i3 or a10

[Hardeep294]

Looking for a CPU for general use, would I be right in choosing the i3 over the a10? Without a dedicated card the a10 will obviously crush the i3 but for stuff like office, youtube, skype, browsing etc would the i3 be sufficient?

 

[Bacon?]

Will you be gaming or doing anything with graphics.

 

[elroberto]

In general day to day tasks you won't see a difference between most modern CPU's. The i3 will win in a lot of benchmarks but the a10 is more flexible, gives decent gaming performance out of the box and if you get the 5800k is clockable.

 

[Hardeep294]

Not really graphically intense games (CoD) maybe battlefield when my budget allows a 7850. Would that push the choice towards a i3?

 

[Martini1991]

I'd take the cheapest solution.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The A10 IGP also has very good OpenCL performance too,just like with Llano and the latter can be had very cheaply now.

Things like the Adobe CS6 suite,DxO,GIMP and HandBrake are all getting or are going to get OpenCL acceleration.

BF3 tends to use an engine which can use multiple threads very well,hence,I don't think that an A10 or a Core i3 would not be massively different, with a discrete graphics card like an HD7850 2GB.

OTH,if it was WoW,then the Core i3 would be better.

Have you considered another option??

I would also be looking at the FX6300, especially when it drops down to around £100:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-338-AM&groupid=701&catid=1967&subcat=1825

If the budget is tight you could get this budget AM3+ motherboard:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-415-GI&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=1481

It does not have SATA3.0(has USB3.0 though),and is not the latest chipset,but the CPU would probably be better than a Core i3 or A10 in BF3 with an HD7850. The IGP is not that great but would be OK for basic purposes(any modern AMD or Intel one would be faster),but should be fine for things like flash video.

 

[Marine-RX179]

I think to put simply...

Get the A10 if you have absolutely no plan on getting a dedicated graphic card in the future, however if you are gonna get one, then the i3 would be a better choice, as the socket 1155 has a much clearer and proven upgrade path than the FM2 (as there's no guarantee that the next and possibly final gen on the FM2 socket would be comparable to Ivy i5 in performance).

In games like BF3 that would use all 4 cores there shouldn't be much difference in performance between the two if you have the A10 overclocked (the i3 2100 had roughly identical frame rate to the Phenom II X4 980BE at 3.7GHz in games that use 4 threads, but the i3 is faster in games that use less than 4 threads). The Ivy i3 would be a bit faster than the old Sandy i3.

With that said, if all the games you plan on playing are not so much stressing the CPU or graphic, the A10 would do nicely without needing a graphic card.