The keyword here is balanced followed by bottle necking,In the last 5 years most games have been more gpu dependent than CPu ...bariing a few exceptions and anamolies (GTA 4 anyone ?
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I`d advise you to get a Sandy Bridge core i5 system..even the cheapest one. Reasone?
1. Its 32nm..runs way cooler, drinks less wattage juice and more thermally stable than any phenom quad.IIRC phenoms have a max T junction limit of 62 dec C compared to a whopping 105 deg C on the 2nd gen corei5`s
2. It simply whoops the ass of competing CPU`s.
Trust me, think of it as an future proff investment,As more games take advantage of multiple threads on multiple cores of the CPu the gap between a core i5 and a phenom will increase even more.
Having said that i`ll confuse a bit more
If you wait a lil bit more, do So.Why?
1. Win 8 should show the real potential of 2011`s biggets flop..he bulldozer cpus. If Win 8 can finally understand the Schedling of threads on the BullZi , trust me it will be one game changer.
2. 28 Nm Ivy Bridge is due to come out ...Cooler and faster by upto 20-25% over its sandy brige cousins...this looks like a fireball in the making.
If not anything, they will certaily drive down the prices of SB`s