Where does an i3 rate for you?

[crenn]

The i3 is more like a SoC because of it's integrated graphics. A i3 will run circles around a Celeron and additionally, the Celeron line soon will be no more.

[OvRiDe]

One thing the i series of processors brings back is hyper-threading so you have 4 threads to work with on an i3 unlike you would on a C2D or the Celeron. I would rate the i3 as a light to moderate work machine or HTPC since it's on chip GPU is capable of decoding up to 2 HD streams. It will probably run many games just fine, with the proper video card.

[BuzzKillington]

So, I'm new at Radio Shack and the guy I work with is setting up new laptops. He pulls one out with a Celeron and we talk about it being a very basic use PC. Then he unboxes one with an i3 and says that it too is a basic computer. I was stunned. To me an i3 is pretty damn nice. I'd say my Q9400 is better, but an i3 is close.

My AMD 6000+ X2 is still a nice processor. It's dual core and runs at 3GHz, but to him it ancient garbage. I've built systems for others recently and used Pentium 4's running Vista and they score in the low 4's on the Windows Experience Index. They get hot as hell, but they're still solid chips.

Why do people think that nothing less than an i5 or i7 is any good at all? How many of you are still using single core or early dual core systems like my kid's 3800+ X2 and would KILL for an i3 system?

I think what it boils down to is some people are just stupid.

[diluzio91]

alot of people think "its not new it cant perform that well" this guy obviously falls into that category... Another thing people don't understand is the new chip architectures... we have been spoon fed by intel! you take our spoon away how are we supposed to know how many cores we have?!?!? i3-dual core i5-quad i7-beastquad or hexa

[Twigsoffury]

i'm extremely happy with my phenom II 955

don't they come in around the same price as a i3, yet perform with the i7 series?

[TheGreatSatan]

Nothing from AMD competes with an i7

[x88x]

Well, it depends what i7, what AMD chip, and what you're doing. IIRC, in most situations the Phenom II x6's will trounce the quad-core i7's (and be quite a bit cheaper). They do fall behind when it comes to memory bandwidth, iirc, and the hex-core i7's do outperform the Phenom II x6's (though they also cost 4-5x as much). I'll be interested to see what happens with the Phenom III (or whatever they call it), when they hopefully upgrade the memory controller.

[Twigsoffury]

Nothing from AMD competes with an i7

my X4 955 @ 3.7Ghz seems to hang/compete with my buddies i7-920 @ 3.0Ghz

least in video games... but i sure am jelous when he opens that resource monitor with 8 flippin CPU charts : \

[Konrad]

Hey, I still use my ancient Socket 478 P4 3.2E - one core with hyperthreading.

Stock 3200MHz but my particular piece OCs at 3998Mhz *all the time* and is absolutely stable. Asus i865 mobo, decent PSU, 4GB PC3200 RAM, Radeon HD 4650 AGP card. I obviously won't be doing Bioshock 2 on this machine; but Bioshock "1" (along with most circa-2008 or earlier games) still do 30fps smoothly on max visual quality. I do all the same movies, music, internet, etc any gamer does; I code and I run things like CAD, SPICE, Solidworks all the time.

All these things work fine - and fast - enough to hardly complain. Sure, I sometimes get an idiotically fat 12GB movie or .jpg or .pdf - enough to choke and stutter even the mid- and high-end 4GHz multicores ... I'm just agreeing that "old" tech is still overkill for normal (and a bit of abnormal) consumer use.

I know for a fact that my system outperforms many i3's ... though no doubt that's only because they've been put together with bargain hardware and run bloated Windows installs.

Yeah, they say it's not the size but what you do with it ... they're onto something but it's still a lie.

My old "junk" is still plenty of computing power; sure, I'd like to upgrade, no doubt I'd love a top echelon six-core i7 (along with all the innumerable other improvements an LGA1366/X58/PCIe system would bring over my wimpy lil old AGP system). Alas, I'm no longer a pure hardcore gamer and there are other priorities in my life, so for me the price of a complete system upgrade doesn't really justify the gains. Maybe one day I'll blow $3-5K on whatever's most kickass, maybe I'll just wait and pick up a 6-core system 2 years from now on craigslist for a pittance.

[x88x]

Maybe one day I'll blow $3-5K on whatever's most kickass, maybe I'll just wait and pick up a 6-core system 2 years from now on craigslist for a pittance.

TBH you can build a really kickass system now for around $800. ...not saying you necessarily need to, just clarifying the playing field.