Core i3-6100 đánh giá

Intel CPU review. Latest product shots, rating, price and Core i3-6100 specs. Gaming CPU benchmarked against the biggest PC games like Fortnite, Minecraft and PUBG Should you buy this Intel CPU?

The processor, also known as the CPU, is the most important component on any gaming PC motherboard. It works alongside the graphics card to power your PC games. This Intel CPU has 2 cores, 4 threads and runs at a clock speed of 3.7 GHz.

PCGameBenchmark rates processors by how many of the top 1,000 PC games the chip can run.This Intel CPU can run 694 of the top 1000 games - so we give it a 69% rating.

Games that this CPU can run include GTA V, League of Legends and Overwatch.

For a full list of the games that this CPU will run and the chance to compare it to other Intel and AMD processors check our CPU comparison tool. We have benchmarked every AMD and Intel CPU and track the best prices too. No need to wait for Intel Core i3-6100 Black Friday 2022 deals or some other sale to get the lowest prices!

Check out best deals on cheap processors and the latest deals on Amazon.

Intel Core i3-6100PCGameBenchmark Rating: 53%

Best Price:$199

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  • Core i3-6100 đánh giá
  • Core i3-6100 đánh giá
  • Core i3-6100 đánh giá
  • Core i3-6100 đánh giá
  • Core i3-6100 đánh giá

Core i3-6100 đánh giá

Intel Core i3-6100 Specs

CPU

Intel Core i3-6100

Weight

0.7 lb (317.52 g)

Dimensions (L x W x H)

11.68 cm x 11.18 cm x 7.87 cm
4.6 in x 4.4 in x 3.1 in

Brand

Intel

Series

BX80662I36100

Model Number

BX80662I36100

Cores

2 Cores

Threads

4 Threads

Clock Speed (Frequency)

3.7 GHz

Best Price:$199

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Network N earns commission from qualifying purchases via Amazon Associates and other programs.

Intel Core i3-6100 PC Gaming Performance

This processor will run 535 of the top PC games. Use PCGameBenchmark's Rate My PC service to test your current set up and set how it compares.

Can It Run GTA 5?

This Intel processor doesn't meet the recommended system requirements for Apex Legends but it can play the game with lowered settings.

Intel has long since run away from chip rival AMD in the field of high-end performance CPUs. The company's current 6th-Generation Core "Skylake" flagship, the Core i7-6700K processor, easily outpaces AMD's aging FX chips, including the AMD FX-9590 and AMD FX-8370. In fact, the FX chips are a better match for the more midrange Core i5-6600K.

But down toward the other end of the spectrum, where value matters more than absolute performance, things get a bit more complicated—especially for those interested in gaming. Due largely to the fact that modern consoles have multiple addressable cores, we're seeing a growing number of AAA game titles that prefer, or in some cases even require, four cores (or four addressable threads) to run. Intel's lowest-price current-generation chips (such as the $65 Pentium G4400) have just two cores, and they lack the company's Hyper-Threading technology, which allows each core to handle two processing threads. This makes these chips poor choices for gamers, as we expect more high-profile titles to require more than two threads going forward.

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Core i3-6100 đánh giá

AMD, meanwhile, has several fairly affordable chips that have both four cores and integrated on-chip graphics that outperform the HD 530 graphics found on most of Intel's mainstream desktop processors. These AMD chips (the company calls them "APUs") include the recent $115 AMD A10-7860K, and the flagship (roughly $180) A10-7890K. (We're working on reviews of both those chips, and we've included them in our benchmarks on the next page.) And for gamers who intend to include a dedicated graphics card, AMD's Athlon X4 880K is perhaps most appealing, thanks to its four cores, high clock speed, and sub-$100 price. You'll definitely need dedicated graphics with that chip, however, as it lacks integrated graphics altogether. But that's what makes it a winner: It doesn't make you pay for a piece of silicon you won't use in the form of integrated graphics.

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Core i3-6100 đánh giá

As you can see, the Core i3-6100 sits on the current bottom end of Intel's 6th-Generation "Core" chip stack. There are two slightly higher-clocked Core i3 chips available, as well. But the Core i3-6100 is arguably the best value, with a 3.7GHz clock speed and integrated HD 530 graphics that are just slightly (by 100MHz) down-clocked compared to its much-costlier counterparts.

The other notable detail in the chart above is that Intel's Core i3 chips are rated at 47 watts, while AMD's high-end APUs (and the Athlon X4 880K) are rated at 95 watts. While TDP (thermal design power, a measurement of heat output) generally doesn't translate to exact power consumption numbers, it's clear that Intel's CPUs still have a huge advantage when it comes to performance per watt. As we'll see, the Core i3 chip generally outperforms AMD's competing chips on most CPU-specific tasks. If electricity is expensive where you live, that may be reason enough to opt for an Intel chip over AMD, though if you're going to add a high-end graphics card in your system as well, it will consume much more power when gaming than any one of these processors.

