Help deciding between i3 and i5

[Scottland]

Hi Guys,

Putting together a little ITX box to replace my ageing C2D setup. Not interested in overclocking this time, so I'll likely be using a H67 board.

I was thinking of an i3 2100 - but I've recently been thinking of an i5 instead.

The power draws aren't hugely increased with the i5, but what about heat and performance?

Is an i5 2400 much of a step up over an i3 2100? I'm mainly concerned about Photoshop work, and video encoding.
Heat is an issue in as far as it will needed to be cooled by a cooler that will fit inside an ITX case - and I would like to keep it relatively silent.


Cheers

 

[mraerosmith1981]

if your gonna encode video, definitively go for the i5 2400, I was faced with a similar questions, and ended up buying a 2100, not being happy with it when encoding blu-rays and then went and bought a 2400, and was much much happier

 

[Scottland]

if your gonna encode video, definitively go for the i5 2400, I was faced with a similar questions, and ended up buying a 2100, not being happy with it when encoding blu-rays and then went and bought a 2400, and was much much happier

What was the real world difference between the 2 then (total encoding time)?

i.e. 3 hours vs 5 hours etc?

 

[mraerosmith1981]

well it was nearly 40% faster

 

[Its_Me]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/07/01/intel-core-i3-2100-review/4

 

[john10001]

I am always thinking more raw speed from a two core i3 is better for gaming when you're mostly just doing one thing and you need the raw speed over the extra cores.

I always think i7 with four cores and multiple threads for heavy video editing and running loads of different applications at once that can make use of the multicores and threads.

And i5 I think somewhere in between those two. Perhaps a bit of video editing and lots of other media and applications.

In this case for the video editing i7 if you can stretch the extra £40 or £50 pounds.

 

[Wakinglimb]

I've just made this choice for a rig myself, opted for best of both worlds i5 2405S (the same as 2400s but with HD 3000 graphics). Was £160 ish, but is a 65w TDP CPU, with 4 cores and gives you a lot more grunt.