Why is the i3 always overlooked and underestimated?

[Speedstang]

Whenever ANYONE is talking about building a gaming rig, everyone jumps straight to the i5's and i7's. Nobody every even considers i3's. And when people want a budget build, everyone directly jumps to the Pentium anniversary and AMD FX processors. Why are they so overlooked? My system has an i3, and I have NEVER been able to lag it, I can do anything you can imagine and it keeps going strong. The integrated graphics, of course, can lose a lot of framerate on more intensive games, but for integrated graphics they really pack a lot of power. So why are i3's so overlooked? They cost about the same as budget FX CPU's, they beat out the Pentium anniversary (NOTE: Any i3 with a U, T or any other letter at the end doesn't count, I'm talking about REAL i3's not laptop power saving ones) so why aren't they ever considered?

 

[jaguarskx]

I use my laptops with a dual core i5-2410m (IdeaPad Y470 w/ nvidia GT 550m) / i5-4200u (Dell Latitude 3540 w/ Radeon HD 8850m) almost on a daily basis. I play some games on my Dell from time to time, but I generally use my desktop (core i5-4670k) to play games most of the time.

 

[synphul]

I don't think the i3 is overlooked for budget gaming, it's often recommended to people looking to game on a budget paired with say a gtx 960. It does a pretty decent job in most games, in some it starts falling behind because of the dual core aspect and it just doesn't have the muscle to keep up with i5's and i7's. It depends on the games played though. If playing a popular game like gtav, it may matter less. Skyrim is another popular game and yet the i3's lack of performance shows in terms of roughly 50-60% of the performance of an i5. If someone has the budget for it, the i5 may be a better gaming choice as it doesn't limit the user to certain games.

Some people only play a particular handful of games so if the i3 performs well in those specific games it's all that's needed. No different from any other program requirements. Coming from the older days of console gaming, I prefer being able to buy a game and have it play well not have to pick and choose. Skyrim is hard on i3's, as is shogun total war. How relevant performance in these games is depends on whether or not a person plans to play them or not.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/11/14/intel-core-i3-4130-haswell-review/5

Another issue is many gamers now want to not only play games but to stream them as well. That makes the i7 a slightly better choice, the i5 the next choice with slightly more impact on gaming performance if streaming while gaming and pretty well shoves out the i3. Again it just can't hack it. The limitations of a dual core cpu are exposed. Not everyone needs to stream their gameplay, I don't - but it doesn't mean many others don't want to. Twitch and similar have a huge following and the i5 is about the bare minimum in intel's lineup for that kind of workload. An i3 'will' stream but it will be painful and fps in games will take a significant hit. Most will opt for the xeon 1231v3 or i7 with ht for that type of use, taking the i5 as the budget option for gaming + streaming. Solely regarding intel's cpus, not factoring amd's fx 6xxx/8xxx.

How people game is another factor, if someone is looking to run sli the i5 or i7 will keep up much better than the i3 will. Some people are playing indie games at 40fps, others are playing aaa titles at 60+ fps. "Gaming" in and of itself is a really loose generalization. Jaguarskx is fine playing games on their laptop occasionally but prefer/opt for the desktop. Other gamers wouldn't consider gaming on a laptop unless it was a high end gaming laptop, the lowered resolution or lower fps aren't enough for them. It's hard to say one person and their preferences is right or wrong, some people consider anything less than crysis to not be 'real' gaming. Others are perfectly happy playing angry birds on their smart phone.

 

[Speedstang]

My system has the i3 3220, and I run on its included integrated graphics, I was actually just playing Saints Row 3 at like 30 FPS average.......

And I have no idea what you guys are talking about with the video thing, I was just talking about gaming.......

 

[synphul]

Unless they've fixed the game (possible) saints row the third was awfully buggy and didn't play nice with most hardware. A dual core cpu is plenty for it, if anything it may be the gpu (using the integrated graphics) holding it back. Or just the terrible optimization problems. 30fps may or may not be 'playable' depending on who you ask. Some folks are fine with 30-40fps, others want no less than 60fps.

 

[Speedstang]

Uh what? To me 30 feels maxed, my old pc ran Minecraft and similar games at 5 to 10 frames and I was perfectly fine with it........

When I said 30 I meant it as a great thing.......

 

[Speedstang]

I run more intensive games on my system too, I play those perfectly fine at 15 to 20 frames and I drop to like 5 when chaos is happening, and I don't mind. My old pc would just crash. This one is fine because it's only the graphics that slows, the processor and RAM are perfectly fine, so my movements and everything I do still happen, I just can't see them too smoothly, but it's fine.

