I definitely thought the same thing about a quad core. I was recommended the Pentium based off of the guys over at
Silent PC Review. They focus mainly on building quiet computers, but quiet also tends to be efficient as well. The benchmarks for my Athlon X3 vs the Pentium show the Pentium to be quite superior despite having one less core. Of course it does have hyperthreading too which helps it out. I will give it a shot and if I don't like it, I will upgrade to an i3.