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CPU uses

gaz1971

gaz1971

gaz1971

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Joined
11 Aug 2012
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129
My own understanding, very limited, is that i3 is good, i5 is better and i7 is best and it all depends on what you can afford. What I want to know is are any of them tailored for specific uses, for example, i5 for gaming, i7 for video encoding or is it a case of you buy the best one you can afford?


On another note, are Intel stock coolers any good or useless like AMD ones?
 
The i3 is a locked dual core with hyperthreading so it is decent for office work and gaming, albiet not as much as a quad core.

The i5 notably the K series are brilliant for gaming since they have unlocked potential and are quad core.

The i7's are basically i5's with hyperthreading which gives them a boost in high thread programs like video editing.
 
They aren't brilliant since they are faily low clocked and dont have any of the nice feautures like HT so I wouldnt use a £200+ GPU on them, however they do office work fine.
 
Surprisingly the Celerons and Pentiums work well. Even in games. They wont give as good performance as a i5 but they are not bad either.

However, they are mostly aimed at office and average home users.
 
Im currently using an Athlon X2 4400 and it does what I want fast enough, Im not a gamer and just want a slight speed upgrade. My main use is video editing and internet.
 
Would look at the i3's coupled with a Z77 motherboard if you can then. The i3's are clocked higher which is nice as the HT would come in handy by doubling your effective threads on the video editing.

The Z77 motherboard will allow for an upgrade to Ivy Quad Core in the future if you ever wanted it :)
 
Yes the Gigabyte ones are quite good, I own the UD3H and its a very capable board. They also have a long warranty and UK RMA which is very handy.
 
going from an athlon 4400 to an i3 2120 will be a huge performance boost :) i assume you will be using ddr2 RAM so keep in mind you will need DDR3 for a Z77 MB :)
 
Smoogels said:
Surprisingly the Celerons and Pentiums work well. Even in games. They wont give as good performance as a i5 but they are not bad either.

However, they are mostly aimed at office and average home users.
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Depends on the game in question - games like World of Warcraft (and most MMO's for that matter) require decent CPU performance as well as GPU. Pentiums and Celerons suck in this scenario.
 
i went from a athlon 4400 to a i7 2600k for me biggest change came from going from ddr2 to ddr3 ram as i only had 1gb on athlon setup.
i got my i7 only because i know i want to try some video editing in time and seemed for the cost difference to me wasn't big enough to not get it.
if you have budget for it and do video editing then its down to how much you're extra time is worth vs cost of i7
 
bartledvd said:
i went from a athlon 4400 to a i7 2600k for me biggest change came from going from ddr2 to ddr3 ram as i only had 1gb on athlon setup.
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Well DDR2 to DDR3 isn't going to be the significant factor here when you're talking about increasing RAM in general. Just about any version of Windows from XP onwards is seriously gimped with only 1 Gb RAM, so it's no big surprise. Also comparing athlon 4400 to just about any Core i7 is like comparing a bicycle to a Ferrari. And since you wouldn't have been able to run DDR2 on a Core i7 I'm not sure how you draw this conclusion. :confused:

Sorry to appear pendantic, but I wouldn't want anyone to think that different types of memory would make such a difference because a. you weren't using enough in the first place and b. you couldn't use the former type of memory so there is no fair comparison to be had.
 
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If you want your system to feel snappier and boot/load apps quickly then get an SSD. Any of the Intel 1155 CPU's including the cheap dual core Celerons will be much faster than your old Athlon, and paired with an SSD on a Sata 3 motherboard will feel extremely quick. :)
 
Cool, never knew if just installing a card would disable cpu/mb onboard graphics.

The SSD thing is useful to know. I was just looking for a step up from what I have speed wise, I wasnt looking for the fastest thing around as I was on a budget.
 
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