Also note that, like the Core i7-6700K, this chip requires a new motherboard with an LGA 1151 socket. You can't drop it into an existing Z97- or H97-chipset motherboard. And you likely won't be able to carry over old RAM, either, as most new Intel-based boards require DDR4. We've been quite impressed with the new features that have landed on many of the new LGA 1551-equipped Z170 motherboards. Most of the new features have to do with extremely speedy storage via PCI Express x4 M.2 SSD slots and ports for USB 3.1 Gen 2, which doubles the theoretical bandwidth over USB 3.0. For details about these new features and others, be sure to check out our review of the MSI Z170A Gaming M5, a sub-$200 board that delivers some of the best of what the new Z170 boards have to offer.

But, as we noted in our review of the Athlon X4 880K, some recent AMD-based Socket FM2+-based boards also offer many of these features, among them USB 3.1 and M.2 storage slots. And AMD boards are generally more affordable than Intel-based options. That's another notch in AMD's favor if you're building a system from scratch and price is your first, second, and third concern.

That being said, if you're planning on building a tricked-out PC with more than two graphics cards and multiple M.2 drives, Intel's Z170 chipset is definitely more advanced, and it offers more bandwidth (via PCI Express 3.0 lanes) than AMD's aging high-end FM2+ A88X chipset. So if loads of high-end components are in the cards for your next build, we'd definitely go the Intel route.

Performance & Conclusion

Before we jump into the benchmark nitty-gritty, it's important to point out that with the recent mix of new Intel and AMD chips, we took this opportunity to switch over to Windows 10 for our CPU testing. We tested the Intel Core i3-6100, Athlon X4 880K, AMD A10-7870K, AMD A10-7890K, and AMD A10-7860K all under Windows 10, while the older chips here, the AMD FX-8370 and Intel's Core i5-6600K, were tested under Windows 8.1. This means the performance of the Core i5 and AMD FX chips aren't strictly comparable to the rest of the bunch. But they're also much costlier and more-powerful CPUs, and are listed here more to provide a broad reference than strictly as competition.

While it's impossible to assure everything is exactly comparable between Intel and AMD platforms, we tested all of these chips with a SATA-based SSD boot drive and 16GB of RAM. And to give the integrated graphics of these chips the best possible advantage, we tested the Core i3 with its DDR4 Corsair RAM running at its fastest rated speed (2,800MHz), while the AMD-based systems were tested using AMD-branded DDR3 RAM running at its top rated speed of 2,100MHz. RAM speed is important mostly for integrated graphics, as it gives the chip more throughput to push pixels.

Cinebench R15

In Cinebench R15, an industry-standard benchmark test that taxes all available cores of a processor to measure raw CPU muscle, the Core i3-6100 stacked up well against AMD's recent chips…

Core i3-6100 đánh giá

Aside from the much costlier Core i5 and FX chips here, the Core i3 was the leader on this test, besting the A10-7890K APU flagship, which costs about $55 more than the Core i3. The sub-$100 Athlon X4, however, had a respectable showing here, given its price difference compared to the Core i3-6100.

iTunes 10.6 Encoding Test

We then switched over to our venerable iTunes Encoding Test, using version 10.6 of iTunes. This test taxes only a single CPU core, as much legacy software does.

Core i3-6100 đánh giá

Here, the Core i3-6100 looked perhaps its most impressive, nearly tying the $200-plus Core i5, and finishing well ahead of the competing AMD chips. Intel has long had an significant edge on tasks that don't take advantage of all cores. But this is becoming less of an issue as more and more software these days is written to lean on all available cores and threads.

Handbrake 0.9.9

These days, our older Handbrake test (run under version 0.9.8) now takes less than a minute to complete with high-end chips. (It involves the rendering of a 5-minute video, Pixar's Dug's Special Mission, to an iPhone-friendly format.) So, we've switched to a much more taxing (and time-consuming) 4K video-crunching test.

In this test, we switched to Handbrake version 0.9.9 and tasked the CPUs to convert a 12-minute-and-14-second 4K .MOV file (the 4K showcase short film Tears of Steel) into a 1080p MPEG-4 video…

Core i3-6100 đánh giá

Here, the Core i3 chip didn't look nearly as impressive. It still managed to best the AMD Athlon and the A10 chips, but not always by a significant amount. It's clear from the much better showings of the Core i5 and FX chips that if serious media crunching or video editing is in the cards, it's worth investing in a costlier chip with more available cores and/or threads.

Photoshop CS6

Next up, in our Photoshop CS6 benchmark, the Core i3 chip again looked impressive.

Core i3-6100 đánh giá

On this timed test, the Core i3-6100 again landed closer to the Core i5 chip than it did to AMD's Athlons and APUs. The Core i3 even bested the eight-core AMD FX-8370 here.

POV Ray 3.7

Last in our CPU-centric tests, we ran the POV Ray benchmark using the "All CPUs" setting. This test challenges all available cores to render a complex photo-realistic image using ray tracing.

