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i3 2100 for BF3 Multiplayer

Tyron

Tyron

Tyron

Associate
Joined
14 Jul 2007
Posts
965
Hello all,

I will be using an amd 5850, 8gig ram and I am undecided on the i3 2100 or the i5 2500k for bf3 multiplayer. Is there a big performance gap between the two? I would be gaming on 1920x1080 or hd if the pc can handle it.

If I get the i3 I will get a cheap mobo and wait for haswell, otherwise I will get the i5 and z77 board but it will be a £130 difference and I really would like to save the money if it only means a few extra fps.

Cheers.
 
Best to have a look at benchmarks.

In general gaming, I'm sure there is a significant difference between the i3 and the i5, in BF3 however, its mostly GPU dependent.
 
Looking at anandtech CPU benchmark it seems the 2500k beats the i3 2100 anywhere from 5-30fps depending on the game
 
I have just checked out lukext's links and they dont show how well they perform in MP with 64 players. And anandtech dont show bf3 for the benchmarks.

Thanks for the help so far.
 
I'd say the 2500k would be much better for 64 MP. Mainly because large multiplayer servers use the CPU quite intensely. BF3 also makes use of quad cores. Plus the 2500k will overclock to at least 4.5ghz usually. It's a no brainer really.
 
I have a Core i3 2100 with an HD5850 1GB and it seems fine for most games I have run.Sins of a Solar Empire,Supcom 1 and 2,Civ5 ,Metro2033,Crysis2, FO3 and FO:NV seem to all run smoothly.

Regarding the Core i5 2500K,in theory it sounds fine until you tot the costs up. The Core i5 2500K itself is around £150 to £170,the overclocking capable motherboards cost more and then there is the cost for the cooler needed too.

There were some offers a few weeks ago where you could get a Core i5 2310 or Core i5 2420 for around £115 to £130. With a motherboard like a GA-H61M-D2H-USB3 for under £50,that would be a good value for money combination IMHO:

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4004#ov
 
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Spenty said:
I'd say the 2500k would be much better for 64 MP. Mainly because large multiplayer servers use the CPU quite intensely. BF3 also makes use of quad cores. Plus the 2500k will overclock to at least 4.5ghz usually. It's a no brainer really.
Click to expand...

From the wiki I read haswell will be released Q3 next year, so the money I save now will go towards that.

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
I have a Core i3 2100 with an HD5850 1GB and it seems fine for most games I have run.
Sins of a Solar Empire,Supcom 1 and 2,Civ5 ,Metro2033,Crysis2, FO3 and FO:NV seem to all run smoothly.
Click to expand...

What type of fps at which resolution are you getting for bf3?
 
Tyron said:
From the wiki I read haswell will be released Q3 next year, so the money I save now will go towards that.



What type of fps at which resolution are you getting for bf3?
Click to expand...

I don't play BF3 as it is not my cup of tea.

Games like Sins,Supcom and Civ5 are quite CPU heavy though as they are RTS games and Crysis2 uses will use all 4 threads effectively. I have not looked into detail into what framerates I have been getting,but I have not noticed any stutter and certainly for the online bit of Crysis2 framerates were high enough.

If I were you I would think carefully about the total spend you are doing. If you look at my last post,I mentioned that retailers were knocking down non-K series Core i5 CPUs and a more basic motherboard and a non-K series Core i5 would be probably better value for money IMHO than a K series one at £150+ plus all the other parts.
If anything BF3 is very GPU heavy,so also putting the money saved into a better card eventually is just as important, as an HD5850 1GB still sells for a reasonable amount on the famous auction site.

You will notice a GPU limitation far quicker on a non-RTS game than a CPU limitation.
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Haswell uses socket 1150 whereas Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge uses socket 1155.
Click to expand...

Yes but if I get the i3 i'll get haswell, if I get i5 can I skip haswell? As I would be spending an additional £130 for the i5 to then upgrade next year.

So if i3 can give me good enough performance in multiplayer till haswell I will be very happy.

Laher said:
I thought haswell isn't even out yet, nvm skylake ?!
Click to expand...

Need to think ahead as they update it every 18 months?
 
I have a i3 2100 with a 6870 1GB, with 4GB of ram (soon to be 8GB) - usually get a solid 60fps on 64p maps on medium settings & 1920x1080, sometimes dropping to 50 depending on map, also sometimes hitting 80-100fps in certain areas (firestorm RU base for e.g.).

Don't forget the i3 2100 has hyperthreading, BF3 makes use of this so it uses all 4 cores/threads. :)
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
There are some MP gameplay videos for BF3 on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/results?sear......3452.4232.0.4321.3.3.0.0.0.0.70.205.3.3.0.

www.youtube.com/results?search_quer...10412.0.11114.12.10.0.0.0.0.129.776.6j4.10.0.

Some of them list the framerates they are getting - you could check if they look OK for you. If not look at a Core i5.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the links only 2 videos which helped slightly.

TallPaul_S said:
I have a i3 2100 with a 6870 1GB, with 4GB of ram (soon to be 8GB) - usually get a solid 60fps on 64p maps on medium settings & 1920x1080, sometimes dropping to 50 depending on map, also sometimes hitting 80-100fps in certain areas (firestorm RU base for e.g.).

Don't forget the i3 2100 has hyperthreading, BF3 makes use of this so it uses all 4 cores/threads. :)
Click to expand...

Brilliant, have you tried on high settings?

I was thinking of getting a cheap mobo for the i3. I guess it boils down to if its worth cheaping out till haswell next year or will 2500k be more than enough and i can skip haswell.
 
Tyron said:
Brilliant, have you tried on high settings?

I was thinking of getting a cheap mobo for the i3. I guess it boils down to if its worth cheaping out till haswell next year or will 2500k be more than enough and i can skip haswell.
Click to expand...

All depends on the map - smaller maps on the high preset with ultra meshes it gets between 40-60fps. Then on wake island with high preset and high meshes it'll be 40ish most of the time, but I'm hitting the vram limit, even on medium it's using over 900mb, on high on some maps it hits the limit and I'd get big framerate drops, from 40-50ish right down to 20 or even 15fps. I used to play on high but had to turn down to medium on the B2K maps and just stay on that now for a solid 60+ FPS.

My biggest issue at the moment is lack of RAM, running 4GB I usually only have 100MB left when playing, can't really alt-tab as BF3 crashes, and it takes about 2 mins for a typical map to load. Got 8GB coming tomorrow though so that'll be sorted. :D

As for the CPU, runs perfectly :D All 4 cores/threads are usually at about 80-90% usage, they run at about 50 degrees in my case when playing BF3. Obviously if I was upgrading to a 680 or 7970 then it would probably be a bottleneck but for my 6870 the cpu is pretty well matched, it's certainly the one area where I'm not lacking. :)

I only have a MSI H67MA-E35 mobo which is a cheap (£80ish at the time of purchase) mATX board, the mobo and cpu was only meant as a cheap rig until I could afford a proper (read: faster!) rig, will probably go for an IB i5/i7 in the next few months.
 
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Update on this - now got 8GB of ram fitted and my vram usage has dropped by 200MB in game :eek::D

Can play on high pefrectly now no problems at all even on wake or the other more demanding maps. My limit now is gpu power, not running out of vram. Needless the say the i3 is running 100% perfectly :D
 
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