Why i7 for new PC games

[runzwithsizorz]

Looking forward to Witcher 3. Providing I have 4 gig vid card, will i5 3570k oc 3.4 ghz be sufficient? Wht is the advantage of i7 in gaming?:\

Or will my i5 suffice?

The Wife





Moved from Video.

Anandtech Administrator
KeithTalent

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Well, they've set the minimum on phenom II x940, your cpu is almost twice as fast, so I wouldn't worry. Anyway, it's not out yet, just wait and see.

 

[NTMBK]

The i5 will be great, I wouldn't worry about it.

Have you got a big enough SSD to install the game to? It will cut down on load times a lot, and make more difference than upgrading to an i7.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I have to say that in some games, e.g. Far Cry 4 with Hyper-threading I get a bit lower FPS. So I have it off.

If buying new, X99 is the best gaming platform you can get. Six/eight or even 18 (if you get Xeon) cores should be plenty for the foreseeable future, I reckon. No die space wasted on stupid iGPU. It's a win-win, really. Ask people who have already pulled the trigger.

1150 socket feels already outdated, not only you're limited to only 4 cores, but the lack of PCI-E lanes as well. Even if you never run 3-4 cards, those lanes are needed for extra storage/M2 and whatnot. Unless you get a board with a Plex chip, you are making way too many compromises. Longevity wise, X99 wins, hands down. Just IMO, though.

 

[ShintaiDK]

i5 will be more than fine.

 

[runzwithsizorz]

Have you got a big enough SSD to install the game to?

128 gig SSD Witcher 2 is on it, but no other games

 

[RussianSensation]

Looking forward to Witcher 3. Providing I have 4 gig vid card, will i5 3570k oc 3.4 ghz be sufficient? Wht is the advantage of i7 in gaming?:\

Or will my i5 suffice?

The Wife

There are a few games that benefit from an i7, Arma 3, Crysis 3, BF4 multi-player. If you have an i5 3570K @ 3.4ghz, it's probably better to spend money on a $40 awesome after-market cooler such as Termalright True Spirit 140 series or similar and overclock it to 4.5ghz+, while the upgrade $ is used towards a faster GPU around end of May 2015. In any event, wait as long as possible to upgrade for TW3 since even if you do decide for a CPU upgrade for some other reasons, maybe Intel will have Broadwell-K.

 

[PPB]

+1 for picking a TS140P and taking that i5 for an overclocking tour.

 

[DigDog]

i5 vs i7 makes you subconsciously think that five is a lot smaller than seven, right?

they are nearly identical however.

 

[Black Octagon]

I have no recollection of i7 ever making sense for a gaming build. Happy to be corrected, though

P.S., This is not the CPU forum...

 

[RussianSensation]

Well let's say if someone had $700-1000 of GPUs, wants every ounce of power, what's another $80-100 for an i7 that gets > 60 fps minimums in Crysis 3, while an i5 cannot? However, for most games the performance difference is hardly there. You would gain more putting $100 towards a faster GPU for most titles.

 

[Ventanni]

There are a few games that benefit from having an i7, but overall you're not going to notice a difference now between that and an i5 other than the missing green from your wallet. I opted to go for an i7 however due to my previous decision backfiring on me in the long run. It was 2006 and there were Core 2 Duos and Core 2 Quads. Erroneously thinking no games would ever use four threads in my computer's lifetime, I opted to go for the Core 2 Duo. And while this decision suited me very well for 6 years, I could have made my computer decision last 8 had I originally gone with the Core 2 Quad. Heck, I often game on my Core 2 Quad listed below and it plays most games just fine (within reason).

So if you upgrade often, the Core i5 will suit you best. If you hang onto your computer for a long while like I do, it might be advantageous to go with the Core i7 in the long run. Now, are logical cores the same as physical cores? Absolutely not, but some games do benefit from them. Other games, like Planetside 2, ignore them competely on purpose. So it really depends on the game.

 

[frozentundra123456]

More games are showing benefits from an i7 but the benefits are not huge, maybe 10 to 20 percent. However, with the high stock clocks of the 4790k, one can make a good argument to just get that and buy a cheaper motherboard and cooler to make up part of the cost difference. You only have about 10 percent additional overclocking room anyway.

And as Russian said, if you are building a 1000 dollar plus system that should last several years, another hundred dollars is minimal.

 

[Puppies04]

If you have top of the range GPUs and still want more speed upgrading to an I7 makes sense. In litterally every other scenario however spending the money you save going for an I5 to upgrade to a better GPU would yield much better results.

 

[DrMrLordX]

The only advantage I could see to an i7 in gaming is if you are not an overclocker. Ironically, the i7-4790k will get you the highest stock clockspeed and the highest turbo possible among all Haswell i5/i7 chips. And that is the only reason.

 

[2is]

I have to say that in some games, e.g. Far Cry 4 with Hyper-threading I get a bit lower FPS. So I have it off.

If buying new, X99 is the best gaming platform you can get. Six/eight or even 18 (if you get Xeon) cores should be plenty for the foreseeable future, I reckon. No die space wasted on stupid iGPU. It's a win-win, really. Ask people who have already pulled the trigger.

1150 socket feels already outdated, not only you're limited to only 4 cores, but the lack of PCI-E lanes as well. Even if you never run 3-4 cards, those lanes are needed for extra storage/M2 and whatnot. Unless you get a board with a Plex chip, you are making way too many compromises. Longevity wise, X99 wins, hands down. Just IMO, though.

