Sunday, October 11th 2020
Intel Launches the sub-$100 Core i3-10100F Quad-Core Processor
Intel launched the Core i3-10100F, an interesting option for entry-level gaming PC builds. This 4-core/8-thread processor lacks an iGPU, unlike the $120 Core i3-10100, but that shaves nearly a quarter off of its price, with the Intel ARK page for the chip reporting a price band of $79-$97 (per chip in 1,000-unit quantities). The lack of an iGPU means that the chip is targeted at gaming PC builds with discrete graphics cards. It otherwise has the same specs as the i3-10100, with four cores based on the 10th Generation "Comet Lake-S" microarchitecture, nominal clock speeds of 3.60 GHz with 4.30 GHz Turbo Boost, 6 MB of shared L3 cache, a dual-channel DDR4 memory controller that natively supports DDR4-2667 memory, and 65 W TDP. Its retail package includes a cooling solution. The i3-10100F should be drop-in compatible with any Socket LGA1200 motherboard. Do catch our review of the i3-10100, which should give you an idea of how the i3-10100F should perform.
47 Comments on Intel Launches the sub-$100 Core i3-10100F Quad-Core Processor
Dicks
At or just above $79 is probably acceptable, anything more you really need to take a good hard look at alternatives.
Almost every modern game is bottlenecked on a quad core - and whilst games still run okay, why would you waste money on a new motherboard and DDR4 if you're only going to put a quad-core in it? At $300 for the CPU/Mobo/RAM combination, spending another $100 to get a much better gaming chip is such an obvious choice that even budget gamers should be looking elsewhere.
Welcome to 2021
Obsolete doesn't mean they don't work any more, just that they've been superseded by other products in their category - and this category is "budget gaming CPU as part of a new motherboard purchase". As one of the lowest-tier chips you can put into a Socket 1200 motherboard, nobody is buying this as an upgrade CPU only, it's a platform cost that includes the B460 board and potentially the DDR4 too if someone is upgrading an older DDR3 platform.
The 10100 matches a 3800X and its only ~4% behind the best chips on the market:
www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-10850k/4.html
Pair this with a budget motherboard (since power requirements are not high), 2x8gb of DDR4 and something like a 1650 super and this will be a great build for the money.It's not, but the point was even with a high end gpu so it's going to be more dependant on cpu, the difference at 1440p is very small.
Admittedly that chart doesn't show minimum frames (or 1% lows), where I would expect the difference to be bigger.
And even if you drop down to 1080p, pretty much the lowest resolution people game at these days, the 10300 is only 1% behind the 3900X. The 10100 is 1% behind the 3800XT. All those extra cores aren't doing crap to help performance.
All the information about the test setup is in the TPU review. All the CPUs that can be tested on the same motherboard are. The Comet Lake CPUs were tested on a Z490 Maximus XII Extreme, the Zen2 CPUs were tested on a x570 Taichi. The memory was the same for both, 16GB(2x8GB) DDR4 running at 3200MHz 14-14-14-34. I don't know where you are getting that they don't use the same motherboards and memory speeds, but they most definitely do.
Higher memory speeds might help the Zen CPUs a small amount, but beyond 3200, its marginal gains. So it really isn't going to make any noticeable difference in real world use.
Plenty of budget gamers will buy this CPU without an iGPU, that's the point. It is a budget gaming CPU, that does really well at gaming. This CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 3060 or 3050 would make a very good budget gaming rig, and the 10100F isn't going to hold either GPU back.
It's too bad it's still a locked chip, though. It might be a better performer at a higher clockspeed. I don't think you would need a super expensive cooler to cool a modern quad core at high speeds.