It depends on what you do with your computer. It will run faster anyways because the i5 has turbo which makes it run faster than the i3. The i5 also has 4 cores instead of hyper-threading which significantly improves performance but as I said before, it depends on the workload. If you browse the web, you'll see no difference. Games in general will benefit from the i5 because it runs faster than the i3, but that depends on the speed of your video card and if you're cpu is actually the bottleneck or not.
So my two questions are:
What is the rest of the hardware in your computer and what do you do with your computer?
This relates to an earlier post but I am contemplating building a new system and trying to find the right balance between power that I need for my usage habits, and whats newest,biggest, and best. I don't really have a budget per say with the caveat that I am unwilling to spend money without gain on the back end. For instance I shoot competitively as one of my other hobbies and I spend a lot of money doing things to my guns that an average shooter A. wouldn't understand, and B. isn't good enough to make use of, but for me .025" at 500 yards is the difference between top three and bottom of the pack. So anyway I am trying to come up with a build that will easily handle heavy web usage with a lot of multimedia sites running at once, FlightSim gaming on a moderate level, and minor photo and video editing. MS X Flightsim, Combat Pilot, Flaming Cliffs etc are the games I play along with a few RP such as LOTR etc.
I'm coming from a Coreduo E 6300/ Geforce 7300 LE so anything you guys have or suggest will be a huge upgrade. I just want to try to hit the sweet spot of what I need versus what is available. I am not good enough, nor know enough to want or need that last .025" out of my " gun". Does that make any sense? This is what I originally had in mind but after reading a lot of older posts on here and elsewhere I am starting to think that is too much horsepower for what I do:
Intel Core i5 Processor I5-3450
INTEL COPPER HEAVY DUTY LGA 1155/1366/2011 COOLING FAN
ZEROtherm Advanced ZT100 Thermal Grease
GIGABYTE GA-Z77MX-D3H LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL10D-16GBXL
Toshiba HIGH PERFORMANCE 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB CACHE SATA 6.0Gb/s
24X DVD-RW DUAL LAYER
EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-2662-KR GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
REALTEK 8-CHANNEL DIGITAL SOUND ONBOARD
REALTEK 10/100/1000 Gigabit Network Card (onboard)
APEVIA X-Cruiser2 Metal Case w/ Side Window-RED
(2X) 120mm HIGH-PERFORMANCE CASE FANS
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W Modular High Performance Power Supply compatible with Intel Sandybridge Core i3 i5 i7 and AMD Phenom
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
I am starting to think this might be a better way to go:
Intel Core Processor I3-3220
INTEL COPPER HEAVY DUTY LGA 1155/1366/2011 COOLING FAN
ZEROtherm Advanced ZT100 Thermal Grease
PROFESSIONAL WIRING
Biostar TZ77B LGA1155/ Intel Z77/ DDR3/ CrossFireX/ SATA3&USB3.0/ A&GbE/ ATX Motherboard
8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600MHz (PC3 12800) Dual Channel
(2X) MEMORY HEAT SPREADERS
Toshiba HIGH PERFORMANCE 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB CACHE SATA 6.0Gb/s
24X DVD-RW DUAL LAYER
nVidia GeForce GTX650 1GB DDR5 2-DVI/HDMI SLI PCI-EXP Video Card
REALTEK 8-CHANNEL DIGITAL SOUND ONBOARD
REALTEK 10/100/1000 Gigabit Network Card (onboard)
APEVIA X-Cruiser2 Metal Case w/ Side Window-RED
(2X) 120mm HIGH-PERFORMANCE CASE FANS
hec X ORION 585 WATT POWER SUPPLY
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit