Would this CPU swap result in any noticeable gains?

[skaughtz]

So I have two systems that I am considering swapping components:

Light gaming rig
A8-7670k
GTX 1050
2x4GB G.Skill Ares DDR3 1833 (mobo has 2 slots)
SSD

Internet/music rig
Pentium G620
Radeon HD 6670
4x2GB Hynix DDR3 1066 (mobo has 4 slots)
SSD

It occurred to me the other day that I might have things bass ackwards. Were I so inclined, I could slap in an i5-3470 or 3570k on the 1155 board and pair it with the GTX 1050 for use as my gaming rig, while the A8 would function more than fine on its own as an HTPC. However, my question is if doing so would improve my gaming experience in any noticeable way? I am not looking to push any boundaries (I just recently finished Batman: Arkham Knight and am currently playing GTA V when my son goes down for bed... playing time is at a premium when you have a kid), and the A8 setup has held up pretty much fine for everything so far (I don't care about 4k gaming, etc.) but for ~$50 or so if I can get a decent bump in performance, then why not? Would the i5 setup yield worthwhile gains over the current A8 setup, or would they essentially be the same? Or, perhaps an upcoming game is released that the i5 would handle fine but the A8 could not?

Also, as a tangential question just because I am curious, would the difference in the 1066/1833 RAM speeds be at all noticeable in an i5 setup? I'd prefer to keep 8GB in both systems and RAM is just too pricey right now to justify buying a slightly faster set.

Thanks.

More about : cpu swa

 

[scannall]

No. You are GPU limited on both those rigs atm.

 

[skaughtz]

Thanks, bud. I figured as much but checking benchmarks and whathaveyou it seemed the i5's were still quite a bit more powerful than the A8. I couldn't really find any real-world examples comparing their actual performance, though.

 

[Topweasel]

I will note. That while he is right, in average or max frame rate. On High or ultra quality, at 1080p your max framerate is going to be limited by the video card. I will note that the minimums an 1%, you know the random stutters. Some of that could be a GPU throughput issue. But a lot of that is the GPU getting starved momentarily by the CPU. Both of those are going to struggle in that area an a true 4 core CPU, specially one at SB or higher i5 or i7 is going to help out a bunch with that.

 

[Burpo]

i5 3470 is almost 30% faster in single & multi-thread than an A8-7670k (imo worth the $50).
That paired with a gtx 1070 would be a big improvement.

 

[ZGR]

What games do you play? I would look into the i7 3770, but those are pricey. Lots of older games where even a GTX 1050 will not be the bottleneck.

 

[NTMBK]

It's a shame the memory on the Sandy Bridge system is so slow! You could use the fast memory at DDR3-1600 speeds, but then you can't put all the slow stuff in that AMD board...

 

[skaughtz]

What games do you play? I would look into the i7 3770, but those are pricey. Lots of older games where even a GTX 1050 will not be the bottleneck.

Open world games like GTA V now and Final Fantasy 15 likely afterwards if I can. I'd like to check out COD WW2, Assassins Creed: Origins, Battlefront 2 maybe... but nothing in particular. It takes me a while to play and finish anything so there are always plenty of titles available to look at.

 

[NTMBK]

Open world games like GTA V now and Final Fantasy 15 likely afterwards if I can. I'd like to check out COD WW2, Assassins Creed: Origins, Battlefront 2 maybe... but nothing in particular. It takes me a while to play and finish anything so there are always plenty of titles available to look at.

An i5 3570k would really help with games like that, with reasonable speed memory.

 

[ZGR]

I had a major CPU bottleneck in GTA V on my i5 4690k at 4.4 GHz.

Assassins Creed Origins murders quad i5's and i7's. I would definitely go for the i7 if you can, but if you find a great deal on the i5, go for it.

 

[SPBHM]

pre-Ryzen APUs are slow,
if you add an i5-i7 (or xeon e3) to the second PC and use it with the I can see many games benefiting, and if you upgrade the GPU later on it still makes sense.

i7 2600 beats the 2400G for gaming, and the A8 APU is not even half as good
https://www.hardware.fr/articles/973-22/indices-performance-cpu.html

you can buy a e3 1230/1240 from china which is around the same as the i7 2600 for cheap, but any i5 basically will be a great upgrade.