Interesting CPU - Intel Core i3-9100F 3.6 GHz (4.2 GHz Turbo) - no graphics

[krick]

I just noticed this CPU for the first time today...  quad-core, 4.2GHz turbo, no onboard graphics.  At a little over $100, it seems like a decent choice for a MAME PC...

Intel Core i3-9100F Coffee Lake 4-Core 3.6 GHz (4.2 GHz Turbo) LGA 1151 (300 Series) 65W BX80684i39100F Desktop Processor Without Graphics
https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i3-9th-gen-core-i3-9100f/p/N82E16819118072?Item=N82E16819118072

[schmerzkaufen]

Indeed, noticed those newly listed 9th gen i3 recently, the i3-9300 and i3-9320 just above are in the same vein just a bit faster.

The top one though, i3-9350K, is rather power hungry, I find the i5-9600 more interesting.

Edit: only the 9100 has that 'F' variant and that low a pricing though it seems.

[haynor666]

Right now in Poland (prices for new processors):

Pentium G3258 - 40 USD; single core score 2128 (2500 if overclocked) -> ratio 53,2
Pentium G5400 - 74 USD; single core score 2181 -> ratio 29,47
Pentium G5600 - 93 USD; single core score 2257 -> ratio 24,27
Core i3-9100F - 118 USD; single core score 2344 (but only 5 samples at cpubenchmark) -> ratio 19,86

Ratio is score/price, higher = better

So it's still G3258 most economic for mame usage if we account only single core usage.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html
Usefull chart but valid for all core performance vs price. Ryzens seems to be winners for multicore.

[schmerzkaufen]

Well the purpose of a CPU like the i3-9100F is to get a relatively powerful real 4-cores processor at a rather affordable price compared to the others...and new/for current mobos and OS.

Personally I don't buy old overclockable CPUs if my purpose is to do the same. Right now on eBay the only supposedly new G3258 (opened box) I see is 130€ not counting customs.
And I can't find a single of the cheap mobos that supported a good OC for it like the E33.

[haynor666]

It's funny how prices can be different in western countries. I've found on bay uk at about 70 GBP.

[lilshawn]

I think the question begs, for the sake of about 200 benchmark points, is it even worth spending the extra bucks?

not sure... but the ram bus speed with the 1151 socket DDR4 vs 1150's DDR3 is going to be a lot bigger of a performance gain that just straight CPU numbers. the ACTUAL real world performance could be a bigger difference.

you are going to be spending more money on a motherboard and ram and stuff anyways over the older socket 1150 hardware.

best bang for your buck?... left to be seen.

[schmerzkaufen]

For me it's simple, right now I can get a i3-9100F at 109€ and a 1151 mobo at 54€, which gets me 4c @4,2GHz without OC.

vs.

A used (OC'd for an unspecified number of hours) 2c G3258 at a broad variety of prices and availability on eBay (some shady 'like new' and some charging heavy shipping and customs), that I need a particular 1150 OC-able mobo (sometimes requiring specific firmware, i've lost the list but I guess it can be found) I cannot find anymore, to get it to OC at somewhere between 4~5GHz.

So I mean if it was like 5 years ago still I would definitely continue to recommend a G3258 setup, but today it's a bit too much trouble and maybe not that cheaper a spending.

What bothers me the most with more moden CPUs is OS support, since I'd like to avoid W10...

EDIT: to be clear I've been wanting to build a new PC for emulation including Groovy, not at all in a hurry, I want something rather powerful but I don't want to bother with OC, something straightforward...but affordable. And this i3-9100F is showing me at least one thing; it's getting there, I'd just want it even a bit faster like 4.5GHz 4c and max 120€ or something. Should happen soon...like in a year or two.

[krick]

not sure... but the ram bus speed with the 1151 socket DDR4 vs 1150's DDR3 is going to be a lot bigger of a performance gain that just straight CPU numbers. the ACTUAL real world performance could be a bigger difference.

DDR4 doesn't make much of a difference...

