CPU Shootout: i5-760 vs i5-4670K - (updated w/760@3.5GHz) Where's the progress?

[Concillian]

3DMark looks good, Deus ex ok, then everything else is pretty surprising (to me).

http://techbuyersguru.com/i5CPUshootout.php

Am I the only one shocked by the (lack of) progress of processors since 2010, particularly for gaming?

I can imagine there are scenarios which are optimized for new instructions, but current games sure aren't. It's almost like a one horse race but the lead horse has stopped to graze midway and the loser is somewhere in the dust cloud with no certainty about it's whereabouts.

This shows what has always been the case with CPUs. You don't need top end performance to have a solid gaming experience.

This is why "in the good ol' days" you'd buy the equivalent of the i3 and overclock the piss out of it. Imagine now that i3 that's currently at what? 3.2? 3.3? is OCed to ~5GHz... Performance would certainly be adequate.

That kind of trade-off has always been a good one to make. Well, at least since the 3D accelerator came onto the scene.

It's not new news. Games are much more difficult to make scale with CPU than with GPU. There's lots of graphical settings you can adjust to tax a GPU. Much less so with CPUs. Because of this, developers have to be very careful what they use as their 'baseline' for CPUs. Make it too high and you cut out an enormous section of your market, because they can't correct for a CPU inadequacy by lowering resolution and settings like a GPU inadequacy can be compensated for.

I really wish there were some ES i3s floating around so someone could pit a 5 GHz IB or Haswell i3 against a 4.5 GHz i5. Those results would be incredibly interesting.

 

[Concillian]

The little warning bell is that games might be about to change dramatically. This may happen with the console launch, or possibly throughout the next year after as they hone in the performance.

I don't think it will happen that quickly. It will happen, but historically game engines don't adapt to new technology overnight. I expect a select few to adapt in the first year. It will be several years before we see the majority of games on PCs seeing significant benefit from >4 cores. I mean, there's still recent releases that don't make strong use of >2.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Most people with a 4670k aren't going to be pairing it with a 7870.

I see far more 7870/7950/GTX 760 builds than I do 7970GHz/GTX 770/780/Titan ones.

 

[shady28]

I see far more 7870/7950/GTX 760 builds than I do 7970GHz/GTX 770/780/Titan ones.

Exactly.

As I posted before, only about 1 in 3 PCs even get a discrete GPU in the first place.

The vast majority of those are decidedly midrange (ie, like a GTX 660 or 7870 type). Not that many people are plopping down over $200 for a video card.

For anyone who doesn't believe it, check Steam's customer systems stats (which they collect).

The only card in their top 20 that is not mid-range is a 670. The other low to midrange Nvidia cards above it outnumber it (in % of steam users) by a factor of 9 : 1. This includes cards like the GTX 460 and 450.

If you count the non-nvidia cards, its more like 30:1. That's just for the top 20. And this is Steam, where gamers go, and they presumably have the best graphics cards.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

DP

 

[BallaTheFeared]

1. You have a CF OC setup. You alleviate GPU bottlenecking in a lot of games, thus the bottleneck is squarely on the CPU.

2. BF3 is highly threaded scaling up to 6 cores and clock speeds.

Combine both of the above, for sure, for someone like you, CPU gains are necessary to keep up. For people on single GPU, especially mid-range or below, any pos CPU is fine as long as its a quad core.

Phenom II or Q9000s? Fine. I mean lets say a user has a Q9400 rig, and a 8800GT, he has $200 budget to improve his gaming performance. Should he get a cheap MB + CPU combo or should he get a new GPU. No contest when the budget is tight, GPU power >>>> CPU power for gaming. Always has been and by the looks of things (lack of progress from Intel/AMD on the CPU side), gonna be this way for awhile.

Hence I said I had a different perspective

My cards aren't getting pushed hard, ULPS is still enabled and I'm overclocking with the second cards default voltage so 1050/1550 is all I run. I like zero core

Even 4.8GHz the neck is pretty much always on the CPU, I haven't seen much to indicate BF3 will use 6 cores but I wouldn't say it doesn't.


My thought there is if budget is tight get the platform first, as you said CPUs don't generally gain a lot year to year. AMD is noticeably behind Intel in a lot of titles, and while having a low-mid range gpu with it now will probably cost you a bit in performance, in two years when that same price point will give you double the performance there is going to be much more load on the cpu.... In four years when the performance quadruples at the same price point AMD platforms will most likely require an upgrade whereas Intel systems generally would not.

I'm not arguing a faster gpu and a slower, cheaper cpu won't be better now, what I'm saying is down the road the platform is actually the more important aspect today, because it can carry over several generations of GPUs if you buy correctly.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Not just CPUs too. Even on an "obselete" card like my 5850 that in order actually tell any improvement in IQ from high to max for let's say Bioshock Infinite I have to go actively go pixel hunting instead of playing the game. Guild Wars 2 high shaders over medium only looks different rather than giving a obvious improvement in IQ, but runs far slower. Hardly any reason for me to buy a new video card.

