Ah, damn. Well, like I said. I'll probably use this to hold me over for about a year. By then, I'll likely get an i5 for cheaper if itbecomes a necessity and pass the system along, and start a new build
I'm with you on this. The i3 is not a speed demon, by [H] standards, but it certainly gets the job done well in terms of gaming if you are willing to accept a handful of shortcomings.
Earlier this year, I was running an i7 3930K and GTX 580 SLI setup. While it was nice, it was a power hog and completely overkill for just gaming on a single monitor. I sold off the parts after a few months of use, and was able to apply the money to build several "lower-end" systems that now comprise the systems in my sig. I've had the chance to play with Celerons, Pentiums, i3's, and i5's across the Sandy Brdige/Ivy Bridge platforms, and I have to say that there are no real losers here - there just has to be the right perspective applied to the CPU of choice. Sure, the i5's and i7's are significantly faster in a number of applications and games, but there is a point where those differences become a rather moot.