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

I always recommend an i3 unless the i5 is within their budget. I will never recommend the g3258 though, not today with these titles out there, for older games sure, why not. Prices always fluctuate and you never know when you're going to get a good deal, and it also depends where you're buying from, prices fluctuate hard from country to country.

 

[synphul]

That's true, availability and local pricing has a lot to do with it because it changes the whole relevance of parts value. At $180 the i5 is a decent value, at $380 not so much.

As far as being happy with 30fps Speedstang there's nothing wrong with that. Being happy with performance is ultimately the bottom line and having lower expectations makes it easier to find enjoyment in the games. 30fps is roughly console framerates. I'm not displeased by consoles, some folks won't touch them after gaming on a pc. Then again it's a matter of playing on a t.v. from a further distance on a screen that's refreshing roughly 30fps. Having a game only getting say 20-30fps on a 60hz screen where it's refreshing 60x per second can cause odd visual effects on a flatscreen monitor. That's why they came out with freesync and gsync monitors, to help smooth out the differences between the game fps and the screen refresh rate and reduce tearing.

There are a lot of factors involved, frame times etc. It gets more complicated with pc's because each game plays different and each pc has different levels of hardware. Compared to a console where everything is streamlined and coded to play on a particular set of hardware the same way every time. High fps aren't the only important thing, some of it comes down to fps variation. If you have one pc playing games at an avg of 30fps with a min of 25fps it will appear much smoother/fluid than a system averaging 30fps but dipping to 5-10fps occasionally. Those kind of drops in performance and wide variations in framerate will cause a hesitation/lag feeling as if the game gets 'stuck' for a moment.

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

Well, not really a console vs pc war introduction, but console is definitely more enjoyable beause more time playing games than figuring out what hardware to buy. That's just the enthusiasts and those that are interested in hardware does, which is the minority. The new consoles are great though, 30 FPS isn't bad, your brain will take care of that for you, you'll enjoy it just as much, I own consoles and PC's. I do however think that the current consoles would of been even more popular if game devs didn't focus too mucha bout graphics, since clearly older titles are far better and more things to do, than newer ones. Take GTA SA vs GTA V for example... Also, consoles have more cores available to them, but even if "PC ports", they're optimised for a PC, it's not copy & paste. This is what started this argument with AMD vs Intel -- on PC.

 

[freeskier93]

I run more intensive games on my system too, I play those perfectly fine at 15 to 20 frames and I drop to like 5 when chaos is happening, and I don't mind. My old pc would just crash. This one is fine because it's only the graphics that slows, the processor and RAM are perfectly fine, so my movements and everything I do still happen, I just can't see them too smoothly, but it's fine.

You're starting to sound a bit ridiculous trying to justify such poor frame rates. I see this type of justification all the time on Jeep Forum when people throw big tires on crappy factory axle gearing, the "it's a Jeep" justification comes up a lot which is complete bull, but you don't know what you don't know if you haven't experience better.

I'm not much of a frame rate snob, I played games like Mass Effect and Deus Ex: HR on my old 2010 MBP, but 15-20 FPS is pretty bad and 5 is a slideshow. I don't understand how any sane human could play at 5 FPS but if you can more power to ya.

 

[LookItsRain]

To be 100% honest, im tired of the fps and graphics war, graphics and higher fps are great, but when the gameplay is complete shit like 90% of the new games released in the past 3 or so years, it means nothing.

Id rather have great gameplay and other things over, does this game support 4k res and 144fps etc. Look at fallout 3 and new vegas, bad graphics even for their release date, but much superior gameplay and more content.

 

[Speedstang]

Honestly, the whole thing is strange to me, when I'm talking about specs and answering questions I know how everything works and I would consider 20 fps bad, but when I'm gaming, it's different. For example, I play TF2 at 1920 by 1200 with every setting on high, and I always thought I was at 60fps, until I turned on the counter and found out I was at 20. Honestly I can't imagine what 60 even looks like, much less 120.

 

[Moonstick2]

[The i3] is less efficient than a quad core CPU at handling 4 threads at once and the program needs to be designed to take advantage of HT.

While a Core i3 can potentially perform better than a dual core CPU with no HT like a Pentium, the actual performance difference depends if the program can make use of HT. If not then only background Windows processes can take advantage of HT which generally means only a minor performance increase at best.

To some, the above might be taken to mean a program needs to be specifically written with hyperthreading in mind to make use of four threads, which isn't exactly the case.

For clarification to those, provided that the operating system supports hyperthreading (which all modern OSs do, as far as I'm aware), then the programs that run within that OS will see four cores and be able to run four threads, no extra programming required.