DDR4 vs DDR3 - Apples to Apples Comparison

[haynor666]

I don't know how much right mame will benefit from multicore processors but some time ago only small number of games used more than 1 core. If it is still then we should still look for most powerfull single core no matter how much core processor have. All modern processors for PC will have minimum 2 cores anyway.

Problem with new processors will be support for windows 7. Some new intel chipsets might have drivers only for windows 8 and newer. Personally I prefer to stick with windows 7 for some time even on my main PC.

Kaby Lake is according to wikipedia first generation that don't have support for windows 7 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaby_Lake but
Starting from Kaby Lake refresh windows 10 officially is required.

[schmerzkaufen]

I don't know how much right mame will benefit from multicore processors but some time ago only small number of games used more than 1 core. If it is still then we should still look for most powerfull single core no matter how much core processor have. All modern processors for PC will have minimum 2 cores anyway.

That was years ago, how many games do use multi-cores today I don't know but it's not just a handful either, and there's other threads for sound, inputs etc, the more increase stability and as Calamity explained once in cases it can even benefit input delay. Recently iirc Haze said something like the ideal CPU for MAME is a 6+ cores with as many Hz as possible.

Problem with new processors will be support for windows 7. Some new intel chipsets might have drivers only for windows 8 and newer. Personally I prefer to stick with windows 7 for some time even on my main PC.

Kaby Lake is according to wikipedia last generation that have support for windows 7 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaby_Lake
Starting from Kaby Lake refresh windows 10 officially is required.

The 'wufuc' patch, right ? honestly if the i7-7700K wasn't so expensive I'd grab one before it's gone. Best W7 config forever.

[donluca]

I'd advise against the G3258: it's impossible to find new ones and buying used means you're gonna get a CPU which has been overclocked to ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- 99% the time and probably has developed some issues.

The new i3 looks very promising indeed.

Some MAME games indeed have started using more cores, although it's just to handle inputs and not much else, so no huge gain.

I have yet to see games which *actually* use more than 2 cores.

[krick]

Some MAME games indeed have started using more cores, although it's just to handle inputs and not much else, so no huge gain.

I have yet to see games which *actually* use more than 2 cores.

I did some benchmarking a while back comparing the G3258 to the i7-4790K...

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Number=371594

The following games (from the list of ones in the benchmark) all ran significantly faster with more cores.  I'm sure there's others...

blitz
gauntleg
gradius4
pinkswts
propcycl
slrasslt

Check out the link above for more info.

[schmerzkaufen]

Some MAME games indeed have started using more cores, although it's just to handle inputs and not much else, so no huge gain.

I have yet to see games which *actually* use more than 2 cores.

Always useful to quote this as a reminder: http://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/FAQ:Performance

Does MAME benefit from SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) / HT (Hyper-Threading) / dual cores?

Yes, MAME uses multi-threading to allow some tasks to be split up across multiple CPUs/cores. In addition to the main emulation thread, MAME may create additional threads for the following tasks, depending on the system being emulated and your configuration:

    Up to three threads for triangle rendering when emulating accelerated 3D graphics hardware, including those 3dfx Voodoo
    Up to three matrix solver threads for emulating analog sound synthesis, TTL logic, and other analog/digital circuitry
    A texture upload thread when using bgfx video output (for uploading textures from MAME to your GPU)
    A thread to handle MAME's output handlers and built-in HTTP server
    Additional threads for OpenMP loop acceleration (requires special compile options, not enabled by default)

In pathological cases, MAME can make use of eight or more CPU cores. Additionally, it helps if you have at least one CPU core to handle the OS and background tasks so MAME doesn't have to relinquish the CPU. Note that parallelisation also increases memory bandwidth and cache requirements. MAME's working set is somewhat larger than a typical benchmark suite, or an AV compressor.

And I think it's a bit outdated, for instance the system22 games iirc use up to 4 cores, not-too-long ago that update made a significant difference for me playing those games.
I wonder if the also not too old Qsound update runs on a different thread/core.

