Intel i5 vs i7

[Kovalinen]

Me & friend was having a discussion an I over heared some how i5 is more suitable for gaming in some sense but never knew why... Just wondered if any one could clear this up & give us some detailed information on whats better between them.

 

[cammy5477]

i dont think its better for gaming more the fact that it is cheaper than an i7 for what ultimatley is the same results cpu wise....the video card does all the hard work. you wont get any more frames per second out of a cpu.....well nothing that you would notice anyway.

 

[Cookeh]

It isnt technically better.
Just makes more sense as the difference in performance is negligible whilst the price difference (when you factor in motherboard and ram) is so much higher

 

[reilly]

Well here is a link which helped me decide on my setup. Compares cpu performance.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/191?vs=47

I couldn't justify an extra £50 on a motherboard, £30 - £50 on ram and £70+ on a cpu for minimal performance gain in my eyes. I don't encode, or photo edit so no need for the hyperthreading.

Plus I have hardly ever maxed out all dual 4gb of my ram so no need for triple channel.

For what I use my pc for it was best for me to go I5, as said above it don't need hyperthreading. If I feel like I am getting bottlenecked I will upgrade my pc with more ram, getter gfx or even to a newer platform but everyone does this in time.


If anyone uses the arguement ' 1156 is a dead technology' well so is 1366 due to new and up and coming tech like Sandy Bridge.

 

[HardwareGeek]

Afaik any benchmark where i5 > i7 is due to the higher turbo boost.

If they were both run at the same speed and without hyperthreading i assume performance would be almost identical.

EDIT: unless the benchmark was effected by triple vs. dual channel memory

 

[cmndr_andi]

Indeed, as HardwareGeek says - the reason the i5 may seem faster than an i7 in benchmarks is due to the more agressive turbo boost. However, when fixed at the same clockspeed (turbo boost off, which is not normally used when overclocking) the performance between i7 and i5 is very similar.

When comparing i5 with i7 (s1366) it should also be noted that the PCIe connection is slightly more direct with the i5 (due to the way the s1156 boards and chips were designed) - so this can give a small performance boost to an i5 system over a 900 series i7 system when using a single graphics card.

There are gaming benefits going for the X58 chipset (used by i7 900 series CPUs) such as dual PCIe 2 16x16x slots - but with current top-end graphics cards 8x8x is generally enough, hence the performance boost is only a few % with the X58 and dual graphics cards. This may extra bandwidth may be of more benefit in the future - but right now the performance difference is not worth the premium for a gamer (similar story with triple channel memory).

 

[Cookeh]

Indeed, as HardwareGeek says - the reason the i5 may seem faster than an i7 in benchmarks is due to the more agressive turbo boost. However, when fixed at the same clockspeed (turbo boost off, which is not normally used when overclocking) the performance between i7 and i5 is very similar.

When comparing i5 with i7 (s1366) it should also be noted that the PCIe connection is slightly more direct with the i5 (due to the way the s1156 boards and chips were designed) - so this can give a small performance boost to an i5 system over a 900 series i7 system when using a single graphics card.

There are gaming benefits going for the X58 chipset (used by i7 900 series CPUs) such as dual PCIe 2 16x16x slots - but with current top-end graphics cards 8x8x is generally enough, hence the performance boost is only a few % with the X58 and dual graphics cards. This may extra bandwidth may be of more benefit in the future - but right now the performance difference is not worth the premium for a gamer (similar story with triple channel memory).

/thread.

Summed up perfectly.

 

[hubby1989]

..

 

[cmndr_andi]

@ hubby1989

I assume paragraphs 2 and 3 of your post are in jest.


If not, then please backup your numbers with links to the tests.

 

[Liampope]

/thread.

Summed up perfectly.

Agreed. For gaming, i7 = ~£150 extra for 0 FPS - not a good buy.

Peoples view that for gaming the GPU is the only thing that is needed is absolute nonsense, as the CPU does a hell of a lot of mathematical calculations for gaming. I know for a fact that if I gave you a hardware configuration with an i5 then replaced it with an i7, in modern games you will be looking at about 70-100% improvement on FPS.

Those who go for SLI or Crossfire are stupid as this gives you about 15-20% improvement for £300!!! For £100 CPU upgrade on games you could get 70-80%! Im not saying the CPU does more than the GPU, or that a good GPU is not needed as it is, but people need to understand how much work the CPU does in a modern game!

A brief intro to the Intel lineup - Core i3 = Hyperthreading with always 4 threads, Core i5 = Hyperthreading with 4 threads + Turbo Boost...and Core i7 = Hyperthreading with 8 threads (extreme can have 12) + Turbo Boost.

