Hey Logan, I am currently working on a budget build for a friend of mine, and I was wondering if it is worth the wait until September 29th when the budget Haswell I3s and Pentiums launche in America, or if he should just go ivy now. Thanks in advance.
No. If you're on a budget, then you're probably best off with the am3+ platform. The price to performance ratio is usually much higher than ivy bridge, sandy bridge and hasewell.
I'm not totally sure Logan will see this one to answer it, so Ima jump in!
If this is a gaming system, you'd be better off spending the same amount of money on the AMD flavour, something like the FX6300. That's just my two cents.
The i3 as a two core processor, with hyper-threading enabled (makes no difference in gaming), is kind of weak. Something like a 4 core Phenom is recommended, and cheaper. Really fits gaming on a budget, nicely.
The i3 is still a couple of months away. The gaming performance increase from Ivy to Haswell is nil. Where Haswell exceeds is productivity. If there is any reason you still want to go with the i3, I would recommend just going Ivybridge. It isn't fun to wait.
Thanks, but I'm really looking for upgrade path also, and even a die-hard fanboy has tho admit that intel performs better than AMD.
Umm... I use Intel and Nvidia. And I can assure you that both platforms perform equally well. In most cases, AMD actually beats Intel.
There are reason to choose either platform. I went Intel because they have a better selection of motherboards. But honestly, AMD are beating Intel right now. Which is surprising, I must admit.
Also, AMD have more upgrade paths, contrary to your last post.
Intel performs better than AMD. However the price of such performance is not meritable. You can still get a decent enough upgrade path with AMD. An upgrade in GPU is usually far better than an upgraded CPU though
In short, you can have games that favour either platform. You're not really at a disadvantage in going with AMD.
For a budget build, you will get more cores and more performance with AMD, that is absolute. The i3 isn't gaming spec. The Phenom/FX6300 would be more suitable for gaming, and cost less.
Final point I am gonna make. The 8320 can be bought for the same price as the i3. That's an octa-core CPU, ridiculous value. And often beats the i5. Great for editing, too.
I think you should reconsider.