Next time you play FC4, leave HT on and try this.

ALT+TAB out of the game
Open task manager > details tab
Right click on the farcry4 executable > affinity and uncheck CPU 7
Go back into the game
ALT+TAB back out of the game
Reselect "all processors" for the farcry4 executable

Go back in the game and see if there's a performance increase. You may get texture/lighting flickering when you ALT+TAB but that should go away if you get yourself killed and the map reloads.

 

[Ramses]

OP, in theory, as programs, games and otherwise, adapt to the industry trend toward multiple cores/threads, a HT chip will perform better, longer. In theory.
In practice today, not such a big deal with the power a mid or better i5 has already.
The ability to use many cores is what lets a game like Crysis 3 do min/max/avg 52/90/76.233@1080p maxed out on an 8 "core" amd chip that has pretty abysmal single core/thread gaming performance. If you're planning on the long run with the build, it's worth a few bucks imo. Two or three years from now there might be enough of a game to really drag an i5, if it happens to be very well threaded the i7 would have an advantage. On paper. In theory. Probably. When CPU replacement cycles were much more frequent years ago such future proofing wasn't near as big a deal but as generational gains in performance are becoming smaller and smaller these days, lots of folks are getting a really long useful life out of a CPU, so it's something to ponder. There are a couple of good threads going here on this topic(s) lately.

 

[flexy]

People seem to forget that even the "small" Intel CPUs have multiple cores, FOUR.

It's not that you're forced into single-threaded with an i5! And those 4 cores are LIKELY not even used with the majority of games. So an i7 will only give you an advantage with apps and games that actually make use of HT eg. 8 "cores", obviously.

 

[the_stigma]

For the i7 you are paying extra for the hyperthreading + higher stock speeds.

The hyperthreading is a nice feature to have for scientific numbercrunching, encoding, videoediting and the like - heavy predictable "work" workloads. For games it typically either does not have an impact or (rarely) can even have a very small negative effect when enabled. In short - you don't need it for gaming, and its not something you will miss for normal day-to-day use.

The higher clock speed is significant IF you aren't overclocking. If you are overclocking then the chips tend to OC to almost the same levels anyway.

All in all, the i5 (as usual) is by far the best bang for the buck. Go for the i7 only if you are on an very high budget and you refuse to do even a mild OC. In all other cases you are better off with the i5 and spending that difference into a slightly better videocard instead.

-Stigma

 

[flexy]

>>
If buying new, X99 is the best gaming platform you can get. Six/eight or even 18 (if you get Xeon) cores should be plenty for the foreseeable future, I reckon. No die space wasted on stupid iGPU. It's a win-win, really. Ask people who have already pulled the trigger.
>>

Why only 18 cores? I am pretty sure The Witcher 3 needs over 900!

But in all seriousness, "in the foreseeable future" I see Skylake and would see it as very silly to "invest" in some 6-18 core system. He doesn't want to run a server nor plans extensive video editing. He asked for advice for "The Witcher 3".

In reality, the difference between i5, i7 and whatever 18 core CPU will be almost zero, at least for his purposes and actually 90% of "normal" people.

 

[Ramses]

What price the warm fuzzies of a 7 over a 5?
Only your heart of hearts knows...

 

[escrow4]

For the i7 you are paying extra for the hyperthreading + higher stock speeds.

The hyperthreading is a nice feature to have for scientific numbercrunching, encoding, videoediting and the like - heavy predictable "work" workloads. For games it typically either does not have an impact or (rarely) can even have a very small negative effect when enabled. In short - you don't need it for gaming, and its not something you will miss for normal day-to-day use.

The higher clock speed is significant IF you aren't overclocking. If you are overclocking then the chips tend to OC to almost the same levels anyway.

All in all, the i5 (as usual) is by far the best bang for the buck. Go for the i7 only if you are on an very high budget and you refuse to do even a mild OC. In all other cases you are better off with the i5 and spending that difference into a slightly better videocard instead.

-Stigma

Every major game towards the end of this year barring FC4 can and does use more than 4 threads, even the 5960X was on top for a couple of GameGPUs benchmarks. An i5 is the bare minimum, buy a 5820K if you don't want to worry about the CPU.

 

[Lepton87]

I will stand out and say buy neither i7 nor i5. IMHO the best bang for buck is Intel Xeon Processor E3-1230 v3 and a very cheap mobo. You will pay less than for the i5 a motherboard suitable for overclocking and a cooler. I would choose a mobo that is MCE capable though so you get turbo on all cores but that's not necessary MT performance will be good anyway due to 8 threads. The only problem with those Xeons is that they are not available everywhere but if you can buy it it makes the i5 a bad choice save for the cheapest one if you are on a very tight budget. If you have more money the additional frequency of the i7 4790k may make it worthwhile tough. IMHO overclocking is very unrewarding unless you go to 5820K. That's on the Intel side, AMD's is quite different:
http://anandtech.com/show/8864/amd-fx-8320e-cpu-review-the-other-95w-vishera

At this point in time 32nm node is so mature that most new Visheras should OC close to 9590, but Intel made OC essentially not worth is at all all the way until 5820K. i5 4570K is a bad choice because of that Xeon, 4790K is already clocked so high that with MCE you are extremely lucky to OC by 10%, most likely you will end up with a 5% OC. 5820K overclocks by over 20% though or 30% if you don't count MCE.