As the entry-level Core chip in Intel’s 10th Generation lineup of desktop CPUs, the Core i3-10100 ($122) finds itself parachuting into a marketplace battlefield. AMD’s Ryzen 3 3300X ($120) has been busy swatting members of Intel’s current lineup of gaming-focused CPUs out of the sky on value, as well as in performance with lightly threaded games. So, how does the Core i3-10100 do in the face of such firepower? It takes cover…mostly.
The Core i3-10100 is sometimes slower than its predecessor, the Core i3-9100, and the 3300X has proven itself to be a four-core CPU that punches above its weight in popular games, making it a hot pick for cost-conscious PC builders and buyers. Unless you need onboard graphics or must be on Intel’s LGA 1200 socket, the Ryzen 3 3300X is categorically a better choice (and if you do need onboard graphics, the $99 AMD Ryzen 3 3200G might finish the fight). Otherwise, in those limited scenarios, the Core i3-10100 fulfills its role within Intel’s stack dutifully enough. The Ryzen 3 3300X and 3200G just do it better, for the money, in AMD’s.
Intel Core i3-10100 Specs: AMD Keeps the Pressure On
To start off our discussion of the Intel Core i3-10100 and where it sits against AMD’s lineup of entry-level CPUs, let’s look at some of basic specs of both…
The four-core/eight-thread Intel Core i3-10100 lands in the 10th Gen stack as Intel’s entry-level Core CPU, the next step up from a Celeron or a Pentium. And at least on paper, it looks like an upgrade in every way from the Intel Core i3-9100 for the same price. On the street the processor is both widely available at the time of publish (not something we can say for the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X), and also going for cheaper than Intel’s original recommended $122 selling price (between $110 and $120, depending where you shop).
The chip also adds back in a critical feature that was missing from several 9th Generation Intel desktop chips, including the Core i3-9100: Hyper-Threading. The Intel Core i3-10100 now supports up to eight threads across its four cores, but, as we discovered in our benchmarking the return of that feature in 10th Generation (specifically at this tier of CPU), it may not be the welcome-back gift we were hoping for.
Now it’s time to talk about the LGA 1200-pound gorilla in the room. Sure, Intel’s insistence on demanding yet another platform upgrade out of its users as a part of its move to 10th Generation in 2020 might make sense at the level of the $488 ($549 street) Intel Core i9-10900K, or even the midrange (around-$275) Intel Core i5-10600K, depending on the features you need. But for the Core i3 price tier? A new motherboard could end up costing more than the chip itself!
As a part of the move from LGA 1151 to LGA 1200, the Intel Core i3-10100 is only compatible with motherboards that use one of the following new-for-2020 chipsets: Intel B460, H410, H470, or Z490. (It should also work with the LGA 1200-based boards for the coming 11th Generation “Rocket Lake” processors.) There are a number of budget-chipset options available in that lineup, but budget or otherwise, it’s hard to stand up to what AMD is offering on platform compatibility these days.
Just for starters, the AMD Ryzen 5 3400G, Ryzen 3 3200G, and Ryzen 3 3300X are all compatible with the same socket: Socket AM4. That same courtesy stretches up and down through many members of the Zen family, but for the sake of processors under $150, the difference between “upgrading today” and “not yet” can often hinge on the cost of a new motherboard between generations…or whether you need one at all.
To offset some of the cost benefits either the AMD Ryzen 3 3100 or Ryzen 3 3300X might have over Intel at this price, the Core i3-10100 hits back with the inclusion of its UHD Graphics 630 integrated graphics processor (IGP), eliminating the need for a separate video card. This more fairly puts the Core i3-10100 in competition with the $99 “Zen+”-based AMD Ryzen 3 3200G or the around-$150 AMD Ryzen 5 3400G on either side, with their Radeon RX Vega 8 and RX Vega 11 IGPs, respectively. (These AMD chips, mind you, are thin on the ground at those prices in early 2021 due to supply issues.)
Intel includes its familiar, basic stock cooler in every Core i3-10100 box, which makes sense at this CPU tier. Oftentimes, buyers of processors under $200 (and especially those purchasing CPUs with an IGP) just want something they can install in one shot and not have to think about. In that role, Intel’s stock cooler handles the job just fine. Gamers might still want to saddle up with something slightly beefier, but it will do the job.
Testing the Intel Core i3-10100: A Step Up in Platforms, A Step Back in Performance
We tested the Core i3-10100 on an Asus ROG Maximus XII Hero (Wi-Fi) motherboard, with 16GB of G.Skill memory clocked to 3,000MHz (for comparability with our earlier CPU reviews), and an Intel SATA boot SSD paired with an ADATA SATA M.2 secondary drive.
All this was packed in ADATA’s XPG Invader chassis, fitted with a Deepcool GamerStorm Captain 240 EX 240mm liquid cooler and a 750-watt Corsair power supply. For our gaming tests, we used an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, at Founders Edition clocks, as we have on all recent mainstream and high-end CPU reviews.
We test CPUs using a variety of synthetic benchmarks that offer proprietary scores, as well as real-world tests using consumer apps like 7-Zip, and 3D games such as Far Cry 5. For chips at the tier of the Intel Core i3-10100, we also run several games on the IGP. Included in the charts below is a variety of like-priced competing and sibling AMD and Intel CPUs, as well as some much higher-end ones for context.
CPU-Centric Tests: Four Cores Should Do More
The Intel Core i3-10100 isn’t meant to be a multi-threaded rock star on this particular stage, but a few of the tests are still important metrics for users who perform single-threaded tasks often.
