Originally Posted by
Saracen
A balance, to be honest.
Up to a point, I require power. After that, efficiency .... though I take that to imply a cost-effective purchase, lower running costs, cooler, less noise, etc.
The question is .... where's the tipping point in the balance?
That, in my view, entirely depends on what you do with the machine. If you write letters and the occasional report, browse the web a bit, do your email, run your accounts and not much more demanding that that, then frankly, any processor in about the last 15 years, maybe more, is enough.
If you're a fanatical gamer, you'll probsbly want processing grunt, but mostly, on graphics cards.
I'm in-between, but close to the first than the fanatical gamer. As long as it'll do the above type general tasks, and do a decent job of photo editing and sound editing, then it's got enough power for me, So a CPU of the Q6600 era, and performance, is enough for me. Beyond that, it's overkill, and is merely power for power's sake.
So, if buying today, I'd take a little care to ensure I matched that, but I susoect it'd be quite hard to get under that. So, mainly, I'd look at what the next step up would cost, and of nominal enough I'd do it, but if I felt the increase in price was more than nomibal, I'd stick at that point.
The same logic applies to how much storage I need, how much memory, what geaphics card, and so on. Oh, and whether to add an SSD would be decided the same way, but view being that, for me, it's nice, but not by any means necessary. I don't expect to get many agree with me, especially on that latter point. But it's how I see it.
So .... a balance, but I'd need convincing that power over efficiency was justified.