Hi, I'm looking at pairing an i3-3220 with something in the region of a 7950, GTX 660 or GTX670, It will mainly be used for HTPC use, (as per title) but I'd like to know if when I game on it, I'll suffer from CPU lag during games such as BF3 and Dirt3/Showdown? I know BF3 is CPU intensive, however I will not be playing multiplayer so I don't know if it will be as much of a problem for me. I'm basically looking for confirmation that, with enough of a GPU, I will get decent frame rates (@ 1080p btw) even with a dual core? If any of you have any doubts then I guess I will have to consider the i5 route) TIA!
Actually, BF3 isn't CPU intensive at all. It will run fine on any CPU with decent per thread performance. You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between an i3 and an i7. If BF3 is your game, then plough all your money into your GPU.
Thanks for the quick response, So i will not see any frame rate drops using an i3 over an i5? I was under the impression that BF3 is one of the few games that does benefit from more CPU power?
No, you will be absolutely, 100% fine with a dual core i3. Some games, like Total War, or Skyrim, do like either multiple cores, or indeed very fast CPUs, and will run better. BF3 on the other hand is not one of them. BF: Bad Company 2 did indeed benefit from both, but the Frostbite 2.5 engine in BF3 is very scaleable, and though it will use more cores if given them, will run just fine on two cores.
