I've said this before but i want to look into it again, and that is will Intel chips lose some of it's current advantage because with Win10 and DX12 single core performance won't matter as much as it does now. Or you could look at it as AMD will just get more benefit out of the up coming OS and dx upgrade. Will a cheap 8 core AMD chip be better than any Intel 4core @ say 4Ghz. Plus add 40% to single core performance and HT for a 8+8 core @ 4-5Ghz for around 200 pound and that will be hard to refuse if you have a tight budget. Surely in Window 10 with DX12 running then i'm assuming that those 16cores will be hard to bottleneck with any gfx set up.

I think i3 in desktops is pointless, but, I personally deem i3 to be the most practical "average user" laptop CPU. Most mobile intel CPUs are dual cores with HT and heavily underclocked, including some i7 models. A lot of what you're paying for when you get an i5 or an i7 in a mobile device are instruction sets you can't really take advantage of, a better GPU (which doesn't matter if you're not gaming or if you don't have a discrete GPU), and bigger caches. The i3 has a very reasonable cache size and its GPU can play HD video just fine, so I personally think it makes a great laptop CPU.

How are i3s pointless? They are good performers in gaming. Believe it or not, that hyperthreading really helps in a dual-core. 4160 vs fx-6300. Priced around the same, but you sure you want those weak 6 cores for gaming as opposed to those strong 2 cores? You don't. Oh you're not going to overclock. Would a budget gamer invest in a cooling solution for that hot fx-6300? Probably not. Desktop i3s are perfectly viable. And on the contrary. The best mobile CPUs you can buy in that low-end 'I wanna watch movies and browse facebook' segment are the Pentiums. Nifty little quad cores that consume very little power and that can also play HD videos just fine. If anything, I dare say that i3s for laptops make less sense than desktop ones. And no, what you're paying for a mobile i7 is raw power. The lowest quad-core i7s (non-U) are just 20% slower than a 4770k, while the high-end ones match the 4770k. Let that sink in for a moment.