Intel Core i3 Coffee Lake i3-8100 BOX (BX80684I38100)

True Quad Core

The previous generation of Intel Kaby Lake processors shook the position of the Core i3 as a strong middle peasant. And all because the 80-dollar Pentium G4600 received the same two physical cores and four virtual threads as the more expensive Core i3-7100. Fortunately, the eighth generation of Coffee Lake returned the Core i3 to its former glory: the $120 newcomer 8100 received four real cores, like the old and one and a half times more expensive i5-7400.

Frequency without a catch

At the same time, unlike the Core i5, the i3-8100 does not have an intricate frequency calculation scheme with nominal and Turbo Boost auto-overclocking. The chip operates at a stable 3.6 GHz — if not a record, but quite a decent figure in 2017 – 2018. If you want more, buy a 4GHz i3-8350K and manually overclock it to 5+GHz. The transition from four threads to four cores had the most positive impact on new demanding games (CoD WW II, Prey, Dishonored 2). The average frame time (latency) has been reduced, resulting in the disappearance of microfreezes and increased control responsiveness.

Graphics to boot

The integrated graphics, compared to the 7th generation, although renamed from Intel HD Graphics 630 to UHD 630 (support for UltraHD monitors and hardware acceleration of 4K video formats H.265 and VP9), but its gaming performance remained the same. It will pull WoT, CS:GO and Dota 2, but nothing more. As a result, the Intel Core i3-8100 turned out to be a worthy answer to the quad-core AMD Ryzen 3 1200 as well. It remains only to wait for the release of cheap motherboards with junior 300-series chipsets (Coffee Lake processors are incompatible with old Intel 100 and 200-series chipsets).