I3 vs i5 3550

If you want to do a bit of gaming, I would go for the i5 3570K and it's been dubbed as the next i5 2500K. Are you going to wait until the 3rd generation of i3's are released? There is not much difference in price between the cheapest 3rd generation i5 and the most expensive so if you could spare the cash and go for the 3570K you would have a solid system.

Here you see I3 compared to I5 2500K. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=288

The i3 should be able to handle games that aren't extremely CPU heavy, but I wouldn't recommend it if you plan on OCing and/or holding onto the computer for a few years.

if you are strapped for cash the i3 will show little difference in gaming; except some games like MP BF3. nor will there be a problem with running dreamweaver and photoshopping on a multi monitor set up for web design - at least i haven't had a problem.

just make sure you get a good motherboard for if you do decide to get an i5 later for some breathing room.

It is not so much a problem of "having a problem" than a "problem" of having to use a little more patience. If you have patience, you can make-do with much slower systems for non-interactive tasks. At web-centric resolutions, images do not quite have the pixel count that would start to significantly tax most PCs either. Things are different if you start to processing 50MP poster-size images or batch-processing 10MP photos.

That's why you drop your money on an Nvidia card with CUDA^^

what you are eluding to is more reliant on RAM and HD speed also . . . you have done this so you speak from experience?

A 50MP image is only 400MB of raw 64bits per pixel data. Not too much of a problem for today's PCs with ~20X that much RAM unless you use deep undo history.

you can babble numbers all you like but i asked, you are speaking from experience?

Not at that sort of resolution.

no offense, i doubt you have much.
there is LARGE difference between raw data on a disk and manipulating those same pixels for composite editing.
look i ain't wanting to get into any debate about, as far as the OP has stated, irrelevant details.

just because quad cores are a lot cheaper and more prevalent than a few years ago, doesn't make a dual core any less satisfactory; they are still very sufficient. if money is an issue for the OP a i3-2120 is the best bang for the buck but if they can afford $45-$50 more a i5-3550 would be better.