intel i3 or i5?

[Buu]

I read some where that the quad core will be able to handle the physics much better than the i3. I am in a similar situation between picking the two under a budget. I have decided to go with a 560 Ti video card. Would it make big difference to go with the i5 (approx $100 more) with future games in mind requiring more cores to play on high settings. I feel like i5 is viewed as being superior due to its ability to overclock relative to the i3. For someone who has no desire to overclock, would it be worth the money??

If you are planning on getting other games later on, it'd probably be a good idea to go with an i5.

That said, there are multiple i5s.
i5-2500k: $220
i5-2500: $210
i5-2400: $190
i5-2300: $180
etc.

The 2500k allows for very easy overclocking. Since you have no interest, I don't think it's worth the money.

i3-2100: $125

Since you are planning on getting newer games, I would recommend the i5 series. The only difference from the ones I listed seem to be the clock speed (listed in GHz).

[nailertn]

Would an i3 be enough to run Diablo? LOL... I can run D3 / SC2 flawlessly on an intel core 2 duo e6420. That is old. As in asking your grandma to dig up her grandma old. The rest of my rig isn't spectacular either - radeon hd 4870, 4 gig ram, 7200 rpm hdd. Blizzard isn't exactly famous for making demanding games.

[Buu]

The current i3's should be enough for D3.

[aerial]

D3 doesn't use 4 cores, it is useful only for streaming or recording, when you have other cpu demanding apps working in the background.
Not sure if expansion will use 4 cores, unlikely, as it will be using exact same engine. There is similar situation with starcraft 2.

[nailertn]

D3 doesn't use 4 cores, it is useful only for streaming or recording, when you have other cpu demanding apps working in the background.
Not sure if expansion will use 4 cores, unlikely, as it will be using exact same engine. There is similar situation with starcraft 2.

SC2 has no control over the number of cores used, it interfaces only with DirectX. Which in turn uses more than two cores to run threads when the situation calls for it, but the thing is, due to the nature of the game this doesn't happen very often. Additional cores can improve SC's performance more by handling background tasks, they don't contribute much directly.

[Boi]

i5 2500k processor.

This is a good card, one of the highest rated on newegg.com currently.

[gruenel]

it doesn't hit the market this month? I'm pretty sure various sources reveal intel will have it by April.

Late response but yeah, the i5 and i7 quad-core models will be released this month with the i3 models supposedly following in may/june.

[Artemis]

D3 doesn't use 4 cores, it is useful only for streaming or recording, when you have other cpu demanding apps working in the background.
Not sure if expansion will use 4 cores, unlikely, as it will be using exact same engine. There is similar situation with starcraft 2.

D3 absolutely uses 4 cores (or more). The Domino physics engine alone uses at least 2 cores. It's the one reason I'm upgrading to an i7, so I don't drop to 10fps during heavy fights like the skeleton pillars.

You can test this yourself in a basic way by running task manager in the background and checking the performance tab.

[Tilitoon]

Does it use four cores, sure. Do you get a tremendous performance benefit from a dual core to a four cores, no. Do you get a big performance increase from a i5 four cores to an i7 4 cores + hyper-threading, nope. If the only reason you are purchasing an i7 over an i5 is to avoid fps drops when you fight a massive amount of monsters, you will be disappointed. If you drop to 10fps during heavy fights with an i5, the problem is definitely not the CPU, you should look somewhere else. The money you will save from the i7 to i5 you can put in in the video card and it will give you a way better increase in performance.

[Artemis]

I have a GTX 560 but it's coupled with a Q9450 quad-core chip, so no i5. Upgrading to an i7 would be over twice the performance.

I've run quite a few performance tests and it's definitely pushing all four cores. Doing standard runs to Weeping Hollow, two cores are used pretty consistently. When fighting at the skeleton pillars, the other two cores spike up quite high.

The cpu is certainly the bottleneck here and moving to an i7 (or even an i5) would provide a good boost to the fps.