The Skylake Core i3 (51W) CPU Review: i3-6320, i3-6300 and i3-6100 Tested
by Ian Cutress on August 8, 2016 9:00 AM ESTMiddle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
The final title in our testing is another battle of system performance with the open world action-adventure title, Shadow of Mordor. Produced by Monolith using the LithTech Jupiter EX engine and numerous detail add-ons, SoM goes for detail and complexity to a large extent, despite having to be cut down from the original plans. The main story itself was written by the same writer as Red Dead Redemption, and it received Zero Punctuation’s Game of The Year in 2014.
For testing purposes, SoM gives a dynamic screen resolution setting, allowing us to render at high resolutions that are then scaled down to the monitor. As a result, we get several tests using the in-game benchmark, taking results as the average and minimum frame rates. Minimum frame rate results can be found in Bench.
For this test we used the following settings with our graphics cards:
| Shadow of Mordor Settings | |||
| Resolution | Quality | ||
| Low GPU | Integrated Graphics | 1280x720 | Low |
| ASUS R7 240 1GB DDR3 | |||
| Medium GPU | MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB | 1920x1080 | Ultra |
| MSI R9 285 Gaming 2G | |||
| High GPU | ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB | 1920x1080 3840x2160 |
Ultra Ultra |
| MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G | |||
Integrated Graphics
As with the other IGP tests, the APU solution gets significantly better results.
Discrete Graphics
SoM is our most CPU agnostic benchmark of the set, such that as you increase the GPU power and the resolution, the CPU matters less to the performance. This is why at 4K Ultra, with both the AMD and NVIDIA discrete GPUs, the $70 CPU from AMD is within 2-3% for average frame rates.
However, it should be noted that the CPU power matters more when (a) an AMD discrete GPU is being used, or (b) lower resolutions. In both cases, the AMD FX CPUs are more likely to match up with Intel's Core i3, which sit at the top of the pack.
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fanofanand - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
LOL nice. I believe Cellar Door was stating that bug77's comments were poorly educated. :PStas - Sunday, August 14, 2016 - link
Maybe he's just giving us some examples?bug77 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
Based on two assumptions (and nothing more), you know for certain my comment is poorly educated. Nice.Dritman - Thursday, August 18, 2016 - link
Explain to me then, the benefit of having a faster system if the speed boost is imperceptible to the user. You also have no insight into how the original commenter is using their system. Grow up.Voldenuit - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
>Neah, I went i5-2500k -> i5-6600k and there's no noticeable difference.In gaming or general applications? If gaming, are you on a 60 Hz display? That could be the biggest bottleneck right there, assuming you have a modern GPU to go with that 6600K.
VeauX - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
I have no compelling reason to retire my 2500K still. Running at 4.5GHz 24/7 for years, it is still able to swallow everything I throw at it without issues. The only thing would be the feature set of the new Chipsets (M2 etc...) but .... meh...kmmatney - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
Last Xmas I bought my son a 2600K + motherboard for less than ~$200 on Ebay. It may be old, but still runs everything without a hitch, and having 8 threads is great when needed. Intel is competeing against itself, including what you can get used nowadays.eaglehide - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
The graphs are not clickable on the GTA V page.sheh - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
ECC only in low-end CPUs?!owan - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
ECC is a Xeon feature once you moving up Intel's food chain. If you need 4+ cores and ECC, you need to get a Xeon