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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DonMiguel85 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
I remember in Eurogamer's i3-6100 review, just using 2666 or 3200MHz DDR4 gave a significant performance boost in pretty much all games, especially Ryse whose maximum FPS almost doubled from 59 to over 100FPS. And this was at the stock CPU clockspeed. Minimum frames improved substantially too.wintermute000 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Problem is the price premium for 3200Mhz, you're already halfway to the cost of a dGPU like a GTX950 or R460 that will blow the doors off any iGPUwintermute000 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
whoops I guess I was looking at the expensive stuff, realised that not all 3200 is priced that much higherbeginner99 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
exactly. If you go Skylake, buy 3200 mhz RAM. For 16 GB it's only $20-30 more than 2133 mhz RAM and totally worth it.fanofanand - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Fantastic article Ian, you are definitely doing a great job of filling in the "lull" period between major GPU reviews. I have been wanting exactly this review to be done, as I would love to be able to build my kid a cheap computer for school that could do a bit of light gaming. I was really hoping the APUs would give adequate performance, but it looks like I will be waiting for Zen. I really don't want to get a dGPU for his computer and with Intel it doesn't look like there is much of a choice. Zen it is! Please don't disappoint us AMD!BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
I'm keenly interested in seeing what Zen brings to the table too. However my next desktop PC upgrade is going to be a GPU of some sort and even that's probably a good 6+ months away if not more. Zen will be another CPU+Mobo+RAM swap and I'm not looking forward to anything of the sort right now...unless Zen can more than double the performance of my 860K, at which point I'll be very interested.Achaios - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Bought a brand new laptop today with an Intel Core i5-6200U Skylake onboard (which you have failed to include in your table) clocked at 2.3 GHz which turbos to 2.8 GHz.The thing I wanna say if you try to install Windows 7 on a Skylake machine without making a little in-depth research, you're screwed.
One way to install Windows 7 on Skylake machines is described by the following ASROCK article:
http://www.asrock.com/microsite/win7install/
(Thank you ASROCK).
I am not ashamed to say I spent the better part of day fighting off the dreaded "A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing" before I had my Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit slipstreamed and updated by ASROCK's app.
Perhaps you should consider adding a couple of words on the subject as there are many ppl who will stay on Windows 7 for several years to come and are not very familiar with the Skylake platform.
DonMiguel85 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Well, of course it's not on the table - that's a mobile chip. Plus unless you have some specific business need to use Windows 7 I don't see why you would go through the hassle of putting it on there. It's an almost 7 year old OS.fanofanand - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
LOL "failed to include" I love it. "I bought it so you should review it, even if it's not even in the same segment as the other products you are reviewing". Classic snowflake narcissism.Meteor2 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
1. I wish you'd calculated price/performance and power/performance for us, rather than leaving us to guesstimate2. The game benchmarks need 95th (or whatever) percentile frame rates and minimum frame times, as that's where the performance difference between i3 and i5 truly lies.