Hyperthreading

[hyperst]

Speaking from experience, 3770k is worth the extra £60-£80 100%, if you play a lot of BF3 it does make a massive difference with SLI, with single GPU it will still make a difference just not so much as when running SLI.

SLI GPU usage with [email protected] 50-60% usage.
SLI GPU usage with [email protected] 90%+ = huge difference to how the game plays.

All from my own experience

 

[Suarez7]

Speaking from experience, 3770k is worth the extra £60-£80 100%, if you play a lot of BF3 it does make a massive difference with SLI, with single GPU it will still make a difference just not so much as when running SLI.

SLI GPU usage with [email protected] 50-60% usage.
SLI GPU usage with [email protected] 90%+ = huge difference to how the game plays.

All from my own experience

I found a thread on overclock.net before where some guy tested this as well, his 2500k GPU usage with SLI would spike up and down whereas with the 2700k upgrade he made it was 90-100% constantly.

 

[hyperst]

I found a thread on overclock.net before where some guy tested this as well, his 2500k GPU usage with SLI would spike up and down whereas with the 2700k upgrade he made it was 90-100% constantly.

Also don't forget the new consoles are coming with 8 core or whatever they have(I have not really read much at all on them), games will start to use hyperthreading more by the sounds of it to me so it's a no brainer to go with an i7 really for future games, I plan to make this 3770k 3 years or there about's so games will be using it fully I should think by that time.

 

[setter]

Speaking from experience, 3770k is worth the extra £60-£80 100%, if you play a lot of BF3 it does make a massive difference with SLI, with single GPU it will still make a difference just not so much as when running SLI.

SLI GPU usage with [email protected] 50-60% usage.
SLI GPU usage with [email protected] 90%+ = huge difference to how the game plays.

All from my own experience

Those figures are pretty similair to what illuz and i were discussing on battlelog one evening. I noticed pretty similair if i turned off ht on my old i7 920 470gtx sli setup. Some users do report stuttering with ht on in bf3, but it's something ive never noticed myself. Still have an i7 930 with a second bf3 account on it.

 

[hyperst]

I have never noticed stuttering in BF3 with HT on and I am sensitive to stutter, I remember it from my old setup of crossfire 4850's though.

 

[setter]

Never experienced it either, on my 920 or the 930. Certainly did notice though a drop in minimums by switching from the 920 to the 3570k in sig. Same gtx 670. As my 930 based system only currently has an 8800gt, if i get the time ill try the gtx 670 in sig in it just to see what the difference is.

 

[LtMatt]

The stutering in bf3 with HT was fixed a few months after the games release.

 

[JamesM]

Speaking from experience, 3770k is worth the extra £60-£80 100%, if you play a lot of BF3 it does make a massive difference with SLI, with single GPU it will still make a difference just not so much as when running SLI.

SLI GPU usage with [email protected] 50-60% usage.
SLI GPU usage with [email protected] 90%+ = huge difference to how the game plays.

All from my own experience

+1 experienced the same results

 

[Suarez7]

What coolers are you guys using on your 3770k's?

 

[old gamer]

What coolers are you guys using on your 3770k's?

Corsair h80 but dont ask me anything about overclocking, only just installed windows and have not had time to play about yet, proberly going to leave it at stock for a few weeks and let everything settle down a bit

 

[zakblood]

well i've read some crock in my time, but too many posts here with it in. more and more games benefit from i7's, just get over it, those who wish to keep there i5's just live with it.

plenty of latest games with top scores all being done in benchmarks by i7's, not i5's.

i care less if others thinks it poor or over priced, i only play a few games now apart from the total war series, have used the same card since Christmas now, a 7950 with first for a few months before xmas with a i5, then for a few months with a i7, the slow down in large battles with the i5 made me turn a few things of ultra and still couldn't have massive battles without slow down, since i've had the i7 in, every things on ultra and battles run a lot smother, no matter what the weather is, troop size is now also on max, using the darthmod latest addon's.

