I am looking at upgrading from my current Phenom II 940 quad core to a more efficient and faster CPU (for video encoding). I am looking for low idle power usage and quiet operation. I have a big old Noctua cooler which should be pretty much dead silent with i5 or i3, given that my 125w TDP Phenom stays quiet and cool.
The crux of the issue is how they perform in video encoding (no overclocking since the goal here is energy efficiency as well and overclocking kills that). The i3 is dual core with hyperthreading, so it should act as 4 cores in handbrake encode and i5 appears to be 4 cores with no hyperthreading. Would they be roughly equivalent clock for clock in an encode scenario? Also, would the i3 use less power under load than the i5?
The crux of the issue is how they perform in video encoding (no overclocking since the goal here is energy efficiency as well and overclocking kills that). The i3 is dual core with hyperthreading, so it should act as 4 cores in handbrake encode and i5 appears to be 4 cores with no hyperthreading. Would they be roughly equivalent clock for clock in an encode scenario? Also, would the i3 use less power under load than the i5?
