Downgrading from a 5930K to a 7600 non K (for VL!)

[escrow4]

Madness, you say? Sheer lunacy, you mutter? I've done it again!

Once I went from a 4770 to a G1860 and now I've swapped boxes for something vastly smaller (near 6in x 6in depth and length) and despite coil whine the pervasive hum is gone. Over here electricity is ridiculous so the power usage drops are welcome (140w vs 65w TDP is . . . . a steep drop). Interestingly the BIOS reports the speed as 3.9GHz, even though HWInfo reports turbo to 4.1GHz and I've seen spikes to 3.9GHz (which I believe is the 4 core binned turbo) or so. Chrome is just as liquid as ye olde 5930K at 3.7GHz. The stock cooler (which normally I wouldn't use. Ever) keeps it at around 40 celsius stock or a touch less.

And before someone mentions gaming, I've given up chasing frames. If I had to buy another monitor right now I'd pick up a shiny new 1080p 60FPS IPS. Still sufficient. And this being the "fastest" non OC i5 (3.5GHz base, up to 4.1GHz(!) boost compared to the spastic 7400 that puffs up to 3.5GHz boost) I am certain it will last a while yet.

Most impressed overall and I'd strongly recommend the chip to anyone who wants a standard all rounder. It has the cores the i3 doesn't and the clocks that the base Pentium wishes it had. 3.9GHz seems to be what all four cores can manage hammering along out of the box, which is rather nice.

 

[imported_jjj]

You won't like it but one can do better.

On the power side, efficiency matters not max power consumption.
More cores might have higher TDP at full load but that doesn't mean that you get higher power consumption ,unless your average load is very very low or you are very ST focused.
Spreading the same load over more cores wins in power. A chip with HT/SMT disabled is substantially less efficient than one with it.
Locked and a new socket every year matters too but not everybody cares about that.

If i would be doing a power efficient box (and somewhat likely that's what i'll be doing soon), i would go with Ryzen 1700 undervolted, no HDDs just SSD, unnecessary I/O disabled.
Has great idle, great efficiency at load , good SMT scaling in both perf and efficiency and as noted, more cores are more efficient. Ofc it is 329$ so others might choose hexa or quads.
Unlocked and an option to upgrade just the CPU in a couple of years to some 7nm chip are bonuses.

It's funny how we all got used to having no options and we accept the artificial constrains.

 

[escrow4]

This is an allrounder box, SSD and HDDs are mandatory. I'd also prefer mature Intel to something untested. Locked and a new socket are irrelevant; I'll run this box into the ground before I upgrade or build anew. As for efficiency its mostly browsing these days so the load is pretty low anyway. Although I get the whole efficient load thing.

EDIT: This 7600 roughly matches a 3770 locked non K in passmark. Benchmarks being benchmarks aside, that is very nice.

 

[imported_jjj]

This is an allrounder box, SSD and HDDs are mandatory. I'd also prefer mature Intel to something untested. Locked and a new socket are irrelevant; I'll run this box into the ground before I upgrade or build anew. As for efficiency its mostly browsing these days so the load is pretty low anyway. Although I get the whole efficient load thing.

As i note, 6 and 4 cores would be an option At a similar price one is likely to be able to get a 6 cores Ryzen or save a bunch with a quad, get SMT and unlocked for less.Untested is today but won't be that in 1-2 months from now. Your focus was efficiency and just by disabling HT Intel kills efficiency at relevant load.
Do note that the 8 cores Ryzen is very close in Idle to a quad Intel, for the entire platform.
Haven't seen anyone test it with all or all that can be chpset I/O disabled but there could be interesting gains there.Ofc the X300 chipset is practically that so could save a little more power.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I disagree that non-HT Intel chips are somehow "inefficient". HT costs power. There's no doubt about that. You don't get more performance for free.

I think that KBL is a pretty efficient CPU overall.

