Gaming benchmarks for the different i5 Haswells?

[crashtech]

Unless all the games you run will fully utilize all cores, Turbo will matter. And the base clock of the 44xx series is 3.2 at best, which will be a fairly significant downgrade from a G3258 when two cores or less are saturated. A 46xx will also be a hell of a lot easier to resell. But it's your PC. Any i5 you pick will work OK, as long as you know the lower-end ones may actually result in a performance regression in certain circumstances.

 

[escrow4]

Why should I care about the upper limits of turbo frequency? On an i5 4690 I'd never hit 3.9 GHz when all four cores are loaded. If I cared about running single or dual threaded workloads at 3.9 GHz I'd never even buy a locked i5, since my G3258 @ 4.4 GHz would be a much better option that wouldn't cost me a cent more. Turbo boost sounds like Intel marketing; the whole point of frequency scaling is to go downward to save power when the CPU isn't being heavily utilized. If I'm running four cores at 100%, e.g., when the CPU is the bottleneck, is the CPU even going to be able to go into any turbo state?

As I mentioned, I've seen my 4770 hit 3.9GHz with 2 cores, 3.7GHz 2 other cores in game. You want the highest turbo period. Buying a dual core in 2014 for gaming is a really really really bad idea.

 

[Cerb]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i5-4670k-4670-4570-4430_5.html#sect0

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/intel-haswell-refresh_4.html#sect0

Not the biggest game selection, but quite telling, nonetheless.

@SteveGrabowski: today, with the i7-4790K's clocks, the E3-1231V3 isn't quit as compelling as the E3-1230V3 was, when I made my current rig. I'd definitely pay more for the i7, if buying today.

You do not buy a CPU with HT at the same clock as a non-HT one for a game, with 1 GPU. You buy it for minimal effects on the game from all the other junk you're running at the same time, for some other program you use, or for multiple GPUs. Here's a recent LTT video showing why you might want to buy a HT-enabled CPU (well, if you're not made of money, and looking at 2011-3 ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GgDZKGA89I
Sure, that's extreme, but it shows the point. The min FPS of the i7-4790K was affected much less by all the crap running than the i5-4670K. Chrome, FF, monitoring utilities, etc., will cause little stutters here and there, as well, and the effect will be reduced/removed by HT, or more cores. But, you still have to be willing to pay for that.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i5-4670k-4670-4570-4430_5.html#sect0

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/intel-haswell-refresh_4.html#sect0

Not the biggest game selection, but quite telling, nonetheless.

It does look like some noticeable differences at for 4670k, 4570, and 4430 at 1280x1024 when they can lessen the impact of the GPU. Thanks for the link.

@SteveGrabowski: today, with the i7-4790K's clocks, the E3-1231V3 isn't quit as compelling as the E3-1230V3 was, when I made my current rig. I'd definitely pay more for the i7, if buying today.

You do not buy a CPU with HT at the same clock as a non-HT one for a game, with 1 GPU. You buy it for minimal effects on the game from all the other junk you're running at the same time, for some other program you use, or for multiple GPUs. Here's a recent LTT video showing why you might want to buy a HT-enabled CPU (well, if you're not made of money, and looking at 2011-3 ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GgDZKGA89I
Sure, that's extreme, but it shows the point. The min FPS of the i7-4790K was affected much less by all the crap running than the i5-4670K. Chrome, FF, monitoring utilities, etc., will cause little stutters here and there, as well, and the effect will be reduced/removed by HT, or more cores. But, you still have to be willing to pay for that.

For me that's not at all a compelling reason to shell out an extra $100-$150 on an i7/Xeon. I turn off all auto-updaters and always shut Chrome down before playing a game (Chrome will restore all tabs when I open it again anyways). I don't run anti-virus because I don't do anything in Windows where someone could steal a CC number or something (for ecommerce I boot into Linux since I really don't trust Windows' security). No interest at all in streaming. The only compelling reason to go i7/Xeon for me would be faster scientific computation, but honestly, my G3258 at stock speed is plenty fast for doing numerical ODE and PDE, partial sums of Fourier series, and so on.

 

[Cerb]

I always keep Virtualbox, and browsers, up and running until I have to reboot. Why should I waste my time serving hardware that is supposed to be serving me?

 

[crashtech]

Why should I waste my time serving hardware that is supposed to be serving me?

Love that, it is sigworthy.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I always keep Virtualbox, and browsers, up and running until I have to reboot. Why should I waste my time serving hardware that is supposed to be serving me?

