I agree with this. The i3 (especially skylake) is a great chip. And it can game with a good GPU. Hell, it can play CS:G0 with its integrated graphics at 60 FPS steady, so there.
When your grandmother's yugo die, you won't buy her a ferrari to achieve same kind of transportation. i3 is completely fine for everything including casual content creation, gaming and scientific calculations. I don't know why on this forum is i3 so underrated CPU.
You can play newest games on 6 yr old i7 just fine, just drop the new video card and that's all.Anyhow, browsing isn't mainly about raw compute speed. Browsing is more about memory. Running half dozen browser tabs with MS Office in the background and with even vlc playing 1080p h.264 in the corner streamed over the network is perfectly fine as long as you have at least 8 GB. In fact, I do this on a 6 year-old Core i7 with 12 GB RAM.
You can play newest games on 6 yr old i7 just fine, just drop the new video card and that's all.
I can't tell the difference between my wife's i3 and my i5.
Well, you're talking about a desktop CPU (overclocked 4 GHz?) that's 4X as fast as that laptop CPU.Really?
My laptop has a i5-2520 (2.5 GHz dual core with boost up to 3.2 GHz), and it feels noticeably slower in web browsing compared to my desktop with 5 GHz i7. Both have SSDs. Pages with a lot of embedded content load noticeably faster on the i7.
And sure, that 5 GHz i7 is faster, but it's not as if an i5-2520 is slow for surfing.
It sure feels pretty slow once you get used to the 5 GHz i7...
Well, it's fast, but a 5 GHz i7 doesn't even really exist. Overclocked CPUs don't really count.
Really?
My laptop has a i5-2520 (2.5 GHz dual core with boost up to 3.2 GHz), and it feels noticeably slower in web browsing compared to my desktop with 5 GHz i7. Both have SSDs. Pages with a lot of embedded content load noticeably faster on the i7.
Please explain why it "doesn't really count" if I have been using it daily for the past 5 years? The evidence is in my sig, and plenty of people on here have i7s which are highly overclocked.
A little off topic question. Why do the core 2 quads have such monstrous L2(?) cache?
That's a webbrowser/graphics issues. If you're not taking advantage of all hardware acceleration or there is some other config issue, that will happen. Using a Core2duo laptop with Chrome and I force enabled all the hardware acceleration features, makes a huge difference.Keep in mind the laptop CPU is a low-wattage version of the i5 and as you mention it's dual, not quad, so yeah, it will be noticeably slower than its desktop counterpart, especially a core i5 to a quad i7.
I notice simple things are notably faster on my desktop i7 as compared to my skylake i5-6300 ThinkPad. Both are skylake, both are fast, both have SSDs and tons of memory, but you can notice the difference even browsing the Anandtech forums. I can't really see the individual elements on my i7 machine 'draw' on the screen. Stuff just appears. But on the i5, there's enough time to see things appear one-by-one even if it's really quick to happen.
That's a webbrowser/graphics issues. If you're not taking advantage of all hardware acceleration or there is some other config issue, that will happen. Using a Core2duo laptop with Chrome and I force enabled all the hardware acceleration features, makes a huge difference.
As for OP, go for the 8GB of ram, you need it. I put 16GB of ram in my Z585 and it helped a lot and I just do webbrowsing and stuff.
Settings are identical and synced. It's not even perceptible for normal people. I'm referring to like, ever so slight difference. Like sequential task combinations. I repeatedly do this: drag image from site, right click, edit, resize to preset, save, drag into different CMS. If you do this 40 times a week on two different machines you can observe very minor differences in speed. There are other things over time. But i'm not describing some kind of browser or graphics problem.
On my A4 AMD chip, I can see images on the web page literally draw from top to bottom while scrolling and it's a perfectly capable basic machine.
Not exactly what I call light usage, particularly the encoder part alongside what I'd probably assume is not hardware accelerated video decode. Obviously, if you're pegging the CPU in the background while browsing, the more modern CPUs will perform better. (file this under the "no duh" drawer)You open up a dozen tabs, start a 60p video somewhere, run word and an email client, then I usually have an FTP client open, files are going to different HDDs, might crack an encoder open a Core 2 will just melt. If you just to want to browse Xvideos then sure use a Core 2. If you actually use a PC for work then nope. I've hit 4-5GB base usage on my 16GB 5930K box.
I don't cheap out on desktops. They are the centrepiece I work on. Everything else is tablet or phone. Core 2 is useless for me at least. And if I used a box near every day I wouldn't use an i3 either.
When your grandmother's yugo die, you won't buy her a ferrari to achieve same kind of transportation. i3 is completely fine for everything including casual content creation, gaming and scientific calculations. I don't know why on this forum is i3 so underrated CPU.
In this regard you would be better off with 4790 and IGP, its quick sync would definitely speed up things at least compared to the underpowered GT 730.I just pointed out where it wouldn't be. And yes most of the GPU stuff I do is GPU accelerated, I have a rubbish GT 730 (soon to be 480 or 470 something that can HEVC decode) which can decode anything x264 and the rest if a CPU accelerates I have grunt in reserve. The problem I have with an i3 is you can spend a little bit more for a real quad core or save a little and get a Pentium. An i3 is stuck in the middle.
Again this is my usage. I have no problem spending an extra $500 on a desktop I hammer more or less every day. I'm using 4.3GB RAM as I type this.