The level of performance is another matter. An HT dual core can't match a quad-core except in certain specific (and largely artificial) circumstances. It's too easy with HT for two threads to get in one another's way. There usually will be a boost in performance, but the amount will be variable. In certain circumstances HT can be detrimental, but those circumstances are far fewer than some believe. Overall, hyperthreading provides a significant boost over dual core, but falls short of quad core performance.

'Writing a program to take advantage of HT' means writing the code in such a way that it takes into account the idiosyncrasies of HT to maximise performance rather than just treat the four logical cores of an i3 as four physical ones. It certainly doesn't mean that a program that can run four threads on an i5 can't run four threads on an i3 without extra code.

 

[chetmaster12]

This is way less related to gaming, but I feel like I read somewhere that i3s support ECC RAM. Could be wrong though.

If so, maybe a great option for a home server.

I feel like the i3 is not really targeted as much at gamers. The low power consumption and price make them good for things like HTPCs, and you will see them a TON in office PCs, as they are reasonably fast as to not be a dead snail in five years. They are in general just a good chip, that feels kind of like a good medium option. Not everyone needs a quad core.

When I built my current rig, I seriously thought about buying an i3, since I really don't find that much time to game. I ended up going with the i5, only because the 4460 was on sale for 175, so I went for it. I figure this will last me a while, and if I start using Adobe stuff it will be able to handle it.

I should point out, and this has been mentioned, that you usually don't regret spending more, but you frequently regret spending less. It can be hard to bring yourself to buy the i5, but if you do, you won't regret it in four years.

Every chip has its purpose, or it would not exist. Even the Celeron has a purpose. It is cheap, and good enough for basic tasks. I just want to know why they need to have a Pentium AND a Celeron line. I mean, they are both targeting the budget market. If Intel didn't make profit on a chip then they would not produce it.

 

[Speedstang]

This is way less related to gaming, but I feel like I read somewhere that i3s support ECC RAM. Could be wrong though.

If so, maybe a great option for a home server.

I feel like the i3 is not really targeted as much at gamers. The low power consumption and price make them good for things like HTPCs, and you will see them a TON in office PCs, as they are reasonably fast as to not be a dead snail in five years. They are in general just a good chip, that feels kind of like a good medium option. Not everyone needs a quad core.

When I built my current rig, I seriously thought about buying an i3, since I really don't find that much time to game. I ended up going with the i5, only because the 4460 was on sale for 175, so I went for it. I figure this will last me a while, and if I start using Adobe stuff it will be able to handle it.

I should point out, and this has been mentioned, that you usually don't regret spending more, but you frequently regret spending less. It can be hard to bring yourself to buy the i5, but if you do, you won't regret it in four years.

Every chip has its purpose, or it would not exist. Even the Celeron has a purpose. It is cheap, and good enough for basic tasks. I just want to know why they need to have a Pentium AND a Celeron line. I mean, they are both targeting the budget market. If Intel didn't make profit on a chip then they would not produce it.

Well the Celeron is significantly more "budget" than the Pentium, but the only reason those exist are for super budget pre-built PC's.

 

[chetmaster12]

The i3 is pretty much the entry level GOOD chip. It isn't exactly budget, but it isn't premium. The single-core performance of the i3 is definitely a strong point. For a lot of people, it is ideal. I really wouldn't feel that bad about using a stock cooler on an i3. Low power, and even the stock cooler isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Wish it was quieter though. Also, it is good enough for most gaming. I think that the money you save by buying an i3 could probably go into the GPU and yeild higher performance than an i5 and a lesser GPU. Really depends on the game though. The $70 you save could push you from a 750 TI to a 960, or you could spend the 70 on an SSD. There is little point to buying an i5 if you don't need a cpu that powerful. I do think that the i3s should be priced around $90, but I really don't want Intel to do that now because it will only hurt AMD more. For a lot of games, you really don't need a true quad core. It would be nice, but not 100% needed.

 

[Speedstang]

The i3 is pretty much the entry level GOOD chip. It isn't exactly budget, but it isn't premium. The single-core performance of the i3 is definitely a strong point. For a lot of people, it is ideal. I really wouldn't feel that bad about using a stock cooler on an i3. Low power, and even the stock cooler isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Wish it was quieter though. Also, it is good enough for most gaming. I think that the money you save by buying an i3 could probably go into the GPU and yeild higher performance than an i5 and a lesser GPU. Really depends on the game though. The $70 you save could push you from a 750 TI to a 960, or you could spend the 70 on an SSD. There is little point to buying an i5 if you don't need a cpu that powerful. I do think that the i3s should be priced around $90, but I really don't want Intel to do that now because it will only hurt AMD more. For a lot of games, you really don't need a true quad core. It would be nice, but not 100% needed.

