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Intel Core i3 2120 Processor

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Overclockers Club has posted a review of the budget friendly Intel Core i3 2120 processor today for those of you interested. If you are building a back-up box, media / file server or the likes, the 3.30GHz Core i3 2120 might be just what you need.

Sure its nice to play with the high end processors and video cards, but when you get down to it, how relevant is that to the person looking to build a computer for the same amount of cash some of us enthusiasts spend on just video cards or high end CPUs alone? Not everyone has the budget, or realistically the need, for a $5000 behemoth of a PC when a dual-core $500 build with a low cost CPU will do the job.
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I wouldn't recommend buying any processors until Bulldozer drops. In my opinion, it'll change the price market of all processors within the $100-$300 range.
 
the top 1% might spend that. this chip is great for the e-mail, facebook, news people.
 
Steve said:
Overclockers Club has posted a review of the budget friendly Intel Core i3 2120 processor today for those of you interested. If you are building a back-up box, media / file server or the likes, the 3.30GHz Core i3 2120 might be just what you need.
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lehmann said:
the top 1% might spend that. this chip is great for the e-mail, facebook, news people.
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The i3-2120, or even the 2100, even though it is one of Intel's lower end chips, is overkill for most people emailing and web browsing.

It even makes for a great gaming chip and a pretty OK encoding chip for those on a budget.

It is complete and total overkill for file server duties. Heck, even an AMD Zacate E-350 or Intel Atom are overkill for file server duties.

My Linux NAS server at home is running an AMD Athlon X2 e3250 (a K8 based low power 1.5Ghz X2 model) and even during the heaviest of file server loads over SAMBA it has less than a percent CPU util.

The only reason you might need more CPU power in a file server, is if it is planned to be a real time encoding media server to stream stuff to your PS3 or something like that.

I mean, this is pretty telling. The little brother of this chip, the i3-2100 is tied with or beating a stock clocked Phenom II X6 1100T BE. This is nothing to scoff at for the lowest member of Intel's core family.



Even the lowest end
 
Sandy Bridge Core i3 is pretty much pointless now. For office or HTPC the Celeron G530 (dualcore 2.4GHz) is much better value, with the 44 euro price (compared to 109 for the cheapest Core i3). For the saved 64 euros, you can easily buy a H61 board...

So for a price of single Core i3 2100, you can get a dual-core sandy bridge cpu with a lowend board - and they call it "budget friendly" ? Sure, the Celerons and Pentiums don't have hyperthreading, don't have AVX or QuickSync, but seriously, who cares ?
 
faugusztin said:
So for a price of single Core i3 2100, you can get a dual-core sandy bridge cpu with a lowend board - and they call it "budget friendly" ? Sure, the Celerons and Pentiums don't have hyperthreading, don't have AVX or QuickSync, but seriously, who cares ?
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Some people like AVX and Quicksync, but there is obviously something else going on as well.

A Core i3-2100 consistently outperforms a Pentium G850 by more than it should based on the 200mhz clock difference alone.
 
The PentiumG series are amazing processors, only problem I have with then is the HD2000 on them. My HTPC upgrade will most likely contain some for of i3 sandy bridge, the increased horse power isn't necessarily needed but its there for the small times I will need it. Plus the HD3000 is enough for all playback, doubt I will need to go discrete GPU with sandy bridge.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037818773 said:
A Core i3-2100 consistently outperforms a Pentium G850 by more than it should based on the 200mhz clock difference alone.
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It is the hyperthreading. But once again, for a price of single Core i3-2100 you have both CPU and motherboard - for a home file server or a office computer, that is a much more important than the performance decrease.


Trimlock said:
The PentiumG series are amazing processors, only problem I have with then is the HD2000 on them. My HTPC upgrade will most likely contain some for of i3 sandy bridge, the increased horse power isn't necessarily needed but its there for the small times I will need it. Plus the HD3000 is enough for all playback, doubt I will need to go discrete GPU with sandy bridge.
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Then buy the one with HD3000 (2105 and 2125) - the rest stilll have HD2000. But with i3 2105, we are already at 120 euros.
 
faugusztin said:
It is the hyperthreading. But once again, for a price of single Core i3-2100 you have both CPU and motherboard - for a home file server or a office computer, that is a much more important than the performance decrease.
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This I can agree with. All of these CPU's are way overkill for for a home/file server, so we might as well go with the cheapest solution possible.
 
faugusztin said:
Sandy Bridge Core i3 is pretty much pointless now. For office or HTPC the Celeron G530 (dualcore 2.4GHz) is much better value, with the 44 euro price (compared to 109 for the cheapest Core i3). For the saved 64 euros, you can easily buy a H61 board...

