Intel Core i3 2100 Vs AMD Phenom X4 955 for GAMING.

I vote for i3 2100.But of course you can OC the Phenom II BEs which in turn might be the difference maker.

In that case I would say the Phenom 955, even though you aren't overclocking...Passmark benches the Phenom about 20% faster than the i3-2100. Your motherboard will likely cost less as well.

I did a 965be build that I still use for gaming, but it is heavily overclocked.

but all andandtech benchmark says that an i3 is faster in gaming. And it can beat the phenom x4 upto 3.8ghz in gaming.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=362
Yes it does beat phenom @ 3.8ghz

Since you are not OC'ing, the answer is pretty easy... Core i3.

its not an opinion, its a fact, that the i3 2100 is faster for gaming.

Okay, will the i3 be able to handle games which require more than 2 cores like GTA 4, Battlefield BC 3 ?

I'd say: take the Phenom. If you put it in a AM3+ MoBo, you will be fit for upgrading for years to come. Bulldozer is at the doorstep and you never know how it may perform - it might and probably will be on par with Sandy Bridge. It could be a worthwhile upgrade in the future. At least you can be quite sure that AMD, unlike Intel, will support a certain socket for years to come.
As for overclocking, saying "I simply do not overclock and that's that" doesn't make much sense. Modern motherboards have such good auto-overclocking abilities now that you only have to press one button and it will automatically fine tune to a fast AND stabe setting. Remember that processors with unlocked multipliers are meant to be overclocked. It really does not harm the part in any way if you don't push it over the limits, and auto-overclock utilities do not. My Phenom I 9850 is running overclocked from 2,5 to 3,1 GHz for four years now, and will probably run for another four, if I don't replace it (I probably will buy either Sandy Bridge, if Bulldozer turns out bad, or Bulldozer, if it's good).
In short - the Phenom II is highly overclockable, you can safely reach 4,1 GHz. I'd say - go for it. With it, you can get a AM3+ MoBo which willl be able to run all the newest AMD CPU's for years to come.

You might be wrong according to a slide we might have a new platform for Piledriver cores.

Mmmh, there's been SO much fabricated nonsense in the internet regarding Bulldozer and AMD plans in general that I'd recomment not to trust all that "info" one bit. It MIGHT be true, of course...MIGHT. The only thing we do know, is that so far AMD's CPU's have been very backwards-compatible. It might of might not change.
Fact is, that AM3+ will at least suppports CPU's ranging from Phenom II's to the FX series and its later revisions. That sounds good enough for me already.
Not my decision to make, of course, just saying how I would act.

Just telling OP the rumors.I might be wrong too.

tell me- the i3 or pii x4? No extra suggestin, i just posted a question above....i would have been more happy if i get the answer.

Sorry, we cant tell you.You have to weigh out pros and cons to arrive to this decision.

amd! you can get a program that comes with your motherboard that will overclock   all you need is a cpu fan like:

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev 2 Socket 775, 1156, 1155, 1366, AM2, AM3 Heatpipe CPU Cooler

use the motherboard cd program and let it do the work  

As so often in life, there is no the right answer   . Like Mr. hsmithot said - we try to provide you with an overwiev of the possible benefits and shortcomings of each processor. You need to decide which benefits outweigh which shortcomings and decide upon that.
To try to sum it up: Intel will provide you with more power if you just put the CPU in and that's it. AMD will provide you with more power if you over-clock it and it might also provide you with a more future-proof platform for CPU upgrades to come. Decisions, decisions.

Will the future games(say 1-2yrs) make use of 4 cores?

I'd say they definitely will, yes. At least the demanding games. Most "mainstream" titles like BFBC2 already use all of my four cores, so quad-core is becoming the standard for high-end gaming, if it already isn't.

http://www.grandtheftpc.com/2010/03/list-of-quad-core-o...

so finally is the phenom x4 955 is an ultimate choice even without OCing? Cause games will require 4 cores for better performence.

Mm, I guess you could say that. Someone linked some comparison charts at the begining of the thread, I think. Check how the CPUs perform in quad-core optimised games.
And I sincerely recommend not to throw the overclocking idea out of the window. It would mean vasting about 30% of the Phenoms potential.

PS - from a quick glance at the charts, Phenom outperforms the i3 in multi-threadded applications and some of the muti-threaded games.

Buy the intel chip with intel motherboard, next year buy a 2500k and sell the CPU you have. You should be able to rise money until then if you do not have them now. The i52500k can be overclocked and you will have big improvements in games with it.
The motherboard should be a p67 or above chip set to be able to overclock the CPU.

That's what i would do.

can i use the both i3 n i5 with a h61 chipset?

all mobos that support the Sandy Bridge would support all i3, i5,i7(with some exceptions).

However we advise you for the p67 chipset or a z68 chipset. so that it allows you to Overclock.The h61 and h67 dont support any Overclocking functions.

You'll be happy with both options. I personally own a phenom x4 at 3.5ghz and am really happy with it, including with titles like starcraft II which are cpu-heavy and only use 2 cores. I also game at 1920x1080.

