true that CPU is not a limiting factor in gaming, as long as you have enough GPU.

And while the I3 is very energy efficient, it seems silly to buy a built in GPU for a gamming system that will never be used. Unless I'm wrong and both it and a card can be used together. That might be nice.

Also, instead of going $15 cheaper for the X3 chip, you could have gone just $11 more than the I3 and gotten a AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition at 3.0GHz. Very overclockable from what I've read.

 

[timobkg]

Very useful article, thanks. It's good to remember that among all the excitement of faster and better CPUs, they're not going to make a difference if what you care most about is gaming.

 

[matt314]

Would the results be any different using a 5870 instead of a 5850? I was thinking of making a i5-750/5870 build but if the i3 is more than enough, I'll save myself the money.

 

[Onus]

Kinda leaves the monthly "Best CPU for the Money" articles meaningless....

I disagree. There's a point of diminishing returns, and yes, at the high end, there turns out to be no practical difference. At the low end, however, there ARE bottlenecks, and how high up the tiered list you need to go can be of interest, especially to an upgrader.
For example, a 4850e bottlenecks a HD4670 at 1440x900.
Perhaps it would be appropriate to add some productivity benchmarks to the CPU comparison, where there will likely be visible differences every step of the way.

 

[caamsa]

After looking at all the gaming benchmarks I gotta ask, why bother over clocking your CPU? It appears that the return you get in FPS are pretty low. At least for this build.

 

[micky_lund]

gaming at such a low budget would not involve a 5850

 

[Onus]

gaming at such a low budget would not involve a 5850

I think the whole point of this article was to show that on a limited budget, you can now get away with going really cheap on the CPU, if it will let you get a decent GPU like a HD5850. RAM and mobo would be the same (whether or not you overclock; noting caamsa's observation [for the tested games]), and you can pick up a 500W Earthwatts PSU (the older one) for only $45 right now.
To really make this point though, I'd like to see an Athlon II X3 or even a X2, which is even cheaper. The i3 looks very overpriced for what you get, unless you aren't a gamer and plan to use the IGP. On the Intel side, for the benefit of upgraders, look at yesteryear's OC chips like the e5200 or e2180 and see if they produce playable FPS with that HD5850.

 

[ryan222h]

What happened to the FSX benchmark? This powerful game/application is particularly CPU bound, and many people build systems just for this program. Would be nice to see benchmarks for other than first person shooters once in a while. Just my two cents...

 

[duk3]

Rather disappointing that a $120 processor beats a $500 processor...

 

[liquidsnake718]

Nice but it would have been GREAT if we saw this i3 against a core2duo e8500 AND an older Q6600 or another great gaming quad. Great reference and good choice of a GPU over the new GTXs as these cards and testing samples are the most "realistic" buys that a current consumer might buy for a decent mid-ranged system with enough grunt to take on a lower high end system. It just shows that OCing is now more common than ever before and readily available with almost all new motherboards, gpu's and cpu's.

 

[Guest]

Proof that game and gpu development are going much slower than cpu development, technologically. I think Nvidia and ATI both missed an iteration of moore's law somewhere in there. Like maybe between the radeon 1xxx and 4xxx series? And how long were the 8800gt/9800gt and 8800gs/9600gso viable purchases? Too long, I think. And on the game front, I think too many are being developed for console ports. Well, on the bright side, maybe intel's 2018 atom-like processor will be so far ahead of ATI and NVIDIA that it'll run Crysis 5.

 

[AZRAELCRUZ]

Rather disappointing that a $120 processor beats a $500 processor..

thats the real world test......

 

[billj214]

I don't think people will care that a lesser CPU will work with a $300 video card, if they have the $300 for a video card they will probably have $50-$100 more for a CPU that says Core i7 and not i3.

The silliest thing is people who buy motherboards for $300 where the $100 board is just as fast!

Also with the price of memory being high right now that extra money would do well in another 2-4 gigs of ram with a 64bit OS.

 

[Verkil]

Please include games like GTA4, Prototype & other games that eats up a lot of CPU power.