i3 IGP?

Anyone got any benchmarks on it? Will it run WoW okay?
Or should i just go ahead and get the Pentium chip just below the i3 and buy a cheap video card? Building a light gaming/htpc/web PC, and i've settled on something i3 or below. Lol.

The i3 should handle all of that quite well. Should also consider a decent H55 Motherboard so you can overclock the snot out of it. They are hitting 4.5+ on air. Even a light OC is 4.0.

Pricewise it would be wiser to get the i3 over a 775 chip unless you already have a Motherboard and DDR2 laying around. Otherwise the price is going to be in favor of the S1156.

There's an 1156 Pentium... can't remember the name, but it also has a slower IGP in it.

But can the graphics chip on the i3 handle WoW and HD netflix, ect?

Yeah the i3 can handle most basic games, blue ray playback, and so on.

Thanks
That'll cut about $50 off the build right now... i have an X1600 here if it turns out they need a GPU. I'm trying to make this thing small and quiet though.

should answer you question
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2921/2
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2921/3

Evilsizer said:

should answer you question
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2921/2
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2921/3

Click to expand...

Yeah...even OC'ed, that GMA HD doesn't have what it takes for WoW

anandtech said:

Intel Core i3 530 (1200MHz gfx) - 19.0 fps

Click to expand...

I'd use that dedicated card you have

But it doesn't say any of the settings used??? But yeah, that X1600 should provide better performance. Also, you could always try passively cooling it to keep it quiet?

CompuTamer said:

There's an 1156 Pentium... can't remember the name, but it also has a slower IGP in it.

But can the graphics chip on the i3 handle WoW and HD netflix, ect?

Click to expand...

You're thinking of the Pentium G6950, though for basic gaming I'd say pick up an ATI 4650. Can be had for ~$40 and it absolutely crushes any integrated graphics.

Overclocked i3 GPU

I have an i3 530 and I've been experimenting with overclocking the GPU before my new graphics card arrives in the mail. My i3 is oced to 3.5 currently. I have a Bclk of 160 x22 and GPU frequency of 733 in the BIOS, which results in 881.8 Mhz GPU.

I have seen great improvements in playing HD video, which was very choppy before I overclocked. However, it's still way too slow to play Starcraft 2. So, I upped the GPU frequency to 833, which should give me a 1002 Mhz GPU. However on this setting video became unstable and it kept trying to switch back and forth between video modes when I loaded Starcraft 2. Realtemp showed the chip running a little hot, in the 60s, but I don't think the problem was just a lack of processing power. I suppose if I upped the voltage it might help but somehow I doubt it would be enough to run Starcraft 2 even if i were able to successfully oc it above 1000 Mhz.

So, in response to your question, you should definitely have a dedicated graphics card and not rely on the i3 igp to run WoW. However, for the money I think the i3 is a great processor, I would recommend it even if you aren't going to use the igp.