Which of these budget systems would you recommend?

[casualadventurer]

Looking for a basic home system, maybe some gaming like simcity. Which system (both same price)...

i3 3240 8GB kingston ddr3 1333 1TB W Digital. H61M-plus

i3 4130 4GB ddr3 1600 1TB H-81M-C/CSM

Thanks very much for your comments!

 

[Rammy]

They are basically the same thing but the first one has double the memory (just a bit slower). The processors are more or less equal, though the second one has better internal graphics.
If you aren't planning on adding a graphics card (or there isn't one included) and you want to play any type of game, the second is definitely better, but any type if Intel HD graphics will limit your games access/performance.

 

[dashboy1998]

Are you building or buying?

 

[stickmansam]

Well I like the Haswell platform much better, it improved Hyperthreading scaling on i3's by quite a bit
If you check here http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-4340-4330-4130_5.html#sect0

you can see that the new i3's are at least 10% faster than their Ivy counterparts(at the same clockspeed)

but it's lacking in ram... if you can add your own ram, that would negate any advantage the Haswell has over the Ivy

One thing to consider is also getting a graphics card if you're looking to do any sort of gaming that is more intense than casual

 

[dashboy1998]

Well I like the Haswell platform much better, it improved Hyperthreading scaling on i3's by quite a bit
If you check here http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-4340-4330-4130_5.html#sect0

you can see that the new i3's are at least 10% faster than their Ivy counterparts(at the same clockspeed)

but it's lacking in ram... if you can add your own ram, that would negate any advantage the Haswell has over the Ivy

One thing to consider is also getting a graphics card if you're looking to do any sort of gaming that is more intense than casual

Wouldn't an APU be better if he isn't getting a GPU and wants to do some gaming?

 

[stickmansam]

^ Yes

An APU would be best for gaming, it all really depends on your budget OP

Look for say a system with an A10 7850k or A8 7600, those are the newest APU's from AMD and if you add in a dedicated card in the future, you can use the iGPU for HSA (if HSA pans out)

 

[casualadventurer]

Thank you very much for the feedback. It was very helpful.... I ended up going with the second configuration and will add more RAM later as needed. Very happy with the system so far. Its quick and responsive to everything I run, although I haven't tested it with any gaming or graphics intensive applications yet. Nice to know that there's a forum out there that you can ask for some unbiased help every once in a while... sending positive vibes out there to everyone who replied to my question!