What Atom? I find my Atom 330 dual-core 1.6 GHz with SSD and 3.12 GB RAM absolutely horrible to use, even just for browsing. I just keep it because I can use it in as additional secondary computer playing Netflix or even Blu-ray (using its nVidia ION's GPU acceleration) in the background while I work on other computers. Or else it's used as a guest machine. Here's my previous post on the subject.Consider that Core 2 Duos still outperform Atoms by a considerable, and an Atom with 2 GB of RAM is quite happy with a dozen tab in Firefox from my usages, I'd consider a Core 2 Duo with a modern GPU on the side for decode to be plenty capable for web browsing in 2016.
Note that yes, when you get those tabs loaded and you have nothing in the background, surfing that one webpage in the forefront is often OK. However, if there are any embedded multimedia ads it's often going to be painful. Furthermore, it's not just about the browser itself. It's about navigating around the OS and opening up browsers and maybe a Word document and such. It's really slow on my dual-core Atom despite having more than 50% more RAM than you and SSD.Some of my machines:
Workplace desktop: Dual-core Pentium G840 2.8 GHz (PassMark 2586), 4 GB RAM, HDD, Win 7. Surfing on it is mediocre. Too much disk thrashing.
Home desktop: Triple-core Athlon II X3 435 2.9 GHz (PassMark 2485), 8 GB RAM, SSD, Win 10. Surfing on it is very good.
Home desktop: Quad-core Core i7 870 2.93 GHz (PassMark 5459), 12 GB RAM, Firewire 800 SSD, Mac OS X 10.11. Surfing on it is very good.
Home desktop: Dual-core Core Duo 2.0 GHz T2500 (PassMark 876), 2 GB RAM, HDD, Mac OS X 10.6. Surfing on it is poor, for multiple reasons.
Home nettop: Dual-core Atom 330 1.6 GHz (PassMark 596), 3.12 GB RAM, SSD, Win 10: Surfing on it is absolutely horrible.
Home laptop: Dual-core Pentium SU4100 1.3 GHz (PassMark 873), 4 GB RAM, SSD, Win 10. Surfing on it sucks.
Home laptop: Dual-core Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz P8400 (PassMark 1471), 4 GB RAM, SSD, Mac OS X 10.11. Surfing on it is OK.
Home laptop: Dual-core Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz T8300 (PassMark 1493), 4 GB RAM, SSD, Mac OS X 10.7. Surfing on it is OK but is limited by lack of hardware GPU h.264 decode and limited browser support.
What does this tell me for web browsing?
1. Slow CPUs are bad, but higher clocked CPUs even from 5 years ago are fine.
2. HDD bad, SSD good.
3. 4 GB not quite enough. 8+ GB needed.
4. On a Mac, you need one of the latest iterations of OS X for proper browser support.
5. You need hardware h.264 decode support.
Given these results, I'd say any current desktop Core i3 would be fine for surfing, and as long as you have a modern OS, 8+ GB RAM, and SSD.
settings can be the same, doesn't mean in practice they are. chrome://gpu/ can tell you if all the hardware acceleration features are working, same with the "troubleshooting" tab for firefox. It has been found that over 70% of machines don't have the hardware acceleration features enabled even though they technically could have them enabled.
I can easily tell the difference easily between mid-range laptop Core 2 Duo and high end modern laptop Core i7. The latter is noticeably faster for page rendering.As I said, settings are identical. What I'm describing is slight difference in performance, not a hardware or software configuration setting. Even on a simple web page, I can tell the difference.
I can easily tell the difference easily between mid-range laptop Core 2 Duo and high end modern laptop Core i7. The latter is noticeably faster for page rendering.
However, both seem fine for surfing to me. We're talking a few seconds difference in page rendering time for complex pages (and much less difference for simple pages), which also means often times the bottleneck is actually the webserver.
This is in stark contrast to something like video encoding where the difference might be tens of minutes to hours.
To put it in simpler terms with modern equipment: Based on my testing on various machines, I'd say many people buying a new machine just for doing browsing, Office, and email would be fine with Core M and 8 GB RAM and SSD, but for us geeks, we might want to look at Core i5 with 8 GB RAM for the zippiness. And for those doing much more on their computers and using their computers to make money doing those complex things, they might want to go Core i7 and 16 GB RAM.
Indeed, while I'm not enamoured with the speed of the Core M MacBook, my biggest criticism of it is not the CPU. I think its biggest drawback is the keyboard, followed by its trackpad. The CPU speed is third.
The Bay Trail Atom Z3735F (quad core at 1.33 GHz). This is pretty much my beater, take anywhere, use on anything, long battery on the cheap kind of device. I expected this thing to be nearly unusable for even basic web surfing with 2 GB of RAM and a CPU that benches 1/3 of my 6 year old laptop, but I was quite surprised.What Atom? I find my Atom 330 dual-core 1.6 GHz with SSD and 3.12 GB RAM absolutely horrible to use, even just for browsing. I just keep it because I can use it in as additional secondary computer playing Netflix or even Blu-ray (using its nVidia ION's GPU acceleration) in the background while I work on other computers. Or else it's used as a guest machine. Here's my previous post on the subject.
Note that yes, when you get those tabs loaded and you have nothing in the background, surfing that one webpage in the forefront is often OK. However, if there are any embedded multimedia ads it's often going to be painful. Furthermore, it's not just about the browser itself. It's about navigating around the OS and opening up browsers and maybe a Word document and such. It's really slow on my dual-core Atom despite having more than 50% more RAM than you and SSD.
In contrast, I don't have any of these concerns with a faster Core 2 Duo class processor as long as it has 8 GB RAM and SSD... but that's not really a surprise, since a faster Core 2 Duo class processor is roughly 3-4X as fast as Atom 330.