i still only use a single card, and tbh always will, only just this year gone onto sdd's and now have 2 x 256gb so games are all installed on them.

sold the i5 as for me and the games i use it just didn't do what i wanted it to do.

total war series
flight sims
farcry3 and Crysis 3 / Skyrim etc

Metro 2033, Just Cause 2, Bad Company 2 etc with a few others on storage for now until i have space left on sdd to reinstall them as i have them imaged, i use ramdisk images for quicker play as have plenty of ram and that will always be faster than sdd's for the next few years anyway...

the i5 is a great overclocking chip and a good chip for the price, but it's not the second coming, even though some seems to think it's the answer to everything inc world peace.

 

[Suarez7]

Think you've overreacted a little zak, nobody has said the i5 is king lol, just most don't think it's worth paying £80 extra for an i7.

 

[illuz]

Where'd that one come from zak?

Don't get me wrong, the 3570k is blisteringly fast chip and for a good gamers rig I highly recommend it. If you're going to be going SLI or just need that extra bit of umph, I'd say get the 3770k. As setter stated earlier after plopping my second 670 into my machine I did feel like it was held back slightly, my CPU usage was constantly 100% whilst gaming yet my cards just weren't getting utilised even at 4.5GHz. Sold my 3570k near the price I paid for it and got the 3770k. Now it rips through everything and my cards aren't held back, for a single card gaming machine though the 3570k is fine imo.

 

[zakblood]

i know, bit ott, but there's plenty of members here who write off the i7 as over priced and the i5 as the number one gaming chip of choice, i now have more friends on i7's than i do on i5's as price alone made them switch, the i5 keeps going up, the i7 has stayed the same or for a long term view has come down a lot, even at £80 more which for most sites now it's not that much between them, the benchmarks speaks for themselves, members only need to look, pick 10 of the latest games with inbuilt benchmarks then see what tops all of the charts, i7 based chips.

for the price the i5 wins every time, but for pure power now in gaming, for me now it has to be a i7 if your serious about the games you play and want the best, spend the extra as it's well worth it.

and when the next one's are out, i'll update to that one as well and sell on my i7.

any if anyone wants to show me any game which the i5 wins a i7 on the same card, with the game being updated to multicore support first, then i'll edit my post.

BioShock Infinite is just another game that cries out for the extra power, upgrade while there cheap, or wait for the next ones i7-4930, 4960, 4970 and the rumored 4990

 

[illuz]

The price of them have shot up a lot, I bought my 3570k near release for 150. Though the difference between the 3570k and it's bigger brother has always been around 80 quid.

 

[ubersonic]

any if anyone wants to show me any game which the i5 wins a i7 on the same card, with the game being updated to multicore support first, then i'll edit my post.

Agreed, I play a lot of Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance (a 6 year old RTS) and using the multicore tool to spread its threads over multiple cores it runs better on an i7 than i5 lol.

 

[Martini1991]

Why would anyone say the i5 would best the i7?
That's illogical posting.

 

[Suarez7]

Why would anyone say the i5 would best the i7?
That's illogical posting.

People like justifying their reasons for not spending the extra, it also works the other way round when people overpay for stuff. A year or so ago there was no reason to get an i7 for gaming but now more and more games are starting to make a use for more threads/cores.

 

[Martini1991]

But justifying it by lying isn't justifying, it's being a prat (Saying the i5 would best the i7, unless of course i5 was higher clocked, and the game couldn't use the extra threads to the point it surpassed the i5's physical cores)

EDIT : Although, you'd probably see your minimums raise with the i7 in GPU limited games, even if the average doesn't change much.

 

[Suarez7]

But justifying it by lying isn't justifying, it's being a prat (Saying the i5 would best the i7, unless of course i5 was higher clocked, and the game couldn't use the extra threads to the point it surpassed the i5's physical cores)

Agreed but it will always happen unfortunately, honesty is hard to come by especially over the internetz.