So, it is interesting that you should have excluded it. A Ph II would be perfectly good enough for multimedia and internet (assuming that you are using the normal definitions of those words), so excluding it seemed unwise. But then, that seems to be the TigerLinux method; set up an opposition between A and C and suddenly declare that, obviously, C is best and that anyone who can't see that the answer to which is best out of A and B is C is a fool. On this occasion, you haven't called anyone a fool, but you are following the remainder of the usual approach.

This is unhelpful.

Not even vaguely comparable to the two processor ranges that you started with, nor the Phenom. The requirement for 'internet' may be something that can be met with a VIA CPU, but multimedia on a VIA sounds like making things more painful than they need be.

Well, get a processor/board combo that can satisfy all of your reasonable current needs now, and can take an upgrade to a faster processor later when your requirements increase to the point that you need it. Ensure that you can stuff enough memory into the board that you buy, which will usually be about twice the amount that seems reasonably affordable today.

Get an i3/1155 board, or something on a AM3+ board - you could save money on the AM3 solution with fewer cores, but to even compete in the better threaded apps, you'll probably need at least four, and that won't help in other applications, where throughput per core is king, but any of these solutions will be massively cheaper than the i7 and the performance will be enough for what you say that you want to do, being essentially limited by I/O and the the user, for the majority of tasks.

The FM1 solution doesn't really seem to save much money over the AM3+ solution, so it is a bit difficult to argue for, unless you put a high premium on power saving, or you don't want even a cheap video card, for other reasons. If the processors were about £10 cheaper and the motherboards £20 cheaper, then the advantage of the new approach would be more apparent, but at the same price as a reasonable PHII/mobo combination, I don't see it (and you could replace the Ph II with a FX-4110 without changing the price much, and you'd be up on some apps and down on others, or even an Athlon, and save a little at the expense of slightly lower performance).

for most people, an i7 is the 'more money than sense' approach; for some people it will seem natural, but it certainly isn't necessary.