A good basic CPU to use for general desktop
Intel’s Core i3 processors line always
offers decent performance and good value. The latest Core i3 that comes to our
labs, the third-generation Core i3-3220, appears to follow in that tradition.
It’s a dual-core Ivy Bridge CPU that runs at a maximum clock speed of 3.3GHz
and has 3MB of Intel Smart Cache. Core i3-3220 doesn’t have a K suffix, which
means you can’t easily overclock it, and it doesn’t have Turbo Boost, which
will overclock it automatically and safely in certain thermal conditions. It
has Hyper-Threading, so each physical core runs as two logical cores, which
should increase multitasking performance.
Core
i3-3220 doesn’t have a K suffix, which means you can’t easily overclock it.
To test Core i3-3220, we fit it into an
Asus P8Z77-V LX motherboard with 4GB of RAM and connect a screen to the
motherboard’s HDMI port. Core i3-3220 isn’t the most powerful processor, and
its test results support this, with the chip reaching 60 overall. Its score is
56 in the multitasking and video-editing tests and 76 in our image-editing
test. Our reference CPU, which gains 100 score, has four cores. The fact that
Core i3-3220 has two cores somewhat explains its moderate performance.
Core i3-3220 has Intel HD Graphics 2500
on-chip graphics, which runs at a frequency of 650MHz. We had no problem when
running productivity increasing apps or web browsing, but it isn’t suitable to
play modern 3D games. The Core i3-3220 fails in our Crysis 2 test, but Dirt
Showdown gave us an average of 16fps when its graphics settings are set at low
level with no anti-aliasing feature and a resolution of 1,280x720. That frame
rate, though, still isn’t fast enough to enjoy the games.
Core
i3-3220 may be a basic CPU, but it’s not cheap.
Core i3-3220 may be a basic CPU, but it’s
not cheap, especially when comparing to some opponents from AMD. It’s not a
suitable CPU for overclocking people, but great to use for general desktop and
browse the web. If you want a more powerful processor for video-editing or
games, you should consider AMD’s A10-5800K, which is faster, and has four cores
and more powerful graphics.
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General info
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Price: $141
·
Rating: 4/5
Technical specs
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Core: 2
·
Clock speed: 3.3GHz
·
Socket: LGA1155
·
Cache: 3MB Intel Smart Cache
·
TDP: 55W
·
Warranty: 3-year RTB
·
Total: 60
·
Multitask: 56
·
Dirt Showdown: failed
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