i3 - i5 - i7

[Zofo]

Whats the difference between them in terms of performance etc?  Can anybody explain it to me

[Humbug]

http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/643035-difference-between-i3-i5-i7-please.html

[Zofo]

Why thank you my good man, jolly good

[Zeus]

depends also on wheather you plan to overcloclk or not

If your happy to overclock i5 FTW

my i5 is at 4.2GHz and stable

[DeathByDribbling]

If you are thinking of buying a new cpu it's worth knowing that Intel is going to replace the current generation with a new lot at the end of the year (code name sandy bridge).  These will require new motherboards (e.g. the current socket 1156 motherboard's used by most i3/i5/i7 cpu's will get replaced by a new socket 1155 pin one).

This means if you buy an iWhatever today you won't have much of an upgrade path in the future.

[Humbug]

i7's use 1366 pins btw

and yeah if you are upgrading and can hole off it might be worth holding off for 2 reasons.  The price will come right down on current stuff when the new stuff is released, that's if your happy with older tech when the new stuff is released, personally not an issue for me. 2nd, you would get the new tech when it's out however the price of this new stuff... i don't know.

[Humbug]

ahh just remembered,, the new i7's are on 1156

[Zofo]

Thx for the advice, not sure if I will wait, gonna think about it

[Zeus]

seeing you dont overclock think you should wait - what GPU was you thinking or planning sticking with your GTX280?

[frymaster]

with the current set, the only thing that's not immediately obvious from the wikipedia specs is the effect of socket size.
i3, i5, and some i7s use the smaller socket size - this gets you memory in twos (so 4 or 8 gigs in your system), and 16 PCIe lanes in total (so one graphics card)

Some i7s use the larger socket size, so you get memory in threes (so 6 or 12 gigs, realistically 6) and more PCIe lanes (so you can run SLI/crossfire/use PCIe peripheral boards like soundcards, RAID cards etc.)

apart from that, you basically just look at the CPU speed.  Hyperthreading is a nice bonus but doesn't add a great deal in most situations

[Tikcus]

All i3 processors are dual core chips for scoket 1156 (with HT)
i5, 6XX series are dual core chips for socket 1156 (with HT)
i5 7XX series are quad core parts for socket 1156 (without HT)
i7 8XX series are quad core parts for socket 1156 (with HT)
i7 9XX series are quad core parts for socket 1366 (with HT) (apart from 980x which is a 6 core beast)

1156 supports dual channel DDR3 memory, socket 1156 cpus have 16 pcie 2 lanes built into the cpu, note that all other pcie lanes on intel socket 1156 motherboards (without 3rd party chips) are pcie revision 1
1366 supports triple channel DDR 3 memory, socket 1366 have access to upto 36 pcie 2.0 lanes


Note all i3 and i5 6 series cpus, have intel graphics built onto the chip, but must be used with a compatible motherboard (H55/H57 i think)

if you are thinking of buying purely for gaming, and/or threaded applications you get much better price/performance elsewhere


best gaming cpu for your money
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-phenom-ii-corei-i5,review-31915.html

and to throw it in there
best graphics card for your money
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics-card-radeon,review-31911.html