Intel Core i3-2120: quick overclocking and testing

The Core i3-2120 chip stands out as one of the most intriguing processors in the Sandy Bridge i3 lineup. It has all the right ingredients: a relatively high clock speed, a decent L3 cache, and a tiny 65-watt TDP by today's standards (often dropping below 50 watts in practice). In this article, we'll see how the Core i3-2120 stacks up against chips like the Core i5-2300, Core i5-2500, Core 2 Duo E8400, Core 2 Quad Q6600, and Athlon II X4 620.

The processor

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The unit we received in the lab is marked SR05Y. This chip was manufactured in Costa Rica in 2009, with a nominal frequency of 3300 MHz.

CPU-Z provides further details on these specifications:

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The Core i3-2120 is built on a 32nm process, which keeps its core voltage to a mere 0.944 volts. This two-core, four-thread chip features 256 KB of L2 cache per core and 3 MB of shared L3 cache. Our CPU's revision is D2.

Test setup:

• LGA1155 motherboard — ASUS P8B75-V

• LGA775 motherboard — Biostar P35D2-A7

• AM3 motherboard — ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO

• Processors — Core i3-2120, Core i5-2300, Core i5-2500, Core 2 Duo E8400, Core 2 Quad Q6600, Core i5 2300, Athlon II X4 620

• CPU cooler — Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus

• RAM — 2x4GB DDR3 Corsair XMS3 PC12800 (9-9-9-34)

• RAM — 2x2GB DDR2 Corsair PC6400 (5-5-5-16)

• Graphics card — Sapphire Radeon HD6950 (800/5000 MHz)

• Power supply — Chieftec 600W GPS-600-A8

• Hard drives — Samsung SP320GB

Software:

• Windows 8.1 x64

• CPU-Z 1.63

• CineBench 9.5 x64

• CineBench 11.5 x64

• 3D Mark 2006 v1.2.0 (CPU test only)

• 3D Mark Vantage v1.1.1 (CPU test only)

• AMD Catalyst 13.3

• wPrime v1.55

• Fritz Chess Benchmark

• WinRar 4.0

• FRAPS v3.1.0

In-game graphics settings:

Grand Theft Auto IV EFLC:

• The in-game benchmark was used!

• Resolution — 1280x1024

• Textures – high

• Reflection resolution – high

• Water quality – very high

• Shadow quality – high

• Filtering quality – x16

• View distance – 100

• Detail depth – 100

• Vehicle density – 100

• Depth of field – on/on

• Vertical sync – off/off

Prototype:

• Resolution — 1280x1024

• Textures — high

• Shadows — high

• Anti-aliasing — 0x

Processor overclocking

Unfortunately, this section won't be particularly exciting. Overclocking Intel Sandy Bridge processors with locked multipliers depends entirely on the motherboard you're using. But don't get your hopes up. Even if you splurge on a top-tier LGA1155 solution with a Z68 or Z77 chipset, you'll only gain a few hundred extra MHz, leading to inevitable disappointment.

In our case, CPU overclocking was limited to 105 MHz on the BCLK, resulting in a processor frequency of 3465 MHz:

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With overclocking covered, let's move directly to processor testing.

Testing

3D rendering

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In CineBench, Intel's new architecture truly shines. The 2-core, 4-thread Core i3-2120 chip performs on par with a full-fledged 4-core Core 2 Quad Q6600 running at 3150 MHz!

Computation

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The situation isn't quite as rosy in synthetic computational benchmarks. However, it's important to remember that the i3-2120 is essentially a dual-core (albeit four-thread) processor, and its primary comparison should be against the Core 2 Duo E8400.

Archiving

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Achieving good results in WinRar requires a fast memory controller and high-speed RAM. Only Sandy Bridge processors boast these two features, which is why the other chips deliver, to put it mildly, weak performance.

Gaming, synthetics

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Game-related synthetic benchmarks, however, show parity between the overclocked quad-core Q6600 and the i3-2120. Yet, it's worth remembering that the boosted Core 2 Quad consumes over 120 watts of power, while the Core i3-2120, overclocked to 3465 MHz, only slightly exceeded 60 watts.

Games

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The game Prototype responds very well to an increased core count, but it also sees a good performance boost from ample L2 and L3 cache. Unfortunately, AMD's chip can't boast the same. The quad-core Athlon II X4 620 delivers the weakest results, while the Core i3-2120, conversely, only slightly lags behind its pricier Core i5 siblings.

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In Grand Theft Auto IV, the situation changes somewhat. Here, the 32nm Core i3-2120 chip couldn't maintain its leading position and only managed to slightly edge out the Core 2 Quad Q6600 by a couple of percentage points.

Conclusion

The Core i3-2120 turned out to be a surprisingly capable processor. Behind its modest specifications lies impressively high performance. And considering that games and everyday applications (professional software already utilizes 12+ threads) won't optimally leverage multi-threaded processors for several more years, the Core i3-2120 remains an excellent choice for a budget home system.

The Core i3-2120 processor and ASUS P8B75-V motherboard were provided for testing by MTPZP.