Sandy Bridge IGP Performance

[DANNYBAKER]

Hey,i'm planning on buying a new pc,and i have some questions : I game on 1440x900 screen,would like to play bc2,cs:s and bf3,so i'm wondering for a starter would i5 2500K IGP be good for css ( just need 100fps capped ) and then buy a gpu later or should i just go with i3 and some gpu like 6850 ( or 6790 which is actually underrated but nice ) Thanks in advance.

 

[mosox]

Budget for the entire system and the parts you don't need?

 

[DANNYBAKER]

Budget for the entire system and the parts you don't need?

around 350euros (492 USD) but i already got some deals for hdd,case,psu and ram just need help in choice of cpu and gpu. The max i can go is i3 + 6790 actually ( not 6850) or i5 2500k alone.

 

[mosox]

Get an AM3+ mobo and the Phenom II x4 955. And the best video card you can get.

 

[MrBig55]

Get an AM3+ mobo and the Phenom II x4 955. And the best video card you can get.

+1

Since you have a pretty low budget, it's the best compromise. For gaming you don't have to get the best cpu, but the best graphic card affordable is recommended.

 

[theDanijel]

No arguing there, the Phenom II X4 955 and a good graphics card have my vote

 

[navZ88]

No arguing there, the Phenom II X4 955 and a good graphics card have my vote

+
let me mention:

i3 2100 beats phenom x4 955 in all games until the latter is O.C.ed, and that adds to budget $$$ for a good L.C.S.

look 4 urself

 

[navZ88]

Hey,i'm planning on buying a new pc,and i have some questions : I game on 1440x900 screen,would like to play bc2,cs:s and bf3,so i'm wondering for a starter would i5 2500K IGP be good for css ( just need 100fps capped ) and then buy a gpu later or should i just go with i3 and some gpu like 6850 ( or 6790 which is actually underrated but nice ) Thanks in advance.

for gaming in budget: i3 is all you need.

Phenom x4 955 is poor in games until OCed and thats not possible on stock.
look 4 urself

You have to spend $$$ on L.C.S. for OC and hence not preferred for tight budget.

opt for i3<CPU> and spend rest $$$ on dGPU.

 

[jaguarskx]

The Intel HD 3000 graphics core is basically equal to the Radeon HD 5450. You can Google for benchmarks if you really want to know it's performance.

 

[Guest]

Get an i3-2100 (3.1 GHz, 3 MB L3 Cache, $125)
It is faster than Phenom II X4 955 at stock speed and has much lesser power consumption figures.
Also, Intel has confirmed that Sandy Bridge platform is gonna be compatible with Ivy Bridge, so i3 system is potentially future proof.

As far as gfx cards go, get HIS 6790, Sapphire 6790, Asus GTX 550 Ti, Sapphire 6850, HIS 6850 (Dirt 3 comes free with this, but it's $145)

 

[truegenius]

i3 are good but multiplayer games loves 3-4 cores. Choose i3 if you want to upgrade in future.

If you do not want to upgrade in future then
go for phenom 2 x4 955 , it is getting rare and a good graphics card like 560ti

 

[Guest]

@truegenius, you're absolutely right, many current high end games use 3-4 cores, a great example is the latest Battlefield 3.

But one more thing to be considered is despite the lack of cores, an i3 is faster than Phenom II X4 955 even in those core demanding games, unless the latter is overclocked, which is not much recommended due to stability, energy consumption and heat issues.

Also, the Phenom might pose compatibility issues with games sooner than an i3 because it is just SSE3 while i3 supports all extensions till AVX, and current games are starting to demand a CPU with "at least" SSE3, so I don't see much future proofing with the Phenoms.

Plus, an i3 system will be upgradeable to the tried and tested i7, or the potentially better Ivy Bridge CPUs, while AMD system could only get the comparatively slow FX-8150 and the upcoming Piledriver, not much performance increase is expected out of which over Bulldozer, think about this...

 

[navZ88]

....

Also, the Phenom might pose compatibility issues with games sooner than an i3 because it is just SSE3 while i3 supports all extensions till AVX, and current games are starting to demand a CPU with "at least" SSE3, so I don't see much future proofing with the Phenoms.

... the upcoming Piledriver....

.

plz describe the BOLD marked.

 

[Guest]

@navZ88, every CPU at present uses SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions) to perform calculations.
In simple terms, a CPU extension is a collection of instructions for the CPU.

