- Please be aware this guide is currently undergoing maintenance -
Lynnfield - Is what you want!
In my opinion, this will be enough for anyone wanting to run 3dsMax, Maya, Photoshop etc, or to do loads of encoding from BluRay/DVD etc. You could run this on another system adequately, but if you're building it for this purpose it'd be a bit crazy not to go with the one that does it best :DBloomfield (see IWANTBIGSHINEYONE) is an option for you, but as you didn't go for big shiney you probably don't have £1500 to spank, this will do the job extremely well.
There is a dual core i5 modelled on the Clarkdale architecture but for Image/Video/3D I'd definitely recommend you give it a miss, because the programs you are looking at, provided they're not very old, are professional products and scale very well across multiple cores. You'll want a quad core. This is slightly complex, but your budget should dictate here.
The Quad Cores are split, i5 and i7, with the main difference being that the i7 can run 2 threads (threads are workloads for the processor] at a time, that's not to say they work twice as quick, but they will be more efficient on multi-threaded applications (video encoding/manipulation or high end rendering programs are good examples)
Suffice to say, spending extra pennies on an i7 version will be noticeable if you do these types of things on your computer.
i5 Lynnfield
i7 Lynnfield
Companies I rate with these processors are Gigabyte, Asus, MSI.
Lynnfield is VERY good at knowing what to do with your cores. There is no real need to overclock it, it will do it itself, maybe not to stupendous speeds, but enough that you will thank it for it. If you are running an application with only one or two of the aforementioned threads and your other two cores are not used, it will ramp up the cores in use giving you more bang for your buck. Obviously if all the cores are in use you won't get the TURBO BOOST but having the extra cores working will offset this :)
Motherboards
We're talking system memory i.e. RAM, hard drives and such I will refer to as STORAGE.
Be warned!!! Lynnfield NEEDS 1.5v memory, make sure you choose memory that is 1.5v!!!
Dual Channel DDR3 is the memory you want for this setup, 2GB should be enough for most stuff, but if you are going to be handling huge image files and heavy 3d work you should get 4GB minimum.
BE SURE you get either 2 or 4 sticks!!! If you get only 1 your system will not function as well as it could do, and if you get three you may as well have got 4 for stability and optimum working.
The speed of your memory obviously has an impact, but not as much as you may think. I'd go for 1600MHz stuff at the moment, because the price difference between that and slower stuff is very small.
1066
1333
1600
If in doubt, ASK someone, we're here to help!