Personally if I had to choose right now I would go for the i3, though. You'll be satisfied with it. As for multitasking, the cpu supports hyperthreading (each core has 2 threads) which may not come close to 4 actual cores but each sandy bridge core is stronger than phenom so it's still alright. You also have a stronger upgrade path as you can get a very strong 4 core sandy bridge and it's almost certain that ivy bridge will incorporate socket 1155 so you'll be able to upgrade to that - At 1024x760, though, I really doubt it if you'll need to.

But if you can afford to wait a couple of monthes tops, I really think you should. Bulldozer is right around the corner and even if it'll disappoint it's still going to be somewhat competitive and drive prices down.

This explains it all.

okay.....thanks.

Can you tell me how to hyperthread the i3 2100??

I want to get the best performance from the cpu for gaming but without doing anything against its warranty.

Hyperthreading is a inbuilt feature.It is automatically used the first time you use your pc but also you can turn it off in bios.

So, according to Doron and you the i3 2100 is the ultimate choice for 1024*768 resolution?

Of course there are better which is i5 2500k.But yeah if you want a great cpu for games at that price then go for the i3 2100.

I vote for the i3. It's just a newer design and runs cooler.
If you can wait for Bulldozer or Ivy Bridge, that will be even better.

I'm personally waiting for Skymount, that's 4 generations past Ivy Bridge..

Skymount is almost 2017 which is 6 years away.

Not to get of topic.
IvyBridge 2012, Haswell 2013, Broadwell, 2014, Skylake 2015, Skymount, 2016.
Yup, I guess your right. I should have said waiting for Broadwell.

Okay will the i3 2100 be able to handle games which require more than two cores like GTA 4 and BFBC 2 with the radeon 6670 at 1024*768 at highest settings?

The Core i3-2100 should be able to handle games that requires a quad core well enough. You can always upgrade to a Core i5 later when you save up money. Also, you buy a P67 or Z68 motherboard chances are good that a BIOS will be released so that you can upgrade to an Ivy Bridge CPU next year.

Unfortunately, I cannot find any benchmarks test for GTA 4, but below is a Mafia II benchmark. The games does seem to use up to 4 cores.



The Core i3 only losses by 0.9 frame, or 1%. No bad.


Below are benchmarks for games that uses at least 2 cores.



Core i3 beats the Phenom II x4 955, by 11%.




Core i3 beats the Phenom II x4 955, by almost 31%.




Core i3 beats the Phenom II x4 955, by 9%.




Core i3 beats the Phenom II x4 955, by 22%. I believe Metro 2033 uses 3 cores, but I am not exactly sure.




Core i3 beats the Phenom II x4 955, by almost 13%.


On average, the Core i3 beats the Phenom II x4 955 by 17% for games that do not absolutely use 4 cores. These represents the majority of games produced. GTA 4 needs a quad core CPU to perform will because it is a crap port of a console game. Will BF3 perform like Mafia II on a Core i3 loosing by only 1% to a Phenom II x4 955? I don't know. The game is still being developed/polished.

Oh, the video card used to benchmark those games with the various CPU is a Radeon HD 6970.

Here is a link to the Anantech Xbitlabs review:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-21...



Edit:

Ummmm.... <cough> typo <cough>

And yet it says xbitlabs   .

People also say that all those benchmarks was taken without use of background apps like antivirus. So the i3 wins. But in the real world when the antivirus and other little apps will run along with the game the four cores of the Phenom x4 955 will be used. Then the i3 will be beaten.

What do you guys say?

^ i say antivirus doesnt use the cpu all the time, only when running a scan, so the i3 still wins. Unless your encoding some video in the background while running your game, which would be pretty silly, then the phenom x4 will win.

Ooops. I meant to type Xbitlabs. I had both sites opened in separate tabs.

I don't know anyone who performs a system scan while playing a game.

BTW how much the phenom 955 be easily overclocked?

Thanks for all your help and replies.

IMO (for gaming), I'd rather have the available upgrade path of the i5-2500k, unless AMD can pull a serious IPC increase.

The i3 is dual core and the X4 is quad core so I'd assume the X4 would be faster.

Me too.

Most games use 1 or 2 cores. Most of the games that use more, use 3 cores. Core scaling (performance gained by adding more cores) is very poor in most games that support it as it is.

The speed difference per clock is just too intense between Phenom II and Sandy Bridge, not to mention the power difference between the Phenom II X4 and the i3 is another huge perk.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-rev...

I know, it's frightening that AMD's fastest CPUs cannot keep up with Intel's low end dual core in gaming.

We can only pray BD will bring some huge IPC increase to keep Intel's finest CPU's prices at bay, however doubtful. Not to mention Ivy will come out then and bring another 10-15% OC headroom.

And all these Intel CPUs are the Mainstream! Just wait til they release the good (enthusiast) stuff on the good chipset. *shutter

You should look at the game benchmark charts I posted above rather than just assume.

lol....i did say about performing a antivirus scan at the time of gaming....i just said that the antivirus sofware will be running in the background while gaming....cuz antivirus starts running as soon we start up our systems....