yottabit
Golden Member
I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem out there. I may have about 4-500 dollars to bat around for a new rig that will be used for some light gaming and some HD video editing (already have case, optical drives etc)
Anything I do will be a big upgrade over my current laptop (Core 2 Duo T5750, HD3450 Radeon) but I'm very torn between something like the Athlon II X4 and the Core i3. The Core i3 seems to be quite faster at applications that aren't very well threaded and even go blow for blow with the Athlon II at well threaded applications thanks to the hyperthreading. I'm an overclocker and all the reports of awesome i3 overclocking are so tempting to me, despite its slightly higher initial cost.
For a video card I'll probably be getting something like a 9800 gt (I'm mostly looking at playing older games and Starcraft 2), but I'm really looking for the most raw CPU performance I can get here for my video editing. Will an overclocked Athlon II x4 beat out the overclocked i3? I can't see how it could if the i3 has so much more headroom. Plus down the line with the socket 1156 platform I could upgrade to a better quad... whereas I'm not so confident AMD is going to have anything competitive for AM3 anytime soon.
Does anyone know of any power consumption figures for OVERCLOCKED i3 and athlon II x4? I'd imagine the i3 would wipe the table with the Athlon even more in this case. This would be nice becuase despite being the occasional gaming rig I might use it as a file/torrent server.
What do you guys think?
Also, should I wait a little longer? It seems like nothing has come out in the past few months... I'm not going to be able to spend more than about 500 no matter how long I wait, but maybe that 500 dollars could go a little farther once the next round of GPUs come out or something
Anything I do will be a big upgrade over my current laptop (Core 2 Duo T5750, HD3450 Radeon) but I'm very torn between something like the Athlon II X4 and the Core i3. The Core i3 seems to be quite faster at applications that aren't very well threaded and even go blow for blow with the Athlon II at well threaded applications thanks to the hyperthreading. I'm an overclocker and all the reports of awesome i3 overclocking are so tempting to me, despite its slightly higher initial cost.
For a video card I'll probably be getting something like a 9800 gt (I'm mostly looking at playing older games and Starcraft 2), but I'm really looking for the most raw CPU performance I can get here for my video editing. Will an overclocked Athlon II x4 beat out the overclocked i3? I can't see how it could if the i3 has so much more headroom. Plus down the line with the socket 1156 platform I could upgrade to a better quad... whereas I'm not so confident AMD is going to have anything competitive for AM3 anytime soon.
Does anyone know of any power consumption figures for OVERCLOCKED i3 and athlon II x4? I'd imagine the i3 would wipe the table with the Athlon even more in this case. This would be nice becuase despite being the occasional gaming rig I might use it as a file/torrent server.
What do you guys think?
Also, should I wait a little longer? It seems like nothing has come out in the past few months... I'm not going to be able to spend more than about 500 no matter how long I wait, but maybe that 500 dollars could go a little farther once the next round of GPUs come out or something
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