5 Generations of Core i7 Processors: 2600K, 3770K, 4770K, 5775C & 6700K Gaming Comparison

[kylew_is_back]

The forgotten child. I refer to it as 0th generation.

Very annoying that everybody bench the second gen i7 to the latest and completely ignore the first gen. I mean from first gen i7 to the second gen i7 it was the biggest performance difference compared to the 5% joke that follow right after.

For people with i7 920 at 4.2GHz it is actually worth it to upgrade to skylake because it gives around 60% more performance.
cinebench r15 - i7 920(4.2ghz) - score = 630
cinebench r15 - 6700k(4.6ghz) - score = 1013
nice improvement there but if you think about it, it took 7 freaking years and 6 gens to get there

 

[jigger]

But is the move from a i7 920 even worth it? At £500-600 even that is debatable.

Intels upgrade options have become embarrassing over the last 7-8 years.

 

[kylew_is_back]

“worth” should probably be replaced with “noticeable difference”
yeah £500-600 it is a lot of money for what they offering

 

[Zairs]

Its not just the chip that needs to be taken into account, I upgraded my i5 760 to an i7 6700k while the extra power from the chip was nice, this main reason I did it was to upgrade the motherboard to get all the latest speeds and connections I was missing. 16gb of ram was a nice bonus!

 

[~>Dg<~]

Very annoying that everybody bench the second gen i7 to the latest and completely ignore the first gen. I mean from first gen i7 to the second gen i7 it was the biggest performance difference compared to the 5% joke that follow right after.

For people with i7 920 at 4.2GHz it is actually worth it to upgrade to skylake because it gives around 60% more performance.
cinebench r15 - i7 920(4.2ghz) - score = 630
cinebench r15 - 6700k(4.6ghz) - score = 1013
nice improvement there but if you think about it, it took 7 freaking years and 6 gens to get there

i7 5820k at 4.6 scores 1326

so more than double.

 

[setter]

Anything multi threaded, X99 will win hands down everytime. Unfortunately though games are still limited in the number of cores they utilise.

 

[james.miller]

But is the move from a i7 920 even worth it? At £500-600 even that is debatable.

Intels upgrade options have become embarrassing over the last 7-8 years.

not when you can pop a 6c/12t xeon in there for 60 quid.

 

[Joop]

I have a i7 2600K was looking to upgrade but the cost does not match the gain am I right?

 

[Mei]

I have a i7 2600K was looking to upgrade but the cost does not match the gain am I right?

its going to depend on yur gfx card and what games you play
the video in the OP seems pretty well done

 

[Besty]

Nice. Shame it was all single player but the message is clear.

It is for Ultra settings in single player games.

I don't play any online game (where speed of reaction is a major factor) in Ultra Details, I play on minimum detail (possibly with the terrain details set at a level so I don't miss anything important).

For gamers like myself this review does not tell the full story. It shows us GPU bottlenecked games running in max settings.

When the bottleneck moves from GPU to CPU/RAM we should see why the upgrade is worth it from Sandy Bridge.

 

[Mei]

yeh id like to have seen him run another test, 144mhz screen on lower settings
im guessing it would mostly come down to the overclock but it would be nice to see

 

[blasterbolt]

Very interesting video. I would have loved to seen some on the rts games like Total War Attilla or Rome.

 

[keyser]

~9% frame rate increase. Lets see what the next gen brings. When does it become worth it again? 20%? DirectX 12 and Vulkan should mean the CPU is even less of a bottleneck anyway.

 

[jigger]

~9% frame rate increase. Lets see what the next gen brings. When does it become worth it again? 20%? DirectX 12 and Vulkan should mean the CPU is even less of a bottleneck anyway.

Thats when running the same clocks. Most of the older chips will comfortably out clock the newer generations.

 

[something daft already!!]

I was strongly considering an upgrade this year. I have an I7 950 and it is 6 years old. It still performs well enough for me to disregard the £600 or so it would have cost to change the board, RAM and CPU with perhaps a 50% increase in speed. The days of a processor only lasting a year or so are long gone. The whole market is pretty stagnant. The chips just seem to be a bit cooler and use a bit less power. Moore's Law seems to no longer apply. Has silicon has reached what it is capable of and are we awaiting the next new breakthrough?

 

[Mercutio]

Rounded out my 2600K/980ti setup with 16GB memory and calling it a day until at least kaby lake. Would be really happy to see Zen do well, just for the change

Has silicon has reached what it is capable of and are we awaiting the next new breakthrough?

Pretty much.

 

[kylew_is_back]

not when you can pop a 6c/12t xeon in there for 60 quid.

not necessarily

In 2014 I move from an i7 920(4GHz) to an x5650(4.2GHz) and it did nothing to me in gaming, a few days ago I move from x5650(4.2GHz) to i7 6700K and the difference in games especially minimum fps was big, and that at stock and without xmp, I will OC later this week.

Also in paint.net(a program that use 100% all 12 threads of the x5650) that I use a lot it was around 10% faster with the 6700K at stock and without xmp!

 

[jbh110tdi]

So, 4670/90K / 4770/90K users aren't going to see much if any improvement...

Ive got the 4690k and have thought about it but as said thees not really any point.

I did ask on here but was advised against it. I had the 6 core boys telling me to go 6 core but I just cant see why I would want to drop that much on a board and CPU for general surfing and light gaming not at the moment anyway.


my plan is to pick up a cheap 1150 board for my son at somepoint and ill give him my 4690k and ill try and get a cheap 4790k from someone that's upgraded

 

[DragonQ]

not necessarily

In 2014 I move from an i7 920(4GHz) to an x5650(4.2GHz) and it did nothing to me in gaming, a few days ago I move from x5650(4.2GHz) to i7 6700K and the difference in games especially minimum fps was big, and that at stock and without xmp, I will OC later this week.

Also in paint.net(a program that use 100% all 12 threads of the x5650) that I use a lot it was around 10% faster with the 6700K at stock and without xmp!

An i7-920 to X5650 upgrade quite obviously wouldn't help FPS in most games. If you thought it would, you were mistaken.

I'd also expect an i7-6700K to be around as fast as an X5650 in multithreaded tasks, since the cumulative IPC increases will be somewhere around 50%, which compensates for the X5650's 50% core count advantage. You'd also benefit from the newer instruction sets.

However, to upgrade to an i7-6700K costs many times more than an upgrade to an X5650, making the latter much more cost-effective for non-gaming scenarios. Of course the i7-6700K is going to be generally much better.

 

[jigger]

An i7-920 to X5650 upgrade quite obviously wouldn't help FPS in most games. If you thought it would, you were mistaken.

I'd also expect an i7-6700K to be around as fast as an X5650 in multithreaded tasks, since the cumulative IPC increases will be somewhere around 50%, which compensates for the X5650's 50% core count advantage. You'd also benefit from the newer instruction sets.

However, to upgrade to an i7-6700K costs many times more than an upgrade to an X5650, making the latter much more cost-effective for non-gaming scenarios. Of course the i7-6700K is going to be generally much better.

I'm not sure about that. In a lot of games I've seen frame rates increase with my 6 core xeon. Not massively and not in everything but it's seems 6 cores are more than useful with DX11. Obviously if the game is optimised to run 4 threads across four physical cores then the newer i7's will be be a lot faster.