Haswell Pentium Vs Core 2 Quad

[Polymathic]

So I've been delaying getting a new PC for a while now but this time my old Core 2 Quad motherboard gave up. With Skylake out later this year, I don't really want to splash out on a i5/i7 just yet. So I want to a Pentuim PC + a good graphics card for now. Apart from gaming, the PC will also be used for Adobe Lightroom for some photo editing which my old Core 2 Quad had no problem handling.

 

[madrynn]

I've found Tom's Hardware's CPU hierarchy chart quite accurate:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html

Still using my ati7970 on my i7 3770, a "jump" from a C2Q Q9650 which used DDR2 ram, Heaven benchmark gave me ~20 fps on the new system compared to ~10fps of my old one... the rest stayed the same.
SATA3 & USB3 was the biggest (or most noticable) upgrade compared to the old rig.

Intel is chasing the mobile and energy efficient market and has no real competition to it's desktop market, so I see no reason why Skylake will be anything more than a slight jump in performance to the last... just like the last 5/6 years... which means, save your money and just by the best PC you can now. Buy a bigger GPU or SSD with the cash you would have spent on the Pentium.

 

[Fox1]

2 Cores will struggle with open world games. You need quad core or higher. The latest Intel chips only hit SA in Oct/Nov when they are released. Also by then the new AMD Radeon cards will be out and fully available locally.