Core i5 or i7 for gaming?

Nice overclock dude! Is that being run 24/7 or was it just for benching? What cooling do you have? You've got a lot more v-core than me, with lower temperatures. Mine is at around 1.38, and temps in their mid 70's when running stress tests.

Also... any reason you're running super-pi and not hyper-pi?
 
Ouch @ the vcore. Good stuff! Out of interest what is your 4GHz vcore? I need 1.375, so I could probably manage 4.2 with something like yours. Amazing temps considering the voltage - you on custom water?
 
OP curious to know what you went for in the end? someone suggested i take a look at thread and it has proved very helpful. i am in a similar situation to you right now, looking to build (for the first time and with not much knowledge) myself a gaming rig for in the region of £1000-1200.
 
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It's a waste of money to get an i7 for gaming.

Get an i5 rig or a Phenom 955 + use the money towards a better GPU/SSD. The performance difference between an i5 and 955 is 2-10 fps in most games.
 
Liampope said:
How do you come to that conclusion? CPU difference is £35 today (a difference commensurate with the performance difference imho), same RAM, and mobos are swings and roundabouts - there's a pretty similar range of prices you can choose to pay with both platforms.

Out of interest, when you say the real advantage of i7 is the x58 chipset itself, what are you referring to? Bearing in mind we're talking specifically about gaming. Tripple channel RAM and 16x/16x SLI are well known to offer almost immeasurable benefits and the same can be said of hyperthreading currently (and it'll only ever offer around 25% CPU gain at best, most likely less). Is there something I'm missing? For gamers, i7/x58 is a premium platform with almost completely diminished returns, imho.
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I have to agree with LP here. We're all agreed that any RAM surplus to 4 gigs is superfluous, and 3x2GB doesn't offer many serious gaming advantages over 2x2GB. I'm not convinced that 16x/16x will offer you a significant advantage over 8x/8x in SLI, and I can't see a massive difference in potential clocking.

Considering the i7-900s are *considerably* more expensive than the i5-700s, both in terms of CPU price and motherboard price, I'm really struggling to justify the difference purely for gaming purposes. There may be some small benefits for some games, but I'd still sooner recommend the i5 and a better GFX solution.

As for the Phenom X4, I can't really agree with that either. The i5 700 may offer the (roughly) same clock speed for slightly more money, but the i5 has more IPCs, or Instructions Per Clock, which mean that when both clocked at the same speed, the i5 gives you more power. And the i5's Turbo Boost system for dropping down to dual core- i.e. for 99% of games- gives it the edge. Both are equally good overclockers, too.

If you're going with "but the Phenom X4 is all you really need for gaming, you won't notice any real performance benefits over that", then to be honest you could go a lot cheaper and still notice very little drop in performance- an i3, Athlon X4 or even X3 would still be all you need.
 
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