Performance Target: 30 FPS Minimum
Battlefield 3 was obviously limited by the performance of our Radeon HD 7970 the last time we tested it. As such, we don’t expect our choice in processors to have much effect on the frame rates of our configurations. In the first round, our target is a 30 FPS minimum frame rate:




Only AMD's Radeon HD 5570 has to be forced under 1080p to hit our minimum target; we set it to run at 1280x720. Every other graphics card achieves our goal at 1920x1080.
And, as expected, there is little to no difference between CPUs as we step up from entry-level to mid-range graphics setups. The Core i3-2100 does manage a marginal lead with AMD's Radeon HD 6770, but nothing you'd notice during game play.
Unfortunately, while we see minimum frame rates that look good, the averages are very close to 30 FPS, too. So, let’s aim for a 40 FPS minimum and closer to 60 FPS average and see what happens.
Performance Target: 40 FPS Minimum, 60 FPS Average




This time we had to drop the Radeon HD 5570 to 800x600 to achieve our target. The Radeon HD 6770 dips to 1680x1050. Both the Radeon HD 6850 and 6950 are able to handle 1080p.
Even at our lower settings, the choice of CPU doesn't affect the outcome in an appreciable way. In fact, the FX-4100 scores marginally better using the Radeon HD 6850, although the advantage is not significant. Overall, we're not surprised by the outcome of our Battlefield 3 charts. After all, even AMD's powerful Radeon HD 7970 couldn't shift enough of the game's workload to our CPUs to expose a weak link.
- FX-4100 And Core i3-2100 Go Head-To-Head
- Test System And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3
- Benchmark Results: DiRT 3
- Benchmark Results: Just Cause 2
- Benchmark Results: Metro 2033
- Benchmark Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Benchmark Results: StarCraft II
- Your Game And Performance Target Matter Most
The line graph is better way to show it's behaviour over a period of time rather than a flat average, which doesn't explain frequent dips or long stretches of smooth gameplay in fps and such.
A very informative and realistic article, nice work Tom's. Lets hope AMD has something with piledriver.
So if you need a new system and can't afford an i5, just buy a cheap 1155 SB as a placeholder until you can [afford an i5]. Like the conclusion states, the upgrade path is there -- I just think that if it's a temporary step, you might as well save $60 to $80 if you're upgrading in the next 4 months anyway. You'd be surprised how fast the SB budget parts are, and they're fast enough to get you through till IB.
So if you need a new system and can't afford an i5, just buy a cheap 1155 SB as a placeholder until you can [afford an i5]. Like the conclusion states, the upgrade path is there -- I just think that if it's a temporary step, you might as well save $60 to $80 if you're upgrading in the next 4 months anyway. You'd be surprised how fast the SB budget parts are, and they're fast enough to get you through till IB.
It would be nice if they through Civ 5 or MW3 in but at least on the FPS front, I think BF3 has a bigger following on the PC and the same thing goes for Skyrim. Not sure how many people are still playing Just Cause 2 though. In either case, I think this has more to do with being able to compare these results to the results from past benchmarks they've run.
The line graph is better way to show it's behaviour over a period of time rather than a flat average, which doesn't explain frequent dips or long stretches of smooth gameplay in fps and such.
A very informative and realistic article, nice work Tom's. Lets hope AMD has something with piledriver.
If DC Sandy Bridges could be unlocked, they would be so good for gaming.
This is all kinds of wrong... "NEVER" is really idiotic to say in this situation, you don't know, AMD might come out with something that will in the future be the best performer. You son have a lot to learn yet and probably have a lot of living left to do.
That is short sighted. I love my Intel build, but in 4-5 years when I upgrade again I will jump all over AMD if they have something good... but it just is not looking good now.
I love the line graphs! They show what we need to know, and more than the overly simplistic min/ave/max.
The i3 is the better/faster chip for gaming, but not so much that you should spend a lot upgrading to it from a "somewhat parallel" performing FX 4100.
Quote - "I don’t recommend upgrading your CPU unless the potential replacement is at least three tiers higher. Otherwise, the upgrade is somewhat parallel and you may not notice a worthwhile difference in game performance."
This article at least shows that their will not be a noticeable difference in game performance. And I would go as fas as to say that once overclocked, there would be no difference whatsoever between the FX and an i3 (which is locked and can't be overclocked).
Absolute respect to Toms for taking onboard these points and hopefully rearranging the table for the March CPU hierarchy chart. And it would seem the G860 & i3 should be closer together too.
and this -
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043-18.html
The FX 8150 seems to be absolutely equal to an i5 2500k at extreme resolutions 2560x1600, ultra detail levels, x8 AA. Would the FX 4100 deliver the same equal performance at these resolutions?
I've never even seen a monitor that has that kind of resolution. 4 megapixels. However eyefinity and Nvidia surround do. 2.7 megapixels for a 720p 3 screen setup and 5.2 megapixels for a 1680x1050 3 screen setup.
Would a $110 FX4100 deliver the same FPS as a $230 i5 2500k? The FX 8150 did.
Totally, I bet you could feed a 6770 just fine with a $50 CPU. No need for these extravagant $120 chips.
The thing that made me raise my eyebrows in regards to "Tom's Hardware" wasnt any cpu test, but the tests of the HD 79** series, in a test where the results showed better results in most benchmark and trashing the competition in 1, the conclusion from "Tom's Hardware" was the this gpu wasnt any good and i almost felt like "Tom's Hardware" was warning me against buying such a card.
This may just be the rantings of a AMD fanboy, but i think "Tom's Hardware" need to see if they are as objective as they claim to be.
good to know that fx 4100 is viable for using with entry level gfx cards. actually it makes more sense to couple the $110~ cpu with a similarly priced gfx card.
as for cpu limitations in cfx/sli: imo those are more likely to come out in budget pcs than higher end pcs as budget gamers might want to upgrade their gfx card or add another for cfx/sli relatively sooner than people who build with cfx/sli in mind or start with 2x cards. intel's h61 and most h67 mobos would be useless for cfx/sli but a lot of cheap p67 and z68 mobos can support cfx/sli. i suspect that a lot of people who bought pcs with llano apus might eventually want to upgrade /add gfx cards without changing their apu and mobo.
another issue most amd users/amd-biased people usually avoid: power consumption. in budget gaming pcs power consumption matters because higher load power consumption results in higher wattage (likely costlier) psu. the locked core i3 uses less power than fx4100, so builders can afford to add higher tdp gfx cards or save money with smaller psu yet use a high perf. gfx card.
overall core i3 is still much more suitable for budget gaming.
phenoms and athlons didn't have aes hardware acceleration. llano apus don't have it either. trinity might have it, but i doubt that. zambezi actually supports aes hardware acceleration. 4/6/8 core (2/3/4 modules) zambezi can outperform 2/4 core intel cpus respectively in encryption benchmarks. some review sites that favored fx8150 used encryption benchmarks (among others) and it's high scores in those benchmarks to pitch it as a 'great cpu'. they also undermined it's power consumption.
intel's sb core i5 and i7 support aes acceleration, core i3 doesn't. so in an encryption benchmark, the core i3 would lose to fx 4100. your claim is baseless.
The 6850 looks to be the best one to use as it becomes the bottleneck at 1080p for most tested games.
Also can we have a similar article with Nvidia cards please ? :-)))