BenchPair

Core i3-8300 bottleneck & gaming FPS

Ranked 199 of 201 desktop processors for gaming in our database (1th percentile). It can sustain roughly 55 fps in a typical AAA title regardless of resolution — that ceiling is what decides whether a graphics card is worth pairing with it.

SpecificationsCoffee Lake · 2018
ArchitectureCoffee Lake
Cores4
Threads4
Boost clock3,700 MHz
L3 cache8 MB
TDP62 W
Released2018
Processor ceiling by game1080p, high

The frame rate this chip could sustain with an infinitely fast graphics card. It is almost the same at every resolution, because rendering more pixels gives the processor no extra work.

GameCPU ceilingWith Radeon RX 6600 XT
Cyberpunk 2077 53 fps 36 fps
Fortnite 71 fps 70 fps
Counter-Strike 2 89 fps 88 fps
Baldur's Gate 3 48 fps 47 fps
Red Dead Redemption 2 63 fps 43 fps
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 32 fps 31 fps
Best matched graphics cards1080p, high

Ranked by how little performance the pairing wastes. Anything much faster than the top entry will sit partly idle at this resolution — though it may still be worth it if you plan to move to 1440p or 4K.

Graphics cardEst. FPSUnused
Radeon RX 6600 XT 54 2.2%
GeForce RTX 4060 54 3.1%
Radeon RX 6650 XT 54 3.9%
GeForce RTX 5050 52 3.9%
GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 54 4.3%
TITAN X Pascal 54 4.8%

Living with a Core i3-8300

This processor sits in the lower part of the range and will be the limiting component in most modern pairings. Frame rates will be capped by the chip well before the graphics card runs out of capacity, and no graphics upgrade will change that.

If frame rates are the problem, this is where the money goes. Raising the resolution will not help here in the way it does for a graphics-limited system.

A small cache holds this chip back

8 MB of L3 is modest by current standards, and it costs this chip more in games than its clock speed suggests. Game engines walk large, scattered data structures, so a small cache means more trips to main memory and more stalls on the render thread. Memory speed and timings matter unusually much on a part like this.

A note on age

Released in 2018, this chip is 8 years old. Beyond raw speed it is on an older platform, which usually means slower memory, fewer PCIe lanes and no path to a newer processor without replacing the motherboard. Factor that into any upgrade maths — the chip may not be the only thing you end up replacing.

Where it sits

Ranked 199 of 201 desktop processors for gaming. Nearest faster: Core i3-9100F, Core i3-8350K. Just below: Core i3-8100F, Core i3-8100. Full method on the methodology page.