I don't know, I'm not Obama and can't print my own money. So I have to pick my battles and pick where I'm going to spend a premium and where I'm not in my system. Spending a premium on the video card makes sense since I want smooth gameplay at 1920x1080 and most games seem like they will be GPU bound with an i5. But if I want to have 20 tabs of Chrome open, Mathematica, antivirus, iTunes updater, etc and I'm playing a game that wants 8 GB RAM then maybe I need to upgrade to 16GB RAM to use my computer that way.

 

[Yuriman]

Let us know what you decide on.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Let us know what you decide on.

I'm buying the GTX 970 first (as soon as the one I want is back in stock at newegg), and will upgrade my Pentium to an i5 within the next month or two. Just depends on the deal I can find when I'm ready to get the CPU as to whether I'll go 4460, 4590, or 4690k. It will be one of those three though. Don't see any reason to sleep on the 970 as I can't imagine it'll get cheaper anytime soon. If I was a betting man I'd say 70% chance it'll be the 4590 for the better turbo than the 4460 and the better price than the 4690k. Who knows, maybe I'll find a crazy Black Friday deal on an i5 that will make the choice obvious which to get.

 

[Cerb]

I don't know, I'm not Obama and can't print my own money.

Luckily, he can't, either. Given that those who can love to like they do, that would be a scary thought...

So I have to pick my battles and pick where I'm going to spend a premium and where I'm not in my system. Spending a premium on the video card makes sense since I want smooth gameplay at 1920x1080 and most games seem like they will be GPU bound with an i5. But if I want to have 20 tabs of Chrome open, Mathematica, antivirus, iTunes updater, etc and I'm playing a game that wants 8 GB RAM then maybe I need to upgrade to 16GB RAM to use my computer that way.

If comparing to an i5, I only spent ~$25 more for HT, so it was hardly an issue (I specified an i7-4771, but there was an E3-1230V3 deal I had missed). The i7-4790K's stock speeds make it a problem, today, because the Xeon E3-1231V3 leaves more than just a few % of performance out, compared to it (4,4.4 v. 3.4,3.8, where it used to be 3.5,3.9 v. 3.3,3.7). I decided to wait on a video card upgrade, to make it work out (I ended up under budget, but still $150+ short of a proper video card upgrade, depending on how you count add-on parts).

If you tailor your computer use to just a few games, you will not see one iota of benefit from HT on a quad core, 90% of the time; and not enough to be worth another $100 on a CPU the other 10% of the time. Just go for higher clocks, within your willingness to spend.

20? Hah, heh, haha...if only D:. Last time I recovered my FF session (I use an extension, because otherwise updates and such will overwrite it, so I see the count when it starts), it totaled over 400 tabs. Bookmarks are so 20th century . Chrome I don't worry about recovery of, but it's probably in the 50-80 range.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Luckily, he can't, either. Given that those who can love to like they do, that would be a scary thought...

If comparing to an i5, I only spent ~$25 more for HT, so it was hardly an issue (I specified an i7-4771, but there was an E3-1230V3 deal I had missed). The i7-4790K's stock speeds make it a problem, today, because the Xeon E3-1231V3 leaves more than just a few % of performance out, compared to it (4,4.4 v. 3.4,3.8, where it used to be 3.5,3.9 v. 3.3,3.7). I decided to wait on a video card upgrade, to make it work out (I ended up under budget, but still $150+ short of a proper video card upgrade, depending on how you count add-on parts).

If you tailor your computer use to just a few games, you will not see one iota of benefit from HT on a quad core, 90% of the time; and not enough to be worth another $100 on a CPU the other 10% of the time. Just go for higher clocks, within your willingness to spend.

20? Hah, heh, haha...if only D:. Last time I recovered my FF session (I use an extension, because otherwise updates and such will overwrite it, so I see the count when it starts), it totaled over 400 tabs. Bookmarks are so 20th century . Chrome I don't worry about recovery of, but it's probably in the 50-80 range.

400 tabs? Holy crap, how much RAM do you have?

 

[Cerb]

400 tabs? Holy crap, how much RAM do you have?

16GB. I was maxed out w/ 8GB years ago. Actually, one reason to use FF over Chrome, in that instance, is that total RAM consumption stays pretty reasonable, 2-3GB, just that closing tabs gets slower as more total are open. I've gotten used to using multiple windows, and patterns of favicons, to tell what is where. Flashblock is an absolute must, though, since FF still hasn't implemented click to play for plugins (Chrome has only had that since forever...), and Flash will kill browser responsiveness.