Review on Intel Communications Fund by Daria Logunova

Currently, not everyone can buy a good processor. Prices have risen a lot, even in the secondary market. All this happened due to the active development of mining and the shortage of semiconductors. Of course, I want to find a compromise for acceptable money and in pursuit of it, many begin to search the Internet for TOP budget processors, where they find how they are told that if there is not a lot of money, then buy server Xeons (Xeon). The idea is tempting. Those people who are sitting on socket 775 and want to upgrade their system after looking at such materials order a Xeon x5460 with a jumper on Aliexpress. Similarly, for other, old sockets, there are Xeons that are recommended for purchase as cheap options. But why do you need server processors that have a very large heat dissipation, low clock speed, and, in fact, were designed for permanent work on servers? I had experience using such a processor, which led to the fact that the power supply burned out after running the system.



And so, after a long time, I decided to build an old system that would be more vigorous for browsers, easy installation and general use. The budget was extremely limited, so I made my choice in favor of socket 1155. I really did not want to take i3 processors. I7 - was a good solution, but expensive. And then, like the golden mean, only i5 remained, my choice fell on the third generation of the processor, namely the i5-3470. Although socket 1155 itself also supports the second generation of Intel processors, I think there is no point in taking anything other than the Core i7-2600K. I bought i5-3470 for $55. For this money, I have not seen analogues for myself, the processor has 4 cores and 4 threads, a frequency of 3.2 MHz (with a maximum dynamic frequency of up to 3.6 MHz), support for Intel Turbo Boost 2.0, heat dissipation of 77 W and a third-level cache of 6 mb.



I want to make a reservation right away: I have assembled a simple system, I refused to buy a very cheap video card and postponed this purchase until later, when there are free funds. In view of this, I use the system on the integrated Intel HD Graphics 2500 and costs only 4 gigabytes of RAM. This clarification is important, because later there will be tests from Сinebench. The system works perfectly for its money. Speed, quick opening of programs and work with them at a good level, until there is an emphasis on RAM. This affects the opening of more than 6 tabs in the browser, multitasking, games and other resource-intensive programs. Relatively speaking: you turned on the computer, opened the browser and everything works quickly, then you opened 6-7 tabs and friezes began.



For modern, 64-bit Windows, you need at least 8GB of RAM.



Speaking of games, I've run The Sims 4 on integrated graphics. Settings are low. HD resolution. The game worked fine, but sometimes there were friezes. Of course, 4 gigabytes of RAM and ancient integrated graphics made themselves felt. It was pointless to launch something more serious. But speaking in general, you can watch any video with tests for this processor. Loading the i5-3470 at 100% is extremely difficult in games, in fact, with this processor, the power of your video card will be the main problem.



Also, on this system, an easy montage was made from animation, video sequence, pictures and music. The duration of the video was about 2 minutes, resolution Fullhd, h264 for Youtube. Rendering took in different ways: from 3 to 5 minutes. Naturally, RAM again became the main problem, due to the small volume there were brakes during the rendering process, and when working with animation, integrated graphics turned out to be a natural problem.



If we talk about tests that reflect the capabilities of the processor, they surprised me, I'll show you one example, Cinebench R23:



1.) In single-core mode, the i5-3470 scored 684 points. As you can see from the table, the results of the single-core mode do not reach the i7-4850HQ, but slightly more than in the server 12-core Xeon E5-2697 v2.



2.) In multi-core mode, the i5-3470 scored 2283 points, which is already far from the i7-4850HQ, but in general, not bad for such an age processor.

Please take into account and do not forget about the characteristics of my assembly, they influenced the final result.



To summarize, the old Intel Core i5-3470 is perfect for buying in 2021 and 2022 for those people who have a very limited budget. It will be able to give you the opportunity to play normally, if you have a video card from the GTX 750 Ti and from 8GB of RAM. It is very nimble and can still be acceptable for everyday tasks. Unfortunately, the strong rise in component prices forces you to look at older models, but if you search, you can find old processors and sockets that may suit your needs.