Gadgetory

hey guys welcome back to another harbour unbox video we're back at it again with a look at hyper-threading at this time the focus will be on the core i3 range for those of you who missed it last month I investigated how much of an impact hyper-threading has on the core i7 processors in today's games essentially with hyper-threading disabled a core i7 quad core becomes pretty much a Core i5 processor and I was interested to see how much this impacted performance using graphics cards such as the gtx 1070 1080 and titan XP as many of you know Intel's more affordable more mainstream core i3 processor series also takes advantage of hyper threading in my previous video I mentioned this and I also alluded to the fact that hyper threading is extremely useful on a core i3 processor and therefore didn't test it or included in that video with the focus being mostly on the core i7 I did things this way because I wanted to see how much hyper threading benefit a quad core processor and if games could really take advantage of those eight threads but as it turns out doing so kind of backfired and a lot of you guys asked me to rerun the tests using a core i3 processor by disabling hyper threading on a core i3 you essentially end up with a dual core Pentium processor and this is the reason the core i3 range seems to cup a lot of flak from some gamers even though we think it's still very capable anyway happy to oblige I've taken a core i3 6100 processor which comes clocked at 3.7 gigahertz and benchmarked it with and without hyper threading enabled this time around the Titan XP and GD X 1080 have been dropped I don't think they were appropriate for testing budget processors heading up the high-end task force is the gtx 1070 followed by the gtx 1060 and then finally the most suitable GPU the 1050 Ti has also been included for testing we've used a basic system comprised of a H 110 motherboard and eight gigabytes of ddr4 2133 memory I was tempted to go with a 16 gigabyte kit but in the end I don't really think it will impact performance and this configuration is probably more realistic of course if you were going to run a gtx 10cm you would use a 16 gigabyte kit but this GPU has been used more to show an extreme scenario rather than a realistic one in total I've tested with six games all of which are quite new I didn't have time to update the results using watchdogs - and that's a game I would have liked to include given his extreme demands on the CPU still I'm sure there'll be numerous opportunities to test with that game in the future right so with the testing notes out of the way let's get to the good stuff starting with the oldest game used overwatch we find some very interesting results let's start from the bottom and work our way up using the gtx 1050 TI the core i3 6100 averaged a hundred and twelve FPS with a minimum of 85 FPS a very nice result disabling hyper threading reduced the average framerate by 17% while the minimum took a massive 32% hit moving to the gtx 1060 the story develops further here the average frame rate increased by 26% from the 1050 Ti and we saw a similar gain for the minimum however disabling hyper threading resulted in the same performance seen when using the 1050 Ti under the same conditions this then clearly illustrates a CPU bottleneck a rather severe one that is likely limiting the performance of even the 1050 Ti moving to the gtx 1070 we see a mere 14% increase in average framerate from the 1060 and just 9% increase for the minimum frame rate clearly even with hyper-threading support the core i3 processor isn't fast enough to take full advantage of a gtx 1070 and well I'm sure that surprises no-one also unsurprising is the fact that we've hyper threading disabled we find the same average framerate cap of 96 FPS interestingly although f1 2016 kept our core i7 6700 K with hyper threading enabled constantly loaded between 50 and 80% it doesn't seem to benefit from hyper threading on a core i3 processor whereas the gtx 1060 averaged 77 FPS use in the core i7 6700k with hyper threading disabled in our previous tests here the same GPU and the manage 53 FPS when paired with the core i3 6100 the minimum frame rate has also been halved although hyper threading did consistently boost performance we were only looking at an increase of one two three FPS which I have to admit surprised me that said it was only with the Titan XP at the core i7 6700k showed a benefit at all from hyper-threading in this title in an interesting twist we find quite the opposite when testing with civilization 6 though admittedly these results are more what I was expecting to find previously with the core i7 processor hyper threading only offered a few FPS boost in this title this was also the case for the core i3 6100 when testing with the gtx 1050 Ti clearly we're seeing a bottleneck here however once we move to the more powerful gtx 1060 things start to change and hyper threading afforded to the core i3 processor a 23% increase to the minimum and average frame rate moving to the gtx 1070 we are now completely cpu-bound and as a result the 1070 was no faster than the 1060 even with hyper threading enabled Gears of War 4 likes to make the CPU hurt the 67 are ok