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 ESTLinux Performance
Built around several freely available benchmarks for Linux, Linux-Bench is a project spearheaded by Patrick at ServeTheHome to streamline about a dozen of these tests in a single neat package run via a set of three commands using an Ubuntu 11.04 LiveCD. These tests include fluid dynamics used by NASA, ray-tracing, OpenSSL, molecular modeling, and a scalable data structure server for web deployments. We run Linux-Bench and have chosen to report a select few of the tests that rely on CPU and DRAM speed.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
C-Ray: link
C-Ray is a simple ray-tracing program that focuses almost exclusively on processor performance rather than DRAM access. The test in Linux-Bench renders a heavy complex scene offering a large scalable scenario.
C-Ray is another bench that likes threads and high IPC cores, hence the i5-6600 sits out ahead followed by the FX-8350. At a lower price bracket, the FX-6350 with six threads wins out against the set of Core i3s, which follow their regular staircase pattern. The difference in frequency accounts for 4 seconds difference, and it seems the L3 cache difference accounts for another 4, or about 2%.
NAMD, Scalable Molecular Dynamics: link
Developed by the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NAMD is a set of parallel molecular dynamics codes for extreme parallelization up to and beyond 200,000 cores. The reference paper detailing NAMD has over 4000 citations, and our testing runs a small simulation where the calculation steps per unit time is the output vector.
Similarly with NAMD, cores and IPC matter most. The Athlon X4 845 gets a good showing here for a $70 chip, beating the price/performance ratio of the Core i3s. Again, the AMD FX-6350 is ahead of the Core i3s, and the lopsided staircase means that the L3 cache difference accounts for another 2% loss in performance.
NPB, Fluid Dynamics: link
Aside from LINPACK, there are many other ways to benchmark supercomputers in terms of how effective they are for various types of mathematical processes. The NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) are a set of small programs originally designed for NASA to test their supercomputers in terms of fluid dynamics simulations, useful for airflow reactions and design.
NPB clearly favors Intel CPUs, and the name of the game is IPC and frequency due to the i5 being behind the Core i3 parts. On the AMD side, the highest frequency part takes the lead and the thread count doesn't seem to matter much; neither does the microarchitecture, indicating that NPB is likely tuned for Intel.
Redis: link
Many of the online applications rely on key-value caches and data structure servers to operate. Redis is an open-source, scalable web technology with a strong developer base, but also relies heavily on memory bandwidth as well as CPU performance.
Redis is similar - high IPC and lots of fast cache are needed, and again it seems to be Intel tuned. The i5 sits below the set of Core i3s until the 100x loading comes along, where having physical cores and more cache seems to help. Despite saying more cache seems to help, the effect of the lower L3 cache on the i3-6100 seems to matter more in the 1x and 10x tests, but less in the 100x test, which is somewhat odd.
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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.