Speed Improvement Desk-topping

[Shula 7]

Would a person notice any substantial difference in performance for average computing -- no cpu intensive activity -- between an i3-6100 and any of the i5s and i6's?

 

[Hazle]

nope. doing most of my office work (including going on youtube when no one's looking) on a nearly 7-8 year old hardware, and there's not much of a big difference, save maybe programs & files opening faster compare to my PC at home. it all comes down to how much junk you got installed from what i'm seeing from my colleague's PC, as mine is apparently the fastest in the office despite similar hardware.

I imagine a desktop pentium or current gen athlon will suit your need if all you do is general web usage & basic office/school work

 

[Shula 7]

I suppose that would be about it, too, as regards to an extra few GHz overclock on any machine?

 

[Ecky]

Unlikely.

I noticed a difference when moving from a Core2Quad to a modern i5, but even that was not a large difference. Heavily overclocked vs stock, I can't even tell a difference in games, so I just set it back to around stock clocks and undervolted, and I'm enjoying the reduced noise.

You're probably going to notice a difference between a Pentium and i3, I'd wager, due to the extra threads and how dumb Windows' scheduler is sometimes, but even that won't be large.

The biggest factor in having a snappy desktop is to have sufficient RAM (4GB minimum, 8GB preferable) and a decent solid state drive. For daily use, I'd take an i3 with SSD + 8GB of RAM over an i7 + 4GB with a conventional spinning hard drive, any day of the week.

 

[Shula 7]

Your comment re overclocking reminds me of the RAID 0 setup I had with two identical SSDs. The speed improvement wasn't even discernable over no array with the same disks. Also, with a RAM drive, in Windows 7, with the same present setup, no speed difference was realized.

You mentioned an i3 with SSD + 8GB of RAM which is what I have. I surmise that the difference between an i3 and an i5 or i7 with SSDs and 8GB RAM for general desk-topping would be so slim that in short season the kick would wear off and be quite forgotten. I'm not into gaming and don't do anthing that is highly CPU intensive. I just want a very snappy-fast sportscar that I don't enter in the races. I guess I should be satisfied with what the good Lord has allowed me to have.

Interesting comments. Thanks

Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3 (rev.1) BIOS vF6
Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz
Samsung 850 Pro 256GB
2 OCZ Vertex 2 60GB
Samsung HD204UI 2TB
Avexir DDR4 8GB
Intel HD Graphics 530
Apevia 640 watts
Windows 7 Professional