Question 7700 Non-K or 6600K OC'ed to 4.5ghz?

[GodisanAtheist]

Having a hard time finding actual benchmarks on this.

My work will be dumping a bunch of their old desktop hardware now that they've moved all of us over to laptops, and a bunch of the PCs that will be getting scrapped have 7700 non-K CPUs in them (as is customary for office PCs, they're definitely top heavy on CPU performance will having crap hard drives and no GPU).

I know some of the guys in IT, and they're willing to send one of the systems my way.

Anyhow, I have a 6600K @4.5ghz and a z170 that will take both 6 and 7th gen Intel CPUs.

Given games are going more multicore, this would be a drop in CPU replacement for free, would it actually be an upgrade from my OC'ed 6600k?

 

[Ranulf]

Eh, if its a free cpu it might be worth the time to try it out at least. I think the main question is, what games/programs do you run that will favor more threads? For some games, it won't matter for others it will.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Eh, if its a free cpu it might be worth the time to try it out at least. I think the main question is, what games/programs do you run that will favor more threads? For some games, it won't matter for others it will.

-I've been playing mostly older stuff recently. The original Kingdoms of Amalur currently. No point in trying to play the newer stuff when my GPU won't give me the performance I want, and it's too pricey to buy a new one.

The calculus in my head is any game that's old enough to run fine on my 6600K will run fine on the 7700, but any game that needs more than 4 threads will choke hard on my 6600 while the 7700 will allow for more legroom.

I also want to have a CPU that will be able to better keep up with a newer graphics card in the event that card prices do come down to earth here at some point, without feeling like I'm leaving tons of performance not the table while getting a core system upgrade sorted out.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

The calculus in my head is any game that's old enough to run fine on my 6600K will run fine on the 7700, but any game that needs more than 4 threads will choke hard on my 6600 while the 7700 will allow for more legroom.

HT isn't a catch-all solution to performance, but it helps. HT enabled CPUs have definitely aged better compared to their non-HT counterparts. Since you're getting the 7700 free, I don't see why not try it out. You'll be out some new thermal paste at most.

 

[daveybrat]

Do it. Those extra 4 threads make a huge difference in newer games. Definitely worth it as a free upgrade.

 

[coercitiv]

Do it. Those extra 4 threads make a huge difference in newer games. Definitely worth it as a free upgrade.

It's not just a SMT + L3 upgrade, it also comes with a 10% drop in clocks.

From Techpowerup's review of the i3 10100 /w RTX 2080Ti, relative gaming performance 1280x720:

• i3 9100F 4c/4t 6MB L3 - 87.7%
• i3 8350K 4c/4t 8MB L3 - 88.8% (fixed 4Ghz)
• i3 10100 4c/8t 6MB L3 - 100% (all-core 4.1Ghz)

For a free CPU it would be worth testing. I like the idea of 7700 over 6600K for the considerably lower power usage (given that I expect 6600K @ 4.5Ghz to use quite a bit of extra voltage), for the expected multitasking performance uplift, but gaming.... I'll reserve judgement based on the titles being tested.