I3 v phenom II x4 965

I would go with the I3 in this case.

will its dual core capability be better than the phenoms quad?

a i3 a great choice but it depends on your budget in the US on newegg which most people use the phenom 2 x4 965 is $95 a good price for what you get and a i3 2120 is about $120 so it depends on the budget because $30 goes a long way in a say $450 gaming pc build that can go from a radeon 7750 to a gtx 650ti or games on medium to games on ultra like battlefield 3 and Skyrim, far cry 3

you can see this in gaming i3 is clear winner - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-a...

For gaming you need to get the 965 to around 3.7GHz to be equal to the i3 2100 so if you are talking an ivy bridge i3 you would need over 4GHz for the 965 to equal it. If you have a low end graphics card in mind you should consider a pentium G series and a better GPU.

i3 for upgrade path, however if you want to hpe that amd are going to be releasing better cpu's in the future (like i did) then i would say its your choice.

have a look at this
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/102?vs=289

they both seem to be about equal, one last thing to not is that the i3 cant be overclocked by using changing the multiplier as it is locked. you can overclcok the i3 but it is a very long and hard process that leaves you unhappy with the results. on the phenom you can simply change the multiplier manually and it will oc easy.

okay, thanks all of you for the advice, and my budget is not all that high, but i think i will go ahead and take on the phenom 2 x4 965. seems like its easier and has a good performance from your statements, i will also add a pretty decent gpu as well

Best answer selected by thalos.