Intel Core i3 2100 

AMD accomplishes these gains by sacrificing some processing power, however: The A8-3850’s Handbrake time of 2 minutes 10 seconds was drastically behind the Core i3-2100’s, and it finished applying 12 filters and effects to a photo in Photoshop CS5 in just over 3 minutes instead of just over 5.

As with all the Sandy Bridge CPUs, you’ll need a newer motherboard sporting an LGA1155 socket to even house the Core i3-2100—an older LGA1156 model won’t do the job.

The intel HD 2000 graphics handle those games at acceptable framerates, and for the pricepoint it cannot be beat.

If you’re planning to build a budget desktop PC and you’re determined to use current parts, the least-expensive Intel option available to you is the Core i3-2100 ($117 list).

After several goes our i3 settled down at 1,300MHz, which isn't a bad jump from the standard speeds.

AMD and Intel chips aren’t interchangeable of course—you need to make your decision and stick with it through the life of your system—but if basic 3D gaming interests you, the A8-3850 delivers markedly better results.

You may not be able to overclock the CPU core but you can though do a smidgen of tinkering to the HD2000 graphics core integrated into this second generation Core CPU.

Though it may just be hoping people instead choose to dig a bit deeper and buy a more powerful quad-core Core i5.

Purchased for the Step Son's build for Xmas - the i3-2100 is a great performer for only being a dual core processor with Hyper-Threading.

I highly recommend it for budget builds, where you may add a discrete video card later, but need your fix of games now.

It will do the trick for a modest-needs machine, but for stronger processing potential you’ll want something faster; and if even basic gaming is your goal, a discrete video card—or considering a system based on AMD’s newest technology instead—will be a better bet.

Plus, it could even run DX11 games Intel can’t (though, in fairness, its frame rates took an even steeper drop, at least with all of the details cranked up the way we had them).

It can even run games at a higher FPS than most of the AMD quad cores!