
Battlefield 3's single-player campaign is largely graphics limited, so the fact that all three platforms turn back similar results from our Radeon HD 7970 was to be expected. At 1920x1080 and Ultra quality settings, the graphics card plays more of a role in determining performance than any of these three CPUs.

We took some time to develop a DiRT Showdown test methodology that produces consistent numbers, and the results here suggest the game is, like Battlefield, fairly GPU-dependent. The Core i5 does establish a slight advantage, though it's hardly significant.
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Summary
- AMD FX-4170 Vs. Core i3-3220: A Fair Fight?
- Test System And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: Synthetics
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Conversion
- Benchmark Results: Content Creation And Productivity
- Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3 And DiRT Showdown
- Benchmark Results: Metro 2033, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, And StarCraft II
- A Close Race Today, But Tomorrow Shows More Promise For AMD
Ask a Category Expert
Hope Piledriver is all that it promises and more.
"...but Tomorrow Shows More Promise for AMD".
Tomorrow...as in ... Oct 16, 2012 or is it only figurative?
At 3.3 GHz, the 6100 doesn't fare well. It's easily out-gamed by the FX-4170, and only gets a bit of a break in highly threaded apps.
In my opinion, if you are on a budget, the FX4170 can be a decent cpu, it is $10 cheaper than the i3, it isn't much but might be able to give you a slightly bigger budget on graphics. Its not a complete wash either. The power consumption might be high but nothing a desktop can't handle, would be more expensive for people who pay more for power but generally in north america, power is pretty cheap.
At 3.3 GHz, the 6100 doesn't fare well. It's easily out-gamed by the FX-4170, and only gets a bit of a break in highly threaded apps.
Does that mean the FX-4170 and 6100 really share the same MSRP? Because I was thinking that it may just be a Newegg (shop-specific) price thing (possibly a sale/discount).
I don't think it would've been a bad idea to have it around if that were the case (though I don't mean to impose more work on you guys). It might've been something to see what relative application performance score it would've gotten compared to the i5, as well as how much it performs less compared to the FX-4170. (I imagine by not so much since a lot of the games were GPU-limited already.)
NO fanboi here....
My current AMD powered laptop plays Skyrim reasonably, something that would have easily required another $100 to do with an Intel laptop at the time of upgrade.
Next time? Whatever has the best numbers will be what I buy... (I always wait to see if a chipset or CPU/GPU is plagued with problems before I buy - usually 3-6 months after they hit market)
Brand loyalty is something companies try to instill in consumers, and nowadays it has no place in a consumer's choice of hardware or software.
Buy what will do the things you NEED to do... forget about joining the war one way or the other.
If more people would buy what is on top instead of supporting only one company, more companies would have to innovate and improve their products more substantially.
A: 10 frames is significant. It's 16.6%
B: This is about benchmark performance, not whether you'll notice the drop in frames or not.
However, I will note that if your display is 60hz, and the game you're playing has vsync, then that small 5 frame difference between the game running at 55 fps and the display's 60hz actually changes to a HUGE frame drop, because the FPS will drop to 30 to stay in sync with the display.
Not something you'd like with Australian electricity prices.