Benchmark Results: Synthetics
Particularly when we use 3DMark 11's Extreme preset, the overall suite score is almost entirely dependent on graphics performance, and so the benchmark turns back near-identical results.
The Physics subtest, however, is very much processor-bound. Because the Core i5 shows up to this fight with four x86 cores, the threaded metric hands it a decisive win. The two quad-threaded models are more evenly matched.
SiSoftware's Sandra diagnostic puts the FX-4170 and Core i3-3220 fairly close together in several measurements as well. The one exception is Sandra's Multi-Media Int x16 iSSE4.1 test, where four integer clusters help facilitate theoretical performance close to what a Core i5 is able to achieve.