I mean, maybe Ryzen 6C/12T should be a consideration in the future, but those aren't available for purchase yet, and I'm not sure I would jump on the Ryzen bandwagon until they get more mature BIOSes out for the current crop of boards, and get memory compatibility improved.

escrow4, I think that's a great build, and I look forward to some pics of the build, if you've got any.

Kind of curious what SSD you went with, and if it was M.2 PCI-E or SATA 2.5". (I've got both in one of my DeskMini builds.)

Edit: Also, are you using the iGPU, or a dGPU? 4K or 1080P? (I think you said you bought a 1080P monitor?)

 

[imported_jjj]

I disagree that non-HT Intel chips are somehow "inefficient". HT costs power. There's no doubt about that. You don't get more performance for free.
I think that KBL is a pretty efficient CPU overall.

The entire point of HT is to increase efficiency , yes you gain perf but you also gain efficiency in a substantial way, maybe 10-15%.I know reviewers don't test those things but that's how it is. Guess there is a note here to be made that with HT enabled, power usage increases slightly when running single threaded tasks.
The platform maturity is a problem today but that's a matter of 1-2 months, so not all that relevant.
KBL efficient vs what? There was nothing to compare it with but now there is. We could have compared it with ARM but that's not fair, aside from Linux.

 

[Yuriman]

This might be getting off topic, but have any reviewers closely scrutinized performance per watt of Ryzen? I know it has a low TDP, but at a glance it also seems to greatly exceed its TDP in a way that Intel chips generally don't.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The entire point of HT is to increase efficiency

Pipeline utilization efficiency, yes. Silicon layout efficiency, yes. I haven't seen anything to suggest that HT is an optimization for power efficiency, however.

Edit: You mentioned ARM in your posts. ARM is known to be a very power-efficient architecture.

Surely, every ARM chip must implement SMT, then, if it is primarily for power efficiency, no?

And yet, I haven't seen a single ARM CPU with SMT. Perhaps there is a point behind that fact?

Edit: I think some of Apple's ARM-architecture CPUs implement SMT? Or are rumored to?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I do think that you could potentially have been happy with a G4560 CPU, after all, it's quite a step up from the G1860... but the i5-7500 is certainly much nicer.

 

[escrow4]

I disagree that non-HT Intel chips are somehow "inefficient". HT costs power. There's no doubt about that. You don't get more performance for free.

I think that KBL is a pretty efficient CPU overall.

I mean, maybe Ryzen 6C/12T should be a consideration in the future, but those aren't available for purchase yet, and I'm not sure I would jump on the Ryzen bandwagon until they get more mature BIOSes out for the current crop of boards, and get memory compatibility improved.

escrow4, I think that's a great build, and I look forward to some pics of the build, if you've got any.

Kind of curious what SSD you went with, and if it was M.2 PCI-E or SATA 2.5". (I've got both in one of my DeskMini builds.)

Edit: Also, are you using the iGPU, or a dGPU? 4K or 1080P? (I think you said you bought a 1080P monitor?)

I ended going for a standard 2.5" SSD as all the M.2 SSDs were out of stock in my price range (I do now have a price range heh), literally ALL of them. Ended up going for a WD Blue 240GB. The EVO 250GB was $10 more and out of stock. Nothing flash but a modern box fresh SSD it is. Considered a 500GB, but nothing is on this SSD except core apps + Office. The odd 50GB game gets deleted upon completion. The case is a Coolermaster Silencio 352 which was the only mATX case I could find here that could fit my Strix 1070 OC (hence no 4560 for gaming), there is literally 2.5in space free at the tip to the front fan.

CPU is a 7600 not a 7500 too which is clocked apart:

7600 - Base 3.5GHz, boost 4.1GHz
7500 - Base 3.4GHz, boost 3.8GHz

Oddly you'd think the 7600 would be based at 3.6GHz roughly.

I'd also highly recommend that case, its very small and very quiet (GPU aside):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e94Hw-szUlQ

Also could everyone lay off the Ryzen comments. It wasn't available 2 days ago when I built this up and its nowhere near polished. Enough already.