Core i3-3220 vs i5-3450

Discussion in 'Player Support' started by Tuco, Nov 29, 2012.

  1. Tuco

    I have never used 4 cores for anything, heck I rarely even use 2 cores, so who cares if the I3 has 2 cores where the I5 has 4?

    I3 has 3 MB of cache compared to I5 6 MB of cache. No clue how important cache is in games. Some say it's not, some say it is.

    Onboard sound apparently is useless.

    I3 is 3.3 GHz, I5 turbos up to 3.5 GHz. Almost the same thing.

    No I don't Overclock.


    $130 I3

    $195 I5

    And why aren't Sandy Bridges cheaper than Ivy Bridges? Have PC component prices flattened out over time, shouldn't they depreciate faster? Or are the tocs (intel tic-toc) are the only time prices depreciate? I'm gonna have to upgrade 5 computers, so........... Last time I did this was 3 years ago, ugh, took me a week to research this stuff.

    Are these benchmarks useless? If I'm running a program that only utilizes one core wouldn't that make these benchmarks useless? http://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html
  2. Tuco

    I read that the northbridge is built into the Sandy/Ivy Bridges, so I don't have to worry about that when deciding on motherboard anymore?
  3. Tuco

    What about the Pentium G2120?
  4. CronN

    If you want to play planetside, go for i5.
    Why?
    - cache is bigger, bigger usually means faster
    - You use 4 cores when you have them, trust me
    - onboard sound is not useless unless you have a dedicated sound card
    - I have no idea why it's not cheaper, however I know they will stop making sandy bridge soon.
    - PS2 is pretty CPU intensive
    - checkout Core Parking if you want to use more during PS2
  5. Tuco

    Sooooo I'm upgrading from a 3.2 Ghz CPU to a 3.2 Ghz CPU.

    AMD Athlon 6400+

    Only difference I see is upgrading a larger cache size, and smaller manufacture with less power usage. So cache makes that much a difference? Please tell me the something is radically different between the AMD Athlon 6400+ and an I3, I5, I7, Pentium, other than power usage and a larger cache size. The freaking clock speeds are almost the same.

    Whatever happened to the good old days of doubling the clock speed every 3 years?
  6. Tuco

    But everyone with a 4-core says the game only uses 2 CPU's, and the other 2 stay idle.

    The I5 has 6 MB of Cache, the I3 has 3 MB of Cache. If you were to equate cache size to processor speed, how many Ghz does 1 MB of Cache equal?
  7. CronN

    ghz speed does not equal cache size speed and therefor you can't really compare them.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_cache

    I quote myself "- checkout Core Parking if you want to use more during PS2"

    Note that if you have 2 cores and PS2 uses 2, windows is using those 2 as well and so is every background program. As I also said "- PS2 is pretty CPU intensive" so if you buy your cpu for PS2, don't hold back a few dollar or euro, pick the mainstream processor, put a good cooler on it and overclock it (so make sure you get an unlocked cpu).
  8. Tuco

    I don't run any back ground programs, and don't want to overclock.
  9. Exchequer

    -Mhz does not mean a thing.. A 2 Ghz new gen cpu can be faster than a 3 Ghz old gen cpu.
    -In planetside 2 the other 2 cores show about 15% load (both) so that is not nothing. In fact combined that is 30% that would be detracted from your 2 core i3.
    -You ALWAYS have background processes. Just press ctrl+shift+escape and browse to the peformance tab. Right now I have 78 (!) processes running on Windows 7 x 64.
    -Planetside 2 will probably not be the only game you will be playing for the comming 3 years
    -Cache size is something Intel and AMD need to worry about. For a user it is a big /care.
    -You compare cpu based on benchmarks.
    For example: i3 vs i5: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/677?vs=702

    You should notice the i5 always wins (even single threaded performane).

    If you want to compare to your old cpu you must use passmark:
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6400+ 1772
    Intel Core i3-3225 @ 3.30GHz 4370
    Intel Core i5-3450 @ 3.10GHz 6612

    As you can see difference between i3 and i5 is about as big as between your current cpu and the i3...

    And yes passmark is useless for one core software, especially since hyperthreading adds a lot to the score. In gaming it does not add a thing (it might even hurt performance).
  10. Katzura

    you will use all the i5, all cores will not be at 100% but the game will run better.
    I know this since I know that the game uses all cores and threads on my i7, and it went even more smooth since I removed the core parking feature in win7.
    Also, as Exchequer said, the i5 is just a better CPU in general
  11. Tuco

    What defines a generation in intels? The tic or the toc? Architecture, or manufacturing nm size? Or both?
  12. Exchequer

    Core parking seems to be a myth. I checked before and after cpu load and it was identical... There was no better loading at all... I still had 2 cores loading about 90 % and 2 doing about 15%. The "gain" you noticed is probably related to other factors. For example see my post on the impact of players on fps.
  13. CronN

    All 3.

    @Exchequer Core parking doesn't help everyone. However, some of my outfit members actually gain a very nice increase of 10~15 fps. I myself haven't been to any big battles lately so I can't tell.
  14. Exchequer

    Both, see codenames...

    Conroe e6xxx
    Wolfsdale e8xxx
    Lynfield/Clarkdale (first i series)
    Sandy Bridge 2xxx
    Ivy Bridge 3xxx

    For example Ivy bridge is only +15% up from sandy bridge but uses less power. So tick and tock :).

    But same as with caceh you do not need to worry about it... Just take a look at the benchmark I linked. That is what matters.
  15. Tuco


    So I should stick with Ivy, considering the prices for Sandy are almost equivalent I'd be stupid to go back to Sandy.

    If prices between Ivy and Sandy are the same, you think Haswell will be the same prices as Ivy? I am such a procrastinator, I'm not waiting 6 more months.
  16. Katzura

    It doesn't work for everybody, and the more cores/threads you have the more of an impact it will have. I got 30-60 FPS more since I removed the parking landing me at between 60-120 FPS from before when I was at 30-60 FPS on my i7
  17. Exchequer

    What you should have done is disable hyperthreading in your bios:). I have an i5 2500k and I checked, no cores are parked before i used the tool. So it makes sense that it didnt add...

    This is what parking looks like:
    http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/...er/SeeingCoreParkinginaction_9B8E/Parking.png

    @Tuko
    Only reason to go for SB would be that 2500k clock higher (up to 4.8 Ghz air). However since you said you do not want to overclock this is irrelevant :).
  18. Tuco

    So there's different performance between Sandy and Ivy, being of different 'generations'?
  19. kwalker179

    I just upgraded to an i5 3570k from an FX 4100 and the game is running buttery for me now. I also added 8 more gigs of ram which you prolly dont have to do, but i got the i5 3570k, 16GB DDR3 1333, 6870 1GB. Nothing overclocked and in big battles the game is smooth for me.
  20. Exchequer

    You are correct 16 GB of ram is total BS :). So far there has not been a single game that goes beyond 1500mb except for (bugged) skyrim. Will probably stay like this for a while because there are still 32 bit OS. So you can't program your game to use 5 GB ram because than all those users will run into trouble.

    @Tuco
    Yes but it was a minor upgrade aimed at reducing power usage. Best case scenario 10-15% per mhz improvement.