The thing with that is, some people may be able to afford $70 more, but for me even $30 more would be a big deal. You can get a pretty powerful, low priced system with an i3 and a 750 ti. Like that other person stated before, HT isn't quad core, but it is still far better than dual core.

And about the cooler, my system has a stock cooler and it makes zero noise, I think that'd depend on the model.

 

[Groza Adrian]

@Speedstang..there is no such thing as a zero noise active cooler,physics do not allow it 😛.
I would say that i3 cpus are overlooked by gamers simply because of the weird price when compared with the Pentiums,especially the anniversary edition.When paired with a mainstream GPU,there is no difference between the two,so if you are on a budget it is better to buy the pentium and get a more powerful GPU and after awhile you can upgrade to an i5 or i7(or even better,a xeon e3).

 

[Speedstang]

@Speedstang..there is no such thing as a zero noise active cooler,physics do not allow it 😛.
I would say that i3 cpus are overlooked by gamers simply because of the weird price when compared with the Pentiums,especially the anniversary edition.When paired with a mainstream GPU,there is no difference between the two,so if you are on a budget it is better to buy the pentium and get a more powerful GPU and after awhile you can upgrade to an i5 or i7(or even better,a xeon e3).

The Pentium anniversary is only good if you overclock it considerably, which requires a cpu cooler, which requires more money, hence the i3 is a better choice, it leaves you more money to buy a GPU and is powerful at stock speed, and it has HT.
And I didn't literally mean zero noise, xD

 

[Groza Adrian]

Actually,the Pentium anniversary is a particulary weird CPU when it comes to overclocking,since many motherboard manufacturers allow overclocking for it on chipsets that do not allow overclocking(such as the h81).When it comes to cooling,the CPU is maintained within normal operating temperatures by the stock cooler even under moderate overclock(@4 ghz).
GOing back to the i3s,if you buy a cheap one,it is to expensive compared to the pentiums for what you get(and the K one is overclockable and can beat some of them),and if you buy an expensive one you get very close to i5 prices which simply destroy the i3.

 

[LookItsRain]

Actually,the Pentium anniversary is a particulary weird CPU when it comes to overclocking,since many motherboard manufacturers allow overclocking for it on chipsets that do not allow overclocking(such as the h81).When it comes to cooling,the CPU is maintained within normal operating temperatures by the stock cooler even under moderate overclock(@4 ghz).
GOing back to the i3s,if you buy a cheap one,it is to expensive compared to the pentiums for what you get(and the K one is overclockable and can beat some of them),and if you buy an expensive one you get very close to i5 prices which simply destroy the i3.

The cheapest i3 is around 105, the cheapest i5 is around 180. For budget or even mid range builds, that 75 dollar price change is a big step in the gpu department. An i3 can easily run gtx 970 or below with minimal bottle necks in most games.

 

[Groza Adrian]

So can a Pentium anniversary edition,which is even cheaper and can be overclocked quite alot even on the dumb cpu cooler that Intel provides,thus providing an even greater budget for the video card(albeit,a pentium and a gtx 970 is rather weird).
On a side note,most benchmarks show that the overly hyped directx12 API has very little benefit from hyperthreading,so for the moment it looks like the gap between the dirt cheap dual cores and the i3 is set to be even narrower at least in dx12 games.Also,the Pentium G3528 has a serious microcode flaw that makes it incompatible with windows 10 regardless of the cpu state(that is,stock or overclocked).Apparently,the windows 10 setup displays a weird SAFE_OS message during setup after which the installation halts.The workaround involves bios fiddling in order to disable one core,and,after windows completes the install process,there is some patching to be done to certain windows DLLs so things can get quite messy.

 

[LookItsRain]

So can a Pentium anniversary edition,which is even cheaper and can be overclocked quite alot even on the dumb cpu cooler that Intel provides,thus providing an even greater budget for the video card(albeit,a pentium and a gtx 970 is rather weird).
On a side note,most benchmarks show that the overly hyped directx12 API has very little benefit from hyperthreading,so for the moment it looks like the gap between the dirt cheap dual cores and the i3 is set to be even narrower at least in dx12 games.Also,the Pentium G3528 has a serious microcode flaw that makes it incompatible with windows 10 regardless of the cpu state(that is,stock or overclocked).Apparently,the windows 10 setup displays a weird SAFE_OS message during setup after which the installation halts.The workaround involves bios fiddling in order to disable one core,and,after windows completes the install process,there is some patching to be done to certain windows DLLs so things can get quite messy.