So for a price of single Core i3 2100, you can get a dual-core sandy bridge cpu with a lowend board - and they call it "budget friendly" ? Sure, the Celerons and Pentiums don't have hyperthreading, don't have AVX or QuickSync, but seriously, who cares ?
Click to expand...

Unless you are near a Microcenter when they have one of thier deals :),
i3 2100 for $99, and an H67 board for $59 after rebate. Great for my HTPC build.
I can record 2 channels, while watching a 1080p movie and streaming another movie to another computer all at the same time, and still use less then 20% CPU. Only time I use most the CPU is during Windows or Media center updates.

The problem with most cheap H61 boards, is that they don't have HDMI out, they also only have 4 SATA connections which is a limit for a file server.
 
nutzo said:
The problem with most cheap H61 boards, is that they don't have HDMI out, they also only have 4 SATA connections which is a limit for a file server.
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True. The HDMI output can be a problem - for a HTPC, for the remaining uses (file server, office PC) the D-SUB & DVI are more than enough.

4 SATA could be a issue - but i personally don't use any of those, i boot my FreeNAS from USB flash and the drives are connected to the SASUC8I card in PCI-E slot. And i guess 12 SATA connections (4 on board + 8 through the SAS card) are more than enough for most fileservers.
 
This is an insanely fast little CPU.

I've been buying them at work for usage in our controllers for our calibration systems.

Little chip just rips through making PDFs of all the data and makes the entire sequence run faster, which in the long run will save us a ton of time.
 
Revdarian said:
Add the cost of that SATA card to the combo and ooops, you went over the price of the i3 2100 with a decent (not great) mobo...
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Well yeah. And try to put 10-12 hard drives on your H67 board. Wait, you can't. Try to put 8 hard drives in RAID on your H67 or P67 or Z68 board. Oh wait, you can't.

But we still argue about the boards, while those don't make that much difference - H67 vs H61 is 15-20 euro difference max. The CPU price difference is still way too high - G530 (44 euros) + a decent H67 board ( GA-H67M-D2, 83 euros) is still 127 euros together.

Compare that to 108 euros for i3-2100, 121 euros for i3-2105, 129 euros of i3-2125 or 132 euros for i3-2120. For the price of the CPU in this review you get a G530 + H67 board combo. All you lose is AVX, AES-NI, QuickSync and Hyperthreading. None of those are important for Office PC or fileserver.

In my eyes, i3 CPU doesn't bring enough on the table compared to the Pentium and Celerons to have 100-120€ price.

PS: I had the SAS card before, my case was just a example. But for more than 6 drives, you will have to get an additional SATA card anyway.
 
faugusztin said:
Sandy Bridge Core i3 is pretty much pointless now. For office or HTPC the Celeron G530 (dualcore 2.4GHz) is much better value, with the 44 euro price (compared to 109 for the cheapest Core i3). For the saved 64 euros, you can easily buy a H61 board...

So for a price of single Core i3 2100, you can get a dual-core sandy bridge cpu with a lowend board - and they call it "budget friendly" ? Sure, the Celerons and Pentiums don't have hyperthreading, don't have AVX or QuickSync, but seriously, who cares ?
Click to expand...

Indeed. I'm using a Sandy Bridge Pentium G620, which is just an i3 at lower clock speeds and some disabled features (but still the same cache etc). I've never felt like I've lacked power. I could have bought a 2500K like my friend did, but why pay more and use more power when none of us do anything more demanding than playing HD video or some light gaming. I saved a bit of money compared to him and we have the exact same computer experience since he is only using a fraction of his CPU.

As long as you get a dual-core any CPU these days is good enough for all but hardcore gaming and people who do a lot of heavy computing. I guess even a G530 would do, but it wasn't out when I got the G620. the only thing no one should buy is the G440. 7 dollars less than the G530 and you get only one core at 1.6ghz compared to two cores at 2.4ghz with the G530. Not even on an office computer does that money saving make sense.
 
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