Intel Pentium B960

[teengenius]

I was wondering if the Intel Pentium B960 is a good CPU to run games, like Diablo, on high settings. Please give advice?

 

[xunicronx]

Diablo System Requirements:

Pentium-60
8MB RAM (16MB for Multiplayer)
Windows 95
SVGA Video Card
Microsoft Compatible Mouse
Double Speed CD-ROM

It looks like you are ok.

 

[jaguarskx]

It should be capable enough as long as the laptop comes with a good video card. Roughly speaking, it should perform on par with an i3-2330m.

The primary difference between the B960 and the i3-2330m is that the B960 does not have Hyper Threading which games do not use anyway. Well... maybe BF3 makes use of it. I don't know 'cause I don't play it and my Q9450 does not have Hyper Threading.

The other difference is the integrated graphics core. All Sandy Bridge Core i3/i5/i7 CPU have the Intel HD 3000 graphics core. The Pentium Bxxx series only have an Intel HD graphics core (that's less powerful than the Intel HD 2000 graphics core).

 

[jaguarskx]

Diablo System Requirements:

Pentium-60
8MB RAM (16MB for Multiplayer)
Windows 95
SVGA Video Card
Microsoft Compatible Mouse
Double Speed CD-ROM

It looks like you are ok.

I'm pretty sure he meant Diablo III, not the original game.

 

[marshal11]

I was wondering if the Intel Pentium B960 is a good CPU to run games, like Diablo, on high settings. Please give advice?

yeah that would be fine for games like that. but if you were to play more CPU intensive games like bf3 and crysis etc, id suggest getting atleast a core i3. do you have a GPU in your laptop? or will you be using the integrated GPU? if you are you might be able to do high settings. your CPU is fine, now you gotta worry bout your GPU.

 

[amuffin]

I'm pretty sure he meant Diablo III, not the original game.

:lol:
Jeez that game came out before I was born!!!

 

[kristjan_i]

The primary difference between the B960 and the i3-2330m is that the B960 does not have Hyper Threading which games do not use anyway. Well... maybe BF3 makes use of it. I don't know 'cause I don't play it and my Q9450 does not have Hyper Threading.

No games use hyperthreading, its not because it's a law or something.
Just because games are programmed mostly with c++ , which doesn't know how to use software threads.

Difference in an b960 and i3-2330m is 3rd level cache, the amount of instructions had(i3 has more), and other features not that important, as far as gaming is concerned.

B960 sits nicely between minimum and reccommended of the estimated req's. So... as far as CPU is concerned you're OK.

 

[marshal11]

No games use hyperthreading, its not because it's a law or something.
Just because games are programmed mostly with c++ , which doesn't know how to use software threads.

Difference in an b960 and i3-2330m is 3rd level cache, the amount of instructions had(i3 has more), and other features not that important, as far as gaming is concerned.

B960 sits nicely between minimum and reccommended of the estimated req's. So... as far as CPU is concerned you're OK.

yeah, BF3 uses hyper threading, i know WoW does, and there are a few new games that use it now too.

 

[kristjan_i]

yeah, BF3 uses hyper threading, i know WoW does, and there are a few new games that use it now too.

Are you really sure? Or the engine is just using the extra cores?

Dug around a bit, and it still seems, that no games use HT.
Not even WoW and BF3.

As far as I know, people ,for example, with 4core slow clockspeed "gaming" laptops are playing BF3 w/o an issue, but when it comes to typical games, their overpriced "gaming" laptops suffer seriously. Though I cannot confirm that, as a lot of reviews say that BF3 only scales to 2 cores (NOT software threads) and still prefer clockspeed over the extra cores.


Seems like hyperthreading made BF3's gaming experience worse, as microstuttering was more of an issue. When HT was turned off, more fps was gained.
Still seems too outerspace to me, that games use software threads.
I think even Java based games e: Minecraft, Runescape. Scale only to 2 physical threads(cores), and wont scale beyond that.
They still prefer clockspeed over parallelism. (Though java was made to scale better than c,c++ and phyton).






Yes... There are games, that use more cores, but I haven't yet seen one to use software threads.

 

[marshal11]

Are you really sure? Or the engine is just using the extra cores?

Dug around a bit, and it still seems, that no games use HT.
Not even WoW and BF3.

As far as I know, people ,for example, with 4core slow clockspeed "gaming" laptops are playing BF3 w/o an issue, but when it comes to typical games, their overpriced "gaming" laptops suffer seriously. Though I cannot confirm that, as a lot of reviews say that BF3 only scales to 2 cores (NOT software threads) and still prefer clockspeed over the extra cores.


Seems like hyperthreading made BF3's gaming experience worse, as microstuttering was more of an issue. When HT was turned off, more fps was gained.
Still seems too outerspace to me, that games use software threads.
I think even Java based games e: Minecraft, Runescape. Scale only to 2 physical threads(cores), and wont scale beyond that.
They still prefer clockspeed over parallelism. (Though java was made to scale better than c,c++ and phyton).

dice themselves stated that BF3 would take advantage of dual cores with hyperthreading, but only in the multiplayer. and ive read a few times that WoW will take advantage of 4 threads.




Yes... There are games, that use more cores, but I haven't yet seen one to use software threads.

 

[BronxBomber50]

I know origin pc uses the B960 which are sponsored by a league of legends team, but would it be able to play a high fps game and stream using Twitch is my question

 

[marshal11]

yeah, BF3 uses hyper threading, i know WoW does, and there are a few new games that use it now too.

Are you really sure? Or the engine is just using the extra cores?

Dug around a bit, and it still seems, that no games use HT.
Not even WoW and BF3.

As far as I know, people ,for example, with 4core slow clockspeed "gaming" laptops are playing BF3 w/o an issue, but when it comes to typical games, their overpriced "gaming" laptops suffer seriously. Though I cannot confirm that, as a lot of reviews say that BF3 only scales to 2 cores (NOT software threads) and still prefer clockspeed over the extra cores.


Seems like hyperthreading made BF3's gaming experience worse, as microstuttering was more of an issue. When HT was turned off, more fps was gained.
Still seems too outerspace to me, that games use software threads.
I think even Java based games e: Minecraft, Runescape. Scale only to 2 physical threads(cores), and wont scale beyond that.
They still prefer clockspeed over parallelism. (Though java was made to scale better than c,c++ and phyton).






Yes... There are games, that use more cores, but I haven't yet seen one to use software threads.

Well, since this thread got revived from the dead, I noticed that my reply to you has dissapeared. Might as well fix that. Yes, BF3 uses hyperthreading. When I'm loading a match, specifically when origin plugin in battlelog says "logging in", BF3 puts all 8 threads of my 3770k at 75% load on average at 4.5GHz. I confirmed this in task manager. BF3 was using about 70-80% CPU and anything above 50% load means hyperthreading is being used. Same with my craptop, with a dual core i3. Except it puts all 4 logical cores at 100% load.