Why an Overclockable Core i3 Might Not Exist: The Supermicro C7H170-M and Intel Core i3-6100TE Review
by Ian Cutress on March 17, 2016 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Motherboards
- Core i3
- Supermicro
- Overclocking
Office Performance
The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can cause concern during environments with a variable threaded workload. There is also an added issue of the motherboard remaining consistent, depending on how the motherboard manufacturer wants to add in their own boosting technologies over the ones that Intel would prefer they used. In order to remain consistent, we implement an OS-level unique high performance mode on all the CPUs we test which should override any motherboard manufacturer performance mode.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Dolphin Benchmark: link
Many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53 minutes.
Dolphin loves single threaded performance, and got a big boost when Haswell was introduced. The overclock puts it within spitting distance of a few i7 parts, and comfortably above the lower clocked i5 processors.
WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
Being a variable threaded workload, the 6100TE gains some benefit with an overclock but is still behind the true quad core parts. This is most likely due to cache contention on the hyperthreads.
3D Particle Movement
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
For the single threaded test, similarly to the G3258 when overclocked, the frequency and architecture make a big difference. In the multithreaded test, the Core i3-6100TE when overclocked starts to play with the i5 parts.
3D Particle Movement v2.0 beta-1
I am in the process of updating the 3DPM benchmark, and you can follow the progress with source code and files in this thread on our forums. It was pointed out that the original code, while written under the naivety of a chemist rather than a non-computer scientist, might have some rough time with a phenomenon called false sharing which seems to affect low-cache AMD processors more than Intel processors (but both get a big increase in performance). The software is currently in the beta phase, with the core algorithms in place, but to showcase the difference we ran it on a few processors.
For an upcoming review with AMD Carrizo, we see some interesting results with this new version of 3DPM.
Web Benchmarks
On the lower end processors, general usability is a big factor of experience, especially as we move into the HTML5 era of web browsing. For our web benchmarks, we take four well known tests with Chrome 35 as a consistent browser.
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Taristin - Thursday, March 17, 2016 - link
Total War: Atilla shows the incorrect graph for performance with a GTX card. It shows the Alien Isolation score (Which is... significantly different!)yannigr2 - Thursday, March 17, 2016 - link
Did I saw an Athlon 845 somewhere in there? Is a review incoming?Bad Bimr - Thursday, March 17, 2016 - link
I miss the days of the cheap CPU with BIG TIME OC potential. My first foray in OCing was with the legendary Celeron 300A. That got me hooked. Next was the P3 600 and next came the P4 2.8 (Northwood) followed by the i7-920. Last year I bought a i7-4790k only to sell it when I came upon a thread on X-58 Xeon overclocking. Currently rocking a very conservative Xeon x5675 @ 4.15 Ghz (25x166) on stock voltage on air on all 6 cores with HT on. I have had it stable to 4.4 GHz but feel better with the lower voltage, plenty fast enough. Total cost for the x5675, $76 on eBay! I love cheap CPU overclocking.OrphanageExplosion - Friday, March 18, 2016 - link
This is a remarkable article. Anandtech has overclocked a *really slow* Core i3 processor so that it's not as fast as the slowest consumer-level i3 and written a *15-page* piece on it?!Why didn't you just buy the Core i3 6100?
The data elsewhere demonstrates why Intel never released a K i3 - it gives quad-like performance for gaming at 4.4GHz, where the i5 is king. The value argument is diluted a bit by the fact you will need a third party cooler though, while the i5 6500 is pretty awesome just with a stock HSF and some fast DDR4.
I really, really hope that AMD targets this sector aggressively with Zen - it could be a game-changer.
ReverendDC - Friday, March 18, 2016 - link
The perfect explanation why AMD is needed in the CPU space as well. No competition = restrictions to force more purchases from a single vendor.Achaios - Friday, March 18, 2016 - link
I was thinking, looking at the gaming benchmarks, that I am going to be stuck with the 4770k for maaaaaaannnnyyyy years to come.JoeyJoJo123 - Friday, March 18, 2016 - link
I honestly think asking why an i3 K-series processor doesn't exist is an awful question.I think the real question here that everyone isn't asking is:
"Why is Intel even selling non-K processors in anything but business grade (Xeon) CPUs?"
Doing a 15 page investigation where you compare an awful starting point locked i3 sample (one that isn't even relevant to consumers), examining its overclocked results, and the results of a locked i5 sample, then concluding that yes, the lower grade processor indeed does have worse performance than an i5, that might be why they don't have a K-series i3, is both completely obvious yet misses the point entirely.
Overclocking is a choice for the consumer. Whether or not the i3 part fully closes the gap with an i5 part is irrelevant, and if it doesn't close the gap, that's not a valid reason to then conclude that's why they don't sell K-series i3's. Overclocking gets me more performance than stock, and regardless of how big or small the overclock is, it should be up to the user to choose whether to overclock, not up to the manufacturer to dictate whether you can attempt to overclock at all (with non-K chips.)
I still can't understand why people are trying to find logic in strategic marketing placement of Intel chips (ie: rationalizing it for Intel, exactly what their marketing department wants) when you should be asking "Why are you selling me a locked down chip? I should be free to run this at whatever level of performance I can muster, as after I purchase this product, it is wholly mine to use as I please"
RobATiOyP - Sunday, March 20, 2016 - link
From the OEM & Intel's point of view, having ppl add volts & frequency to their complicated processors, may well lead to unstable chips or non-functioning, which may be (attempted) to be returned under warranty. If you buy a 3GHz locked CPU they're not fleecing you by not letting it be run faster, like options you pay more for.What is more annoying to me, is how there are various instruction options, like encryption & virtualisation which they turn on/off for market segmentation.
zodiacfml - Friday, March 18, 2016 - link
Awesome. More care and effort was given here than I expected.Simply, Intel refuses to. Limiting higher frequencies to i5 and i7. The market Intel is limiting is gaming market. They might open it if AMD, miraculously, becomes competitive again.
TheHolyLancer - Friday, March 18, 2016 - link
honestly i think the author missed the fact that intel( and amd to a point ) prices their stuff no-linearlyto jump from a pentium to i3 may only be 50 but to jump from i5 to i7k or the extreme (well soon? for the 2011 revamp?) costs a lot more
i remember the i7 920 too and with an oc i had i7 965 extreme levels of performance for way way cheaper