Wrong, a pentium g3258 is not near as good as an i3. Sure, the average fps you see on charts plastered around the internet are good. But, find a chart that displays min frame rates, graphs of the frame rate over time and the 3258 is up and down like a roller coaster. The mins of the 3258 are very low, and the dips occur very often. Average means nothing if the min is in the teens.

Not to mention the cost of a cooler to get it above 4.0ghz and a mobo that allows overclocking.

 

[synphul]

Power consumption will vary from setup to setup depending on all the hardware used. While the i3 has somewhat lower power consumption, it's not exactly by a lot making the argument for lower power consumption almost moot. Actually it's less efficient if you factor that it's half the processor of an i5.

This is hexus' findings.
i3 4130 (idle/load) - 32w/54w
i5 4690k (idle/load) - 31w/63w
i5 4440 (idle/load) - 30w/58w

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/71265-intel-core-i5-4690k-devils-canyon-22nm-haswell/?page=8

Here we have bit-tech's power consumption likely using a different set of hardware yet directly comparing cpu's.
i3 4130 (idle/load) - 63w/98w
i5 4670k (idle/load) - 79w/132w
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/11/14/intel-core-i3-4130-haswell-review/6

i5 4690k (idle/load) - 48w/109w
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2014/07/03/intel-core-i5-4690k-review/6

The power consumption differences are minor at best. Especially considering under stock load, the i5 running 11w higher than the i3 is also powering twice the cores. I think even the new ccfl 60w (equivalent) bulbs are running 13w so it's less power difference than an energy efficient '60w' light bulb. I wouldn't spend all the saved pennies in one place.

A lot of i3's as well as the pentium g's and xeons and a few odd i5's/i7's do support ecc though very rarely do people bother with ecc since it's quite a bit pricier. Especially when you factor in the ecc compatible motherboard which aren't most of your standard mainstream motherboards.

There also some low power options like the 4130t and 4570s and others if people are concerned with power consumption. Of course they're also downclocked versions of the mainstream model.

People get caught up in the tdp and assume it's a power rating, it's a heat rating. A measure of the amount of heat under 'normal' load (can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and how they estimate their assigned tdp ratings) of the heat that must be displaced by the cooler. Hence tdp, thermal design power, not power consumption. It's a measure of heat dissipation requirements in watts (watts can be a measure of heat as well as electrical consumption). A 54w tdp cpu doesn't consume significantly less power than an 88w tdp cpu, consumption is a whole different matter. It's not the 34w as seen in the thermal design difference between the chips, rather consumption is more along the lines of equal at idle (which most cpu's do the majority of the time, especially htpc type scenarios) and at load is more like 10-11w consumption difference.

 

[Groza Adrian]

So can a Pentium anniversary edition,which is even cheaper and can be overclocked quite alot even on the dumb cpu cooler that Intel provides,thus providing an even greater budget for the video card(albeit,a pentium and a gtx 970 is rather weird).
On a side note,most benchmarks show that the overly hyped directx12 API has very little benefit from hyperthreading,so for the moment it looks like the gap between the dirt cheap dual cores and the i3 is set to be even narrower at least in dx12 games.Also,the Pentium G3528 has a serious microcode flaw that makes it incompatible with windows 10 regardless of the cpu state(that is,stock or overclocked).Apparently,the windows 10 setup displays a weird SAFE_OS message during setup after which the installation halts.The workaround involves bios fiddling in order to disable one core,and,after windows completes the install process,there is some patching to be done to certain windows DLLs so things can get quite messy.

Wrong, a pentium g3258 is not near as good as an i3. Sure, the average fps you see on charts plastered around the internet are good. But, find a chart that displays min frame rates, graphs of the frame rate over time and the 3258 is up and down like a roller coaster. The mins of the 3258 are very low, and the dips occur very often. Average means nothing if the min is in the teens.

Not to mention the cost of a cooler to get it above 4.0ghz and a mobo that allows overclocking.

You don't need a fancy mobo to overclock the pentium,that's the weirdness of this CPU,many manufacturers allow overclocking it on very dumb h81 mobos(even if Intel is not pleased).In my previous post I was comparing the Pentium at @ 3.7-3.8 ghz to the cheapest i3 (the 4130).I don't know in what games you have serious stuttering or frame drops but in the games that I have played(Mostly the total war series) there was hardly any difference between the i3 and the pentium since apparently the warscape engine doesn't like hyperthreading.