proffet
Honorable
luciferano :
Hyper-Threading makes up for the minor loss between a 5GHz i3 and a 3.1GHz quad-core i5 (of the same micro-architecture) in quad-threaded work. For any software that does not scale roughly 100% across four threads, the i3 would beat the i5 in this example and even in roughly 100% quad-threaded scaling, they would be on-par. Any enthusiast who can buy an unlocked i3 for say $140-160 would probably do so instead of spending more on a locked i5 that can't beat the i3 in much of anything, if anything at all.
A locked i5 still has Turbo overclocking, but that's usually only a 20% gain if you don't include BLCK overclocking that the i3 could also do anyway and it would then be a trade off between huge lightly threaded performance with great highly threaded performance against great lightly threaded performance and huge highly threaded performance. The i3 option is more favorable for most current gaming software and even for future software that will be more well-threaded, the i3 would be quite good and the lower price is a good arguing point. It might not be the best for everyone, but it would decimate i5 sales and for good reason (hence Intel will probably not do it).
A locked i5 still has Turbo overclocking, but that's usually only a 20% gain if you don't include BLCK overclocking that the i3 could also do anyway and it would then be a trade off between huge lightly threaded performance with great highly threaded performance against great lightly threaded performance and huge highly threaded performance. The i3 option is more favorable for most current gaming software and even for future software that will be more well-threaded, the i3 would be quite good and the lower price is a good arguing point. It might not be the best for everyone, but it would decimate i5 sales and for good reason (hence Intel will probably not do it).
question, which do you prefer an i3-2120 or i5-2300.?
or the Ivy Bridge versions, doesn't matter, same concept.