 

[wand3r3r]

The article was updated and includes the 760 overclocked to 3.5GHz.

 

[tential]

This just goes to show that there is increasingly little reason to upgrade a CPU for the average consumer.

The data is never all in one place, but we can see :

1 - in 4th quarter 2012, 90 million PCs shipped
2 - in 4th quarter 2012, 28 million discrete GPUs shipped

Ref:
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2301715
http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases/details/amd-intel-nvidia-q4-graphics-gpu-shipments/

This means a bit less than 1 in 3 desktop PCs are getting a discrete GPU in the first place

We also know the overall dGPU market is shrinking faster than the desktop CPU market :

What I'm really getting to here is that the industry has matured and is re-focusing on mobile where advancements can be made. The lifecycle of a PC, even for an enthusiast, is going well over 3 years now.

But I see a lot of indication that mobile is maturing too, meaning lifecycle of ARM parts may not be all that short anymore. Witness the "new" Galaxy Tab 3 7" and 8", whose processors are not so much different from the Galaxy Tab 2 7" and Galaxy Tab 7.7" (there are some other things that make them desirable vs their earlier counterparts, but not the processors).

I agree with you until you get into the mobile space. I don't think we matured, I just think that ARM's business model works given the competition. With intel, not having a desktop market to really focus on, and mobile market basically in it's pocket laptop wise, they only really have what ARM has left to focus on. Once intel fully jumps in and competes with ARM, I think we'll see cut throat development there until that too is fully mature with not much else left to do.

The biggest reason I bought my new PC though was I realized "this PC will have a LOT longer life than my previous ones". No longer am I worried about my PC being really outdated really soon. Nope. I'm more excited about anything having to do with mobile really. If Haswell had OC'd to 6 Ghz, I wouldn't have cared because there were few applications that would have benefited me. Mobile battery life, performance, tablet batterylife/performance and phone. That's what excites me now.

 

[shady28]

I agree with you until you get into the mobile space. I don't think we matured, I just think that ARM's business model works given the competition. With intel, not having a desktop market to really focus on, and mobile market basically in it's pocket laptop wise, they only really have what ARM has left to focus on. Once intel fully jumps in and competes with ARM, I think we'll see cut throat development there until that too is fully mature with not much else left to do.

The biggest reason I bought my new PC though was I realized "this PC will have a LOT longer life than my previous ones". No longer am I worried about my PC being really outdated really soon. Nope. I'm more excited about anything having to do with mobile really. If Haswell had OC'd to 6 Ghz, I wouldn't have cared because there were few applications that would have benefited me. Mobile battery life, performance, tablet batterylife/performance and phone. That's what excites me now.

think the

I agree on mobile being the exciting area now, but this past year I'm seeing some stagnation from SoC components in the space.

Look at Samsung's newest Galaxy Tab 3 line. The 7" has a Rockchip in it, with a 1024x600 display, it's no better really than the Tab 2.

The tab 8 is nice, but it's really a rehash of the Galaxy Tab 7.7

Tegra 3 was all the rage for the past 12 months, but in quiet places you can find benchmarks showing it basically ties, and in many cases loses, to the TI OMAP 4 4470 - a two year old architecture. My 2 year old Bionic, the first dual core LTE phone, has an OMAP 4430 in it and I almost never see lag.

Not saying its over, but I do think the last hurrah of mobile SoC is approaching from a technical perspective. Bay Trail, Exynos Octa, Tegra 4, Apple A7, snapdragon 600/800, will all become the Sandy Bridge's of Mobile with minuscule advancements to follow.

And that means bad things for all these chip makers looking beyond 2014.

 

[tential]

Haha quite possibly. Seeing that Sandy Bridge will certainly be nice though. But maybe that's where it ends. I hope not though. I think mobile has more growth potential than Desktop. Desktop just needed performance. Mobile needs Perf/Watt. That's a little more difficult.

Using XBMC on my phone, it runs great, but could use more power to be more fluid. I think we'll see more advanced apps as we get more power on mobile. I hope so at least. In this era of twitter/fb/instagram or whatever, it's pretty much all devices get used for now. Social Networking has destroyed so many things. What are we to do though -.-

 

[Makaveli]

The article was updated and includes the 760 overclocked to 3.5GHz.

Not surprised by the numbers at all.

Once you clock Gen 1 to the same clock speed Gen 3 or Gen 4 i7 the increases are not as large in games as people like to think.

 

[Arkaign]

Hence I said I had a different perspective

My cards aren't getting pushed hard, ULPS is still enabled and I'm overclocking with the second cards default voltage so 1050/1550 is all I run. I like zero core

Even 4.8GHz the neck is pretty much always on the CPU, I haven't seen much to indicate BF3 will use 6 cores but I wouldn't say it doesn't.


My thought there is if budget is tight get the platform first, as you said CPUs don't generally gain a lot year to year. AMD is noticeably behind Intel in a lot of titles, and while having a low-mid range gpu with it now will probably cost you a bit in performance, in two years when that same price point will give you double the performance there is going to be much more load on the cpu.... In four years when the performance quadruples at the same price point AMD platforms will most likely require an upgrade whereas Intel systems generally would not.