What on earth are you talking about??!! Are you aware i5 7xx is also a quad core? I'd love to see some benches that support what you claim. They don't exist, by the way, to save you wasting your time looking

 

[gurusan]

Just look at his sig.

i7 980X with a 4870 :/

 

[hubby1989]

..

 

[hubby1989]

..

 

[Ascendancy]

World In Conflict, using the built in game benchmark, between an i5 and i7 you can get 80-100% fps increase.

Prove it.

 

[setter]

No difference worth mentioning, i7 offers pcie at x16 per lane, (8x on i5), i7 has triple channel ram that doesnt currently make any difference in games, both i5/i7 are quad cpu's, still very few games properly utilise quads, an i7 980x is a nice cpu, but for gaming its way overkill, i run an i7 and its no better than my previous q6600 or q9550, (both at 3.8ghz) in gaming, gpu makes the difference.

 

[cmndr_andi]

Most the reviews shown on the web use incredibly high end games like Crysis which are incredibly GPU intensive and with these games the CPU wont give much of an increase,

Aye, but you mention modern games in your previous post - to me this means all game released in the last ~3 years. I certainly agree that crysis is among the most graphically demanding games around, but other popular games are still very GPU hungry and in most something of the level of an i5 750 is plenty of power for excellent framerates. In fact, most people could get away with a Phenom II X3 and still achieve more than 60FPS in most games (GPU depending).

but for more mainstream games like World In Conflict, using the built in game benchmark, between an i5 and i7 you can get 80-100% fps increase.

Is that through testing on your own, or something you read somewhere. This test on tom's hardware tests that game, using a i5 700 series and a i7 900 series (both clocked at 2.8Ghz). With a 4870X2 graphics card (approximately equivalent to a 5870 in terms of performance) the i7 system shows a 9FPS increase (@1920x1200) over the i5 with the same card, By my maths that is a 13% increase in performance - in one of the few games that makes use of the i7's hyperthreading.

Im not saying at all that the GPU does as much as the CPU as it does far more in a gaming situation however the CPU is definitely underestimated in gaming situations - especially well written multithreaded games.

Thanks for the PSA, but the best way to make a point and change peoples minds is to provide evidence to back up your numbers. Unfortunately, for the numbers that you quote I don't think the evidence exists to back you up.

 

[Liampope]

Haha yes ofcourse im aware of the i5 700 series, they are great cpu's as well! Hence I put the "with HT" in brackets to show I was on about i7s.
Most the reviews shown on the web use incredibly high end games like Crysis which are incredibly GPU intensive and with these games the CPU wont give much of an increase, but for more mainstream games like World In Conflict, using the built in game benchmark, between an i5 and i7 you can get 80-100% fps increase. Im not saying at all that the GPU does as much as the CPU as it does far more in a gaming situation however the CPU is definitely underestimated in gaming situations - especially well written multithreaded games.

80-100%!!! LOL - where are you getting this from??? At very very very very best, HT is worth about 25% for an i7. This is seen in fully multithreaded encoding type apps. In games it's much less - usually nothing. Nobody is saying CPUs aren't important in gaming, just that the difference between i5 7xx and i7 that you've dreamt up doesn't actually exist (unless you can show otherwise).

980X - no wonder you're too skint to buy a decent GPU

 

[Ascendancy]

I've seen benchmarks that actually show cpus with HT actually giving worse performance than those without lol. hubby1989 needs to put down the crack pipe.

*edit*

Here they are:

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/ci7-turbo-ht-p1.html

Only game shown to benefit from HT was Crysis, with a staggering 1% gain. The rest either had no effect or saw a loss.

World in Conflict shows no gain from HT what so ever, so I'm calling shenanigans on hubby1989. A core i5 and a core i7 at the same clockspeed would perform nearly identical.

 

[mrtckane]

well i went i7 for the socket.

i figured that i weren't touching Sandy Bridge, so when SB arrives i'll be looking for a higher end CPU than my i7 920 and hope to get it reasonably cheaper cos it's old tech.

that was why i went i7. i figured i5's lga1156 socket will die off much more rapidly than 1366.

it had nothing to do with benches, as i5 and i7 are somewhat equally matched in a lot of scenarios.

 

[bJN]

that was why i went i7. i figured i5's lga1156 socket will die off much more rapidly than 1366.

As soon as the first Sandy Bridge CPU "hits the shelves", both 1156 and 1366 will be "dead"

Theoretically the i7 should last you longer due to the HyperThreading, but unless there's some amazing HT-related technological breakthrough in Software coding, it's not really going to make an awful lot of difference.