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 ESTAlien: Isolation
If first person survival mixed with horror is your sort of thing, then Alien: Isolation, based off of the Alien franchise, should be an interesting title. Developed by The Creative Assembly and released in October 2014, Alien: Isolation has won numerous awards from Game Of The Year to several top 10s/25s and Best Horror titles, ratcheting up over a million sales by February 2015. Alien: Isolation uses a custom built engine which includes dynamic sound effects and should be fully multi-core enabled. We take the average frame rate as our marker with a scripted version of the built-in benchmark.
For this test we used the following settings with our graphics cards:
| Alien Isolation Settings | |||
| Resolution | Quality | ||
| Low GPU | Integrated Graphics | 1280x720 | Ultra |
| 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 | Ultra |
| MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G | |||
Alien Isolation seems to have recently had an update that affects low powered GPUs, pushing our new results to be very different to the results in our database. It only seems to affect the IGP and R7 240 results, so for now we'll focus on the other data.
In each case the Core i3s perform at the top or near the top, with the higher frame rates being with the higher frequency parts. However, for our mid-range GPUs (R9 285, GTX 770), that doesn't seem to matter that much, and the $70 AMD Athlon X4 845, along with the A10 parts, are within shouting distance. However, the effect gets worse with higher power GPUs, with the graphs taking an Intel/AMD split almost. The 8-thread AMD FX part sits as close as it can, but the Skylake parts pull a 10+ FPS advantage, which equates to an 8% or better difference.
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junky77 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
No DX12 comparison?Meteor2 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
Another good point!BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
Ian mentioned in the article that they're still using their 2015 game benchmark suite for this review. I would expect AT's 2016 benchmark list, once finalized, will include more DX12 titles. I'm not sure when those benchmarks are normally confirmed since I've never really given it much thought, but as we're wading into August, one would hope that the 2016 list will be as forward-looking as possible. However, they'll probably need to keep something from the 2015 list in order to have a comparative basis for new and old products. It's also important to retain a DX11 title or two as the older version of the API is very much alive and well at the moment.jeffry - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
I think if your running an oced Sandy-Bridge (2500K) and you use your pc for gaming, its not worth the upgrade cost. Perhaps its worth to upgrade for the very high-end games with maxed out resolution and graphics features, but then id not pick an i3 (-> i7 instead).If you run simulations or any kind of HPC, you most likely have another setup anyways.
jeffry - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
95% of all pp are shopping on a budget anyways, so i would spend my bucks on a new GPU instead of CPU, eg AMD Polaris or Nvidia Pascal GPU.Death666Angel - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNjT5R5XI4 You can get quite a few frames more with a modern, equally overclocked CPU. If you have the budget or get a good deal, an i7-3770k seems to be a good upgrade without having to get a completely new system with motherboard and RAM. Can be the difference between 45fps and 60fps.Voldenuit - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
Thanks for the review Ian.A bit perplexed at the choice of GPUs and CPUs and game titles tested in this review.
The Core i5-2500K is a natural point of comparison since so many people are still on it. Though they are unlikely to switch to an i3 Skylake, still a useful comparison for a data point.
Those GPUs are really old. Someone building a new Skylake system would most likely be getting a 480 or 1060. Also, it would be useful to know if the i3 is bottlenecking games from reaching high framerates on 120/144 Hz monitors.
Which brings us to the choice of games. Following (in my opinion, somewhat dubious) claims by various youtube reviewers that even a skylake i5 is not sufficient for 144 Hz gaming, I'd like to know if an i3 is a bottleneck on games where framerates matter: Overwatch, DOOM, Crysis 3, Battlefield 4, etc. As well as games that stress the number of CPU cores like AOTS, TW:WH, etc.
Icehawk - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
They run their benches w/o V-sync... so monitor Hz doesn't matter, you can see the maximum frame rates.I agree, some slightly newer GPUs would be good - at least a 470 or something.
leopard_jumps - Monday, August 15, 2016 - link
i3 6100 + RX 470 4GB ($200) will make $550 gaming PCleopard_jumps - Monday, August 15, 2016 - link
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/gfHsXHPrice breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/gfHsXH/by_merchant/
CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($110.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($77.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2800 Memory ($40.98 @ Newegg)
GPU Asus Strix RX 470 4GB - $200
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($47.49 @ OutletPC)
Case: Deepcool TESSERACT SW ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($43.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $561.42
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-15 13:01 EDT-0400