On single-threaded tasks the Intel Core i3-10100 performed well, but oddly seemed to struggle against its predecessor, the Intel Core i3-9100, depending on the benchmark. Despite having four more threads to work with compared to the i3-9100, the i3-10100 couldn’t beat the chip it’s meant to replace regularly enough to walk out as a unanimous victor.
That’s to say nothing of the beating that the i3-10100 takes from the Ryzen 3 3300X. (In the Core i3’s favor, you can actually buy one without hiring a search party to find it.) However, it does manage to keep pace with (or set a new one against) the Radeon Vega-IGP-equipped AMD Ryzen 3 3200G, depending on the run, and that chip might be considered a fairer comparison.
Gaming With a Low-End Core: Intel Core i3-10100 Frame Rates
Here’s what we saw in our bank of gaming tests with our GeForce RTX 2080 Ti card running the show. This top-end consumer graphics card is the primary arbiter of performance at 4K with all of the CPUs that we have laid out below. At 1080p, though, the card gets out of the way a bit more and lets the CPU differences shine.
Does the Intel Core i3-10100 do its job here (which is to say, powering games in 1080p and 4K at reasonably high frame rates)? Sure!
Does the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X do it better at almost every turn? Also sure. And while some of the wins often come down to the indistinguishable wire on frames, factoring in the almost certainly mandatory cost of upgrading to an LGA 1200 motherboard (versus some of the cheapest B350 or B450 boards that are available), the price-to-performance ratio inevitably skews back to AMD’s favor.
Gaming on Integrated Graphics: Intel Core i3-10100 IGP Results
As a low-end chip, the Intel Core i3-10100 is often looked at as both a chip that can power games alongside a discrete graphics card, as well as a chip that can run the show all on its own with the help of its onboard Intel UHD Graphics 630. We run lower end CPUs that have IGPs through a series of games tuned to either near-lowest, or the lowest, settings at 1,280 by 720 pixel resolution (720p), as well as at 1,920 by 1,080 pixels (1080p).
Well…that’s not great for Intel’s Core i3. The Ryzen 3 3200G, while not comparatively the best deal against its older brother, the Ryzen 5 3400G, looks like a downright steal compared to the Core i3-10100, if you’ll be relying on the AMD chip’s Radeon Graphics IGP for gaming.
The Ryzen 3 3200G, as its own budget gaming engine, regularly comes within spitting distance of hitting 60fps in 1080p, and it even manages to cross the boundary in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, versus the Intel Core i3-10100’s result of just 35fps in the same benchmark.
The Night Raid 3DMark run shows just how much work AMD has put into elevating its APUs in the past several years from afterthoughts into serious contenders. Both the Ryzen 3200G and 3400G smash through this synthetic run, and provide one of the starkest examples of the limits of Intel’s older UHD Graphics options in today’s climate.
A Brief Look at Thermals and (Not) Overclocking
While the Intel Core i3-10100 never crested above a balmy 46 degrees C during our testing, we should emphasize that our cooling solution was incredibly overkill for the job. We didn’t run any tests on the stock cooler, since using that is outside of our standard testing regimen. However, as a four-core processor it’s unlikely that the Core i3-10100 will be setting off alarms in your system anytime soon if you allow for even modest airflow.
As the Core i3-10100 is a non-“K” chip—which is to say, “not overclockable”—we didn’t get a chance to see what the Core i3-10100 could do without Intel’s anti-overclocking shackles on its wrists. If you want to overclock a processor at this level, the Ryzen 3 3300X and its unlocked clock speed will be the way to go.
Verdict: Ryzens Win at This Level…If You Can Find Them
As a chip meant to fill what is debatably one of the largest volume-seller roles in every chip launch—the entry-level option—the Intel Core i3-10100 shows just the tough spot that its 10th Generation desktop silicon has left Intel in price, value, and performance.
The results above show off the pinnacle of what the Core i3-10100 should be capable of at stock, given the deluxe testbed it was slotted into, and it still came in well under the new standard set by AMD and its Zen-based CPUs and APUs.
Granted, those chips were also tested on beefy AM4 motherboards attached to liquid cooling systems that cost as much as or more than the CPU—but we digress. If you want a chip that will far outstrip the Core i3-10100 in gaming results with a dedicated GPU, the Ryzen 3 3100 and Ryzen 3300X provide consistently faster competition in nearly every metric we test on.
If money is the only thing on your mind (but you also gotta have Intel), we’d recommend putting your savings savvy to work before opting for the Core i3-10100 upgrade. If you have an older-generation board, pair it with an Intel Core i3-9100 instead, which in our tests was often just as good (and sometimes better) than the Core i3-10100 in multi-core runs. Or look further up the stack at a Core i5.
As an IGP-equipped CPU for everyday work, the Core i3-10100 will serve its duties just fine, but as a “gaming” solution, it left us wanting. The Ryzen 3 3200G with its Radeon RX Vega 8 graphics far outstripped the capabilities of the Core i3-10100’s UHD Graphics in IGP testing, and that’s to say nothing of the smackdown we saw out of Vega 11 with the Ryzen 5 3400G.
Perhaps Intel’s 11th Generation Core “Rocket Lake” desktop CPUs, likely appearing in March 2021, will see a low-end renaissance for Intel and its new processors. But until then, we’d recommend staying the course with AMD at this price point, and going with any of the options mentioned above before sticking on the Intel Core i3-10100. They’re worth the hunt.