I'm not arguing a faster gpu and a slower, cheaper cpu won't be better now, what I'm saying is down the road the platform is actually the more important aspect today, because it can carry over several generations of GPUs if you buy correctly.

This is a good point. Think of someone building an OC q6600 during '07 era vs. someone building an X2 5600+ or E6300. The Q cost a good bit more, but waaaaaay outlasted the others in relevance. Hell, a 3Ghz q6600 + 7859 will STILL play most titles at decent settings just fine. The X2 and E6300 not so much lol.

 

[SlowSpyder]

As someone who games on an obsolete CPU almost daily, I'm not surprised by the results in the article.

 

[wilds]

Having a fast CPU for gaming is necessary in my opinion. Bottlenecked CPU's behave way worse than having a bottlenecked GPU. In fact, I want to get my GPU pegged at 99% utilization because that will be a lot smoother than have a frame-dropping CPU.

Going from Nehalem to Ivy Bridge gave me MUCH better fluidity in GTA IV, Metro 2033, Crysis, ARMA 2/3. It runs a lot hotter though.

It really matters on which game it is, but a Core i5 is always a good choice.

 

[Face2Face]

As someone who games on an obsolete CPU almost daily, I'm not surprised by the results in the article.

Don't sell yourself short. A Phenom II X6 @ 4.0Ghz is still a capable CPU for single GPU gaming. The only real difference I noticed going from a 960T@4.0Ghz to a 3570K @4.8Ghz is the minimum frame-rate. Games like Skyrim and GTA 4 it made the biggest difference, other than that - it's not as much as you would expect. At least it wasn't for me.

 

[sm625]

The addition of a 3.5GHz i5-760 was very nice. But now I'm noticing several instances where the overclokced 760 delivers slightly lower minimum framerates compared to stock. That's kind of odd. And also there is one instance where the overclocked i5-760 is actually faster than the new i5 at stock. That's kind of surprising considering it is a paltry overclock.

Also if your charts were all zero based, it would serve to much better highlight the lack of progress that intel has made over the past few years. Those charts make the difference between old and new i5 seem like more than it is.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

The addition of a 3.5GHz i5-760 was very nice. But now I'm noticing several instances where the overclokced 760 delivers slightly lower minimum framerates compared to stock. That's kind of odd. And also there is one instance where the overclocked i5-760 is actually faster than the new i5 at stock. That's kind of surprising considering it is a paltry overclock.

Also if your charts were all zero based, it would serve to much better highlight the lack of progress that intel has made over the past few years. Those charts make the difference between old and new i5 seem like more than it is.

Just shows the reviewer can't product exact runs between each setup, grain of salt.

 

[Mondozei]

There is progress; in power consumption. But if your power bill doesn't matter, then I guess there is minimal progress.

But ask yourself, if you could have a 7GHZ processor, would it make a difference for you except in rare niche cases like high-end gaming or video editing etc?

For the vast majority of people, the difference would be small or even nothing.

 

[SithSolo1]

I see far more 7870/7950/GTX 760 builds than I do 7970GHz/GTX 770/780/Titan ones.

My point was that Joe Blow Gamer isn't going to spend $300+ on a new cpu/mobo and less than $200 on the gpu. Joe Blow Gamer is going to have an i3 or a multi-core AMD cpu and the sub $200 gpu. Both the 7950 and GTX 760 would have been better suited for this system and wouldn't stretch the budget to breaking. Whether it would have made a difference in the results or not, I don't know. It was pretty apparent the card was choking before the cpus but I guess that was the whole point.

 

[crashtech]

If it runs too much against the grain when giving advice to recommend keeping old CPUs in service, there should at least be some disclosure that a platform update is likely not going to give performance increases commensurate with the dollars spent the way a GPU upgrade does. The emphasis should be that the platform upgrade theoretically sets the stage for several future GPU upgrades.

 

[Makaveli]

If it runs too much against the grain when giving advice to recommend keeping old CPUs in service, there should at least be some disclosure that a platform update is likely not going to give performance increases commensurate with the dollars spent the way a GPU upgrade does. The emphasis should be that the platform upgrade theoretically sets the stage for several future GPU upgrades.

Totally agree crash.

But that would also be bad for business

They want you to buy each new gen and a new motherboard also.

 

[crashtech]

Totally agree crash.

But that would also be bad for business

They want you to buy each new gen and a new motherboard also.

My commentary is directed at members of the forum who give advice to those wanting to upgrade.

 

[Makaveli]

My commentary is directed at members of the forum who give advice to those wanting to upgrade.

My bad I thought you were talking about AMD and intel directly.

 

[Smartazz]

I went from a 3.3GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600 to a 4.4GHz 2500K and the difference is staggering. Sims 3, Cities XL, Battlefield 3 64 players, Civilization 5 are all much more playable with this processor.