Need budget CPU advice

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kumquat

Supreme [H]ardness
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Dec 7, 2005
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My old Athlon 64 X2 3800+ motherboard is dying so it's time for a new MB+CPU+RAM combo.

I have tuition and whatnot so I'm working on a budget. The most CPU-intensive things I'll be doing are converting audiobooks, light gaming, and photo processing. I'm looking at the Celeron G530 but am willing to spend a bit more if I get a lot more performance.

What would be the next step up? Athlon II X4 640, Core i3-2100, Pentium G840, etc? What's going to give me the best bang for my buck?
 
The Core i3 2100 has hyper threading and would give a significant performance boost in games that use more than two threads. If you play any such games, then it would be worth it; otherwise, stick with a cheaper sandy bridge dual core. They are still quite snappy.

You can rule out the Athlon II X4 completely: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/122?vs=406
 
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