There's probably more benefits than what people realize IMHO, it's just that if you have a powerful single or 2c there's fewer instance where you'll realize the difference 3+ cores make.
(some additional theory bit: most people use weak-to-average CPUs and play essentially mid-80's to mid-90's 2D games, which probably reduces the occurences of 3+ cores being used and beneficial)
Also mamedev communication being as bare/dry/lacking in clarity as usual in explaining and advertising, they don't list actual examples, whether it's in the docs or the sources/systems info so people are mostly in the dark about real life MAME behaviour and performance anyway.
They said looooong ago that MAME used one core period, and it stuck, now that's changed they didn't make that clear enough for the general.

[haynor666]

Some MAME games indeed have started using more cores, although it's just to handle inputs and not much else, so no huge gain.

I have yet to see games which *actually* use more than 2 cores.

I did some benchmarking a while back comparing the G3258 to the i7-4790K...

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Number=371594

The following games (from the list of ones in the benchmark) all ran significantly faster with more cores.  I'm sure there's others...

blitz
gauntleg
gradius4
pinkswts
propcycl
slrasslt

Check out the link above for more info.

Yep, some (if not all) voodoo based games are multithreaded, also cv1k driver looks like used more than one core. For neo-geo, cps1, cps2 and many 2D systems still only one core is used. Would be great to see discrete components using many cores especially in qsound based games with discrete emulation enabled. This would probably boost some old 2D games.

Main questions is would You like to those games play in mame and how much You are going to spent for that.

It's great to use powerfull processor for variety of usage ie. modern games, programs, movies, work that's why I still have i5 in my main PC but spending lot of money for processor that only runs mame (in my case not too often) and some other emulators does not make sense to me. That's why I build second PC based on G3258 at a time when this processor was new on market and all other parts were quite cheap. Time has pass so if anyone looking for good price/single core power ratio then should look for newer processors like i3-9100F or G5600. The only problem might be performance and compatybility problems under windows 7.

[schmerzkaufen]

Say a 4+GHz/4-cores falls under the psychological 100 $/£/€ (should be soon for the i3-9100F) there'll be no reasons left to bother looking for a 1c or basic 2c anymore unless you're so broke your survival is at stake.

Some people opt for the 'cheapest' possible build for ideological reasons more than monetary, that's the logic with the Pi, which I find mostly broken as I see people spending A LOT on everthing additional around those for their build, all that to find themselves crippled by a very under-performing base computer that can't do half what MAME (and GroovyMAME!) does with a decent CPU on Windows.

It's like we've reached the turning point, or it'll be in a year or two, where the 2c become obsolete for nearly every use.

[krick]

Time has pass so if anyone looking for good price/single core power ratio then should look for newer processors like i3-9100F or G5600. The only problem might be performance and compatability problems under windows 7.

This might help...

Intel Preps New H310 Chipset Revision With Windows 7 Support For Coffee Lake
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13201/intel-preps-h310-revision-with-win7-coffee-lake-support

[pbj]

Will it run gauntlet legends 100%?

[haynor666]

Time has pass so if anyone looking for good price/single core power ratio then should look for newer processors like i3-9100F or G5600. The only problem might be performance and compatability problems under windows 7.

This might help...

Intel Preps New H310 Chipset Revision With Windows 7 Support For Coffee Lake
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13201/intel-preps-h310-revision-with-win7-coffee-lake-support

Unfortunately, Intel does not seem to plan releasing Windows 7 drivers for its latest iGPUs, so PCs running Intel's Coffee Lake on the H310C (H310 R2.0) and Windows 7 will have to use a discrete graphics card instead. This will naturally make systems running the long-standing OS a bit more expensive than modern PCs with iGPUs.

Fortunately this is no problem for groovymame users

[schmerzkaufen]

This is really cool. And even if Microsoft don't really follow it doesn't matter either, it's not like we need windows update (I think?), just the compatibility.

[haynor666]

One question remains - how those processors will work on windows 7. G3258 had about 2300 points under XP x64 but 2500 under 7 x64.