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Which Chip?

Cap4152

Cap4152

Cap4152

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Joined
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UK
Still looking into replacing my rig that recently gave up the ghost and am trying to decide between an i3 2120 or an i5 2400s.

Which would be the better option for general day to day use and some casual gaming a few times a week?

Thanks
 
pdobs1 said:
Still looking into replacing my rig that recently gave up the ghost and am trying to decide between an i3 2120 or an i5 2400s.

Which would be the better option for general day to day use and some casual gaming a few times a week?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Why just these two chips?

Whats your price range? Only Intel?

Out of those two the i5 2400 is the better chip, 4 real cores, vs 2 real cores + 2 HT, plus it has more cache.

Benchmarks here.
 
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Well i'd pretty much settled on the i3 however now have the option of picking up the i5 for about £10 more.

The only thing putting me off the i5 is that it's an 's' variant?
 
The 'S' means its a power saver, using less watts.

Basically it's unclocked. Will still perform much better than the i3, due to have more cores. :)
 
opethdisciple said:
Why does that matter?

The i5 is clearly the faster chip.
Click to expand...

How can you give advice when you don't know (or don't seem to know) the major, major difference between a regular i5 and the S or T variants?

There are actually several differences, the major ones being that they are clocked way, way under the normal versions when all four core are in use. They can turbo a lot higher, but that's only for single-core loads.

Seriously, I don't claim to know much about CPUs, but if you can't at least visit ark.intel.com you shouldn't be giving advice!
 
Go with the i5 2400s. Even though it's a "low power chip" it still has high turbo boost level, and you can also overclock it by 5 notches above max turbo (and keep it like this) which gives a speed of 3.8GHz on all cores. Will depend on the motherboard if it supports forcing turbo boost across all 4 cores, here's a quick guide:

http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/over...-overclocking-guide-beginners.html#post110980

(wait for it to load fully before scrolling).
 
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JonSmith said:
Go with the i5 2400s. Even though it's a "low power chip" it still has high turbo boost level, and you can also overclock it by 5 notches above max turbo (and keep it like this) which gives a speed of 3.8GHz on all cores. Will depend on the motherboard if it supports forcing turbo boost across all 4 cores, here's a quick guide:

http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/over...-overclocking-guide-beginners.html#post110980

(wait for it to load fully before scrolling).
Click to expand...

Got a source for that?

The i5 2400 (non-S) will reach 3.8 on ONE core maximum (3.4 on ALL cores).

You're saying the 2400-S, a lower power version, will reach 3.8 on ALL cores? I've Googled for this before, and you're the first person to claim this.
 
Oh and that linked article is using a i7 2600. Not all chips will turbo to x38.

If you read that article and assumed that all non-k i5/i7s could be set to operate at x38 turbo, I'm afraid that's not correct.

The 2400s is in no way as good as a 2400 i5.
 
As far as I'm aware the information is somewhat conflicting, some are saying that you're limited to the turbo level for each core count (ie 3.8 for 1 core, 3.6 2 cores 3.5 4 cores or whatever) or some motherboards may allow you to enforce max turbo across all 4 cores. The confusion probably arises in that the 2400s has a much higher turbo boost range than the 2400 (from 2.5 to 3.3 vs 3.1 to 3.4).

Regardless, the i5 2400s will almost certainly overclock to be faster than an i3 2120, and if he's getting one for just £10 it will be worth it I think, even if it will only go up to 3.3GHz
 
I would be very cautious about assuming anything about these 2400-S models. There are no reports of overclocks (turbo boost overclocks) that I've found from Google.

So you're taking a big risk.
 
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