with hyper threading enabled for example was utilized by as much as 95% though for the most part utilization sat at 70% which is still very high an eighth threaded processor ok so starting from the bottom with the GTX 1050 - we see the hyper threading offers a small performance bump of 9% here certainly very welcome when the minimum frame rates are in the 30s now when we move to the gtx 1060 things get a little crazy with hyper threading disabled we find a massive bottleneck on the dual-core processor limiting the gtx 1060 to 1050 Ti like performance however with hyper threading enabled the core i3 6100 and it's 1060 partner race await on average of 75 FPS with a 50 FPS minimum that's a 47% increase for the average frame rate from the 1050 Ti and a 28% increase for the minimum frame rate what's more is this means hyper threading is providing an unlikely 56 percent performance boost for the core i3 6100 when paired with the gtx 1060 still 75 FPS was the end of the road for the core i3 processor is the gtx 1070 allowed it to go no faster for those wondering the core i7 6700k pushed the gtx 1070 to an average of 116 FPS with a minimum of 98 FPS so 55% faster or almost 100% faster if you look at the minimums now for the battlefield 1 results please note these results are not directly comparable with those previously recorded using the core i7 6700k processor as I did test a different section of the game here we see that without its hyper threading support the core i3 6100 is severely crippled as the average frame rate with the gtx 1050 TI dropped from 60 fps down to just 38 fps the hit to the minimum frame rate was even greater dropping almost 50% of its original performance so with the loli 1050 Ti this means we saw an insane 92% increase in performance with hyper-threading enabled on the core i3 processor this mid-range GPU really is unable to do much better than the 1052 AI without hyper trading support however enabling hyper threading boosted the average and minimum frame rates by over 100% obviously hyper trading doesn't really offer those kinds of performance gains under normal circumstances the issue here being that the game just doesn't run properly with only two threads available choking the processor to the point where it's performing much worse than expected the situation is much the same when using the gtx 1070 though even with hyper-threading support the core i3 processor is unable to fully utilize this graphics card the 1070 was seen to be just 13 percent faster than 1060 when comparing the average frame rate and just three percent faster for the minimum lastly we have total war Warhammer and this should provide some interesting and possibly different results given that this is the only DirectX 12 game tested using the core i7 6700 K in our previous tests we saw a little difference between running the quad core processor with or without hyper threading as you can see this was also the case with the core i3 6100 when using the geforce gtx 1050 TI graphics card just one extra frame was rendered with hyper threading enabled with the gtx 1060 installed we saw a 10% increase in average frame rate with hyper threading enabled though the minimum was only boosted by 4% once we reached the gtx 1070 you can see without the aid of hyper threading we hit a wall at around 52 FPS enabling hyper threading boosted performance further though again this GPU is clearly just too powerful to be utilized properly by a core i3 processor for those wondering the 6700 using the 1070 pushed over 110 FPS well that was for the most part pretty much what we were expecting to find as I said in the previous video hyper-threading really does work wonders for the core i3 processors games such as battlefield one go from almost unplayable without hyper threading to delivering around 60 FPS or more with hyper threading it's also worth noting that other games such as overwatch which do take advantage of the core i3 hyper threading support don't necessarily need it for playable performance here we saw with hyper threading disabled still about 60 FPS and that was with the GTX 1050 Ti using the ultra quality preset then you have titles such as titanfall 2 which have a strict door policy preventing dual cores from entering sorry buddy you're out of here not enough cause that was a dead processor guys so you can relax I said relax stop hitting for the comments box anyway where was I yes so it has been apparent for some time now that the life of a dual core processor is running out and hyper threading really does help out the core i3 range here by forwarding it for threads priced at 125 dollars a US or 150 ozzie the core i3 6100 is a perfect pairing for a budget graphics card such as the gtx 1050 Ti or Radeon rx 460 or the standard 1050 budget graphics cards you guys get the idea the gtx 1060 cards just a little bit too fast we feel though for the most part we're right on the edge here beyond that though you'll want a Core i5 processor particularly if you play games such as battlefield 1 Gears of War 4 or by the looks of it then you watch dogs to game well that wraps this one up you guys asked for core i3 testing so I hope you enjoyed it I'm your host Steve I'll catch you guys next time