The most common CPU extensions are: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2 and AVX (arranged lauch-date wise, from old to new)
There are others as well, but these are main ones.
Note that the various SSE versions are incompatible among each other.
But CPUs supporting higher versions of SSE support the lower versions as well.

For example, the current i-series Intel Sandy Bridge processors are AVX processors.
That means, they support all the above mentioned instructions upto AVX.
While AMD Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs are just SSE3, that means they don't support SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2 and AVX.
But they do have a AMD exclusive SSE4a extension set that's incompatible with all Intel CPUs and due to the major market share of the latter, apps/games pay less attention towards SSE4a. A point to be noted is that the recently lauched AMD Bulldozer CPUs (FX-xxxx) support all SSE extensions and even AVX.

Many games/applications demand certain SSE requirements
For example, Autodesk Maya, widely used to create 3D animation, requires an Intel/AMD CPU with at least SSE3.

http://www.autodesk.de/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=452932&id=14595158

What happens when the CPU doesn't meet the SSE requirments is that the game/app will just fail to run, or will crash when the unsupported SSE instruction is executed. Some apps/games won't straight away mention the SSE requirement, but go the other way and demand a CPU with at least Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 or higher CPU, both of these "least" requirements support SSE3 max. This implies that P4 and older CPUs without SSE3 won't work with these apps/games.

However, SSE3 CPUs are fully compatible at present, but it's hard to say till when it will hold true because developers are really loving working with AVX as it's much flexible and faster than SSE.

About Piledriver, it's a new CPU microarchitecture by AMD that will be released in 2012 in Trinity APUs that will replace the current Llano platform but the socket will change to FM2. Pliedriver for "CPUs" will replace the current Bulldozer platform in Q4 2012 or early 2013 according to AMD. Phenom II is based on old K10 microarchitecture.

With Piledriver, AMD claims 10% performance improvement over Bulldozer, which, unfortunately is around 30% behind the now old Intel Sandy Bridge, so just think how far it would be behind Ivy Bridge that's to be launched in maybe April 2012, which claims around 20% performance improvement over Sandy Bridge!!!

Hope this lengthy explanation satisfies your queries.

 

[navZ88]

thanks for that info on AVX n Piledriver - topics i just discovered.

 

[Guest]

thanks for that info on AVX n Piledriver - topics i just discovered.

You're welcome. My pleasure to help.

 

[jaguarskx]

About Piledriver, it's a new CPU microarchitecture by AMD that will be released in 2012 in Trinity APUs that will replace the current Llano platform but the socket will change to FM2. Pliedriver for "CPUs" will replace the current Bulldozer platform in Q4 2012 or early 2013 according to AMD. Phenom II is based on old K10 microarchitecture.

With Piledriver, AMD claims 10% performance improvement over Bulldozer, which, unfortunately is around 30% behind the now old Intel Sandy Bridge, so just think how far it would be behind Ivy Bridge that's to be launched in maybe April 2012, which claims around 20% performance improvement over Sandy Bridge!!!

Hope this lengthy explanation satisfies your queries.

If Piledriver can achieve a 10% increase in performance over Bulldozer, then that puts their performance at close to the 1st generation of Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs. That means they will be around 15% slower than the current 2nd generation Sandy Bridge Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs. Ivy Bridge will represent the 3rd generation of Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs. There has never been a CPU released that has offered a 20% increase in performance from the previous generation CPU (at the same clock speeds). Ivy Bridge will only be a minor improvement to processing power as most of Intel's efforts are going towards Intel's Haswell CPUs (2013) for a performance boost. Therefore, I expect performance increase to be around 6% over Sandy Bridge. That makes Ivy Bridge around 21% faster than Piledriver.

The biggest improvement in Ivy Bridge will be the integrated graphics core, the Intel HD 4000, on the higher end models. Currently the HD 3000 is Intel's fastest integrated core an is basically equal to the Radeon HD 5450 video card. The Intel HD 4000 is rumored to 60% faster than the HD 3000; that put's it's performance at around the Radeon HD 5550.

Intel's Haswell is coming in 2013. I do not know what the estimated CPU performance increase will be, but it has been mentioned that the updated integrate graphics core will only be about 20% faster than the upcoming Intel HD 4000. That means Haswell's graphics core will be approximately as powerful as a Radeon HD 5570 (almost, but not quite).