Core i3-6100 đánh giá

This time, the AMD A10-7890K managed to best the Core i3, though by only a handful of seconds. And that AMD chip is about $55 more expensive than the Core i3. So that's not exactly a fair fight.

Graphics Tests

In recent years, Intel's integrated graphics have gotten much better, making many games playable on desktop CPUs at low resolutions and settings. But AMD has generally held on to an edge in gaming with its on-chip graphics when comparing similarly priced parts. But with a new round of AMD parts, were were eager to see how the Core i3-6100 and its HD 530 graphics (clocked down slightly from higher-end Core i5 and i7 parts with the same IGP) would stack up.

Note that in these charts, there are fewer comparison chips, as AMD's Athlon X4 880K and FX-8370 lack integrated graphics. With those chips, you're required to supply a dedicated graphics card. With the Core i3-6100, you don't have to. But if you want to play proper PC games above resolutions of approximately 1,366x768 and low-to-medium settings, you'll probably want to use a dedicated card.

3DMark (Cloud Gate)

We started out our graphics testing of the Core i3-6100's HD 530 graphics with the 2013 version of Futuremark's 3DMark, specifically its Cloud Gate subtest, which is designed to measure a system's overall graphics capabilities.

Core i3-6100 đánh giá

While there's not a huge variance between the Core i3 chip and the AMD A10 chips on the overall score, things look worse for the Intel chip when you look at the Graphics subscore, which is designed to isolate just the ability of the gaming cores. By that measure, the Core i3 is the least-powerful here, and not by an insignificant amount.

Tomb Raider (2013)

To get a sense of how these chips can handle modern gaming, we started off our testing with the 2013 reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, first at the Normal detail setting, then on the much-more-demanding Ultra preset.

Core i3-6100 đánh giá
Core i3-6100 đánh giá

The Core i3-6100 managed to deliver a smooth 41.5 frames per second (fps) at lower settings and the lower resolution, but things got choppy when we jumped up above that. The AMD chips did better, running this title smoothly at high resolution settings and low detail, or vice versa.

Most impressive here is the AMD A10-7860K, a $115, 65-watt chip that's capable of running this game at high settings without stuttering. If you want to crank things up and play at 1080p (1,920x1,080 resolution), though, you'll still want to install a dedicated card.

Sleeping Dogs

Next, we ran the open-world action title Sleeping Dogs. This game actually launched in 2012, but at high settings and resolutions, it's still demanding enough to push even moderate gaming PCs to their limits. We stuck to the Medium detail setting.

Core i3-6100 đánh giá

Once again, the Core i3-6100 managed smooth performance at 1,366x768, but stepping up to 1,920x1,080, only the AMD APUs and the $250-plus Core i5 chip were able to stay above 30fps (the general baseline for smooth performance). And keep in mind this test is run at Medium settings. If you want to crank up the eye candy, you'll definitely need a dedicated card.

Conclusion

For general-purpose computing that also includes some gaming, the Core i3-6100 is arguably the best bang for your processor buck in Intel's 6th-Generation "Skylake" lineup. If you aren't churning through a video render or some other time-consuming task that tends to lean on all available cores, it will generally "feel" about as fast as the Core i5-6600K, which actually has a lower 3.5GHz base frequency, but sells for well over $100 more than the $125 Core i3.

Core i3-6100 đánh giá

That being said, if you're building a PC specifically with gaming in mind, and you're going to include a dedicated graphics card, you may want to consider going the AMD route and opting for the Athlon X4 880K instead. It's not as speedy as the Core i3, but it's plenty peppy enough to handle games, it's easily overclockable (we hit 4.5GHz using the redesigned stock cooler), and when we wrote this, the Athlon chip was about $30 cheaper than the Core i3. If you're building a system from scratch, you can also find perfectly capable AMD-based motherboards for less than most current-generation Intel-based boards. We saw some FM2+ motherboards selling for as low as $40, with tricked-out options like Asrock's A88M A-G/3.1 (with USB 3.1 and an M.2 connector) for just $71.

So if gaming is your aim and you're starting from scratch, you can save a significant amount of money by opting for an AMD-based build, rather than a Core i3, which is money you can sink into a more powerful graphics card. On the other hand, if you're the type to upgrade down the road, the Core i3 chip may be worth paying extra for, just for the future viability of its platform. The LGA 1151 socket is still fairly new, while the AMD Socket FM2+ (which the Athlon X4 chips plug into) is expected to soon see its end of life, as AMD has promised to shift to an all-encompassing AM4 socket later in 2016. So the Athlons remain superior budget values now, but the platform supporting the Core i3-6100 will have legs for longer.

Intel Core i3-6100

4.0

Core i3-6100 đánh giá

Matt is a self-described Net nerd, gadget geek, and general connoisseur of off-kilter culture. A graduate of the first class of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, his work has appeared in Popular Science, Consumer Reports, Smithsonian, and elsewhere in the ether. You'll often find him writing while walking on his treadmill desk, surrounded by heaps of consumer tech. (But really, he prefers the low-tech scenery of the Scottish Highlands and the hills of Japan.)