Intel Core i3-2120 Review (Page 10 of 11)

Page 10 - Benchmark: SuperPI 1M, Cinebench R11.5

About SuperPI

Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point - up to a maximum of 32 million. It uses Gauss-Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of the program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute Pi to 2^32 digits.

Super Pi is used by many overclockers to test the performance and stability of their computers. In the overclocking community, the standard program provides a benchmark for enthusiasts to compare "world record" pi calculation times and demonstrate their overclocking abilities. The program can also be used to test the stability of a certain overclock speed. If a computer is able to calculate PI to the 32 millionth place after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be moderately stable in terms of RAM and CPU. However, longer tests with other CPU/RAM intensive calculation programs will run for hours instead of minutes and may better stress system stability. While Super Pi is not the fastest program for calculating Pi, it remains very popular in the hardware and overclocking communities.

From: Wikipedia (January 22, 2011)

Back when I had a Newcastle core Athlon 64 3000+, calculating to one million digits took over 40 seconds. When I got my Core 2 Duo E6300 in 2006, the time was reduced to 29 seconds. I then overclocked it to 2.8GHz shortly, shaving an impressive 10 seconds off. The Core 2 Extreme QX9650 came along in 2007 and blew them all away with a 15.563 second official time. When I gave my heavily overclocked Core i5-750 a shot last year, 4.00 GHz on the dial returned a time of just over 10 seconds. Because SuperPi is not a multithreaded benchmark, it is probably unsurprising it posted an impressive 11.9 second time to one million digits of Pi, which is very similar to the 3.3GHz Intel Core i5-2500K with Turbo Boost off.

About Cinebench R11.5

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON's award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X).

From: Developer's Page


Rendering performance in Cinebench R11.5 is very good. While we cannot expect the Core i3-2120 to perform as well as true quad core processors, Hyper-Threading contributed its part, setting the dual core/quad thread processor to be just behind the Core i5-750 as far the CPU score is concerned. Rolling around to our OpenGL results, again the Core i3-2120 took the middle ground and split the difference between the two quad core Core i5s.


Page Index
1. Introduction and Specifications
2. Intel Core i3-2120 Architecture; Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 CPU
4. Benchmark: AIDA64 FPU
5. Benchmark: AIDA64 Memory
6. Benchmark: BAPCo SYSmark 2007
7. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage
8. Benchmark: 3DMark 11
9. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0
10. Benchmark: SuperPI 1M, Cinebench R11.5
11. Power Consumption and Conclusion