[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]My take on the drop of i5 is that their numbers for i5 were based on systems using older drivers, and there was not enough time to re-run them all with updated drivers. I have no complaints about this; I don't think any rational individual was expecting this to be a be-all, end-all article on CPU performance. I5 was not one of the CPUs being compared anyway, and confounding the results with multiple driver versions would just bring out the more trolls.[/citation]
I agree with you about the i5, but I do think article comparing the i3, Pentium, Athlon II x2 260, and Pentium G6950 would be kind of informative.
As much as people like to see expensive processors, the reality is that the lower end processors are often what people buy. In particular, I think the i3 is probably worth the extra money, considering it not only gets you 1 MB cache, but also hyper-threading which can be useful.
Also, I saw a review on another site on the Athlon II x2 260, which, when compared to the 255, is much faster than it should be. Performance went up more than the clock speed, and when I questioned them why, they brushed it off and just said they were only aware it was a faster clock speed. Maybe they tested wrong, maybe there is no difference, but another review showed the difference between the 260 and the Phenom II 255 to be quite small as well.
I think a lot people would be curious about matching low-end platforms on a cost basis. For example, if I save $25 on the processor, and spend it on the video card, what do the results look like. I would be impossible to do in one article, but I think a series of articles would be very interesting, covering different price points. It's time consuming, but, I think it's got broad interest and would get page hits. Of course, I could be wrong.