3770k Future Proof

[Opsilon]

Oi mate, since you already have a mobo i will not bang on about go haswell, but here is the deal.

I buy a new pc every 5 years on average, and i have noticed that Future-proofing does exist, but you will only get an answer to that if you form an answer based on your needs, so: if you are just browsing the web, typing, and doing just light work on your pc, it can potentially last for 6-7 years and not slow down to a point that you can make a trip to the store and buy milk because waiting for firefox to load takes 10 mins. If you are a hardcore gamer, you will last 3 gens max with an aggressive overclock on your cpu and a gpu change every 2 gens.

 

My friend uses an "old" i7 950 with 6 gigs of ram and an HD 5850, he has 2 HDD-s, no SSD-s and no raid. that pc is still fast, sure it can't max out crysis 3 because of the GPU, but his cpu can take it, no problem, and his cpu is just 15% overclocked, sometimes, most of the time when he is working, he is an IT student, i have never seen that pc to slow down, what ever we played, and i saw a small decrease in performance when he was rendering something for his project. My friend still states, he is not planing an upgrade for next 2 years, or sooner if a component dies.

 

So, for Future-proofing, you decide, does it exist or not, but i can tell you that if you go to an i7, you will not be disappointed, the i5 will save you money, and if you overclock it you will have epic performance.

 

As for hyperthreading in games, if you play a game that needs only 2 cores, HT will not benefit you, you might even lose some performance, but as soon as your cpu needs more than 4 cores, you will see the difference, so if you plan on playing modern titles, HT would be a great option to have, you can disable HT if you are not using it or see performance drop in such games,  and as for the i5, if you overclock it high you can close the gap with the i7, even when the i7 is overclocked, so you can have 80%+ performance of an i7 with 100$ less.

 

Hope this helps, cheers

[BKCXb]

I say save the extra money, invest In time machine stocks, will that pay off, IT'S IRRELEVANT!!

 

There is no such thing as future proofing, buy what you need now to do what you you are doing now.

 

Its like buying clothes that are future proof for an 8 year old boy. He grows, and the rest of the world moves on no matter what clothes he is wearing (or not wearing because he bought future proof clothes).

[Glenwing]

As for hyperthreading in games, if you play a game that needs only 2 cores, HT will not benefit you, you might even lose some performance, but as soon as your cpu needs more than 4 cores, you will see the difference, so if you plan on playing modern titles, HT would be a great option to have, you can disable HT if you are not using it or see performance drop in such games,  and as for the i5, if you overclock it high you can close the gap with the i7, even when the i7 is overclocked, so you can have 80%+ performance of an i7 with 100$ less.

 

Hope this helps, cheers

 

I disagree with that; even on games which are known to use more than 4 cores the i5 and i7 generally perform the same.  It depends on the game and how it's optimized for hyper threading.  In gaming performance you won't see too much difference between a Pentium and an i3 (2 extra threads) however you will see an enormous difference between an i3 and an i5 (2 extra physical cores, same number of threads).  Likewise you won't see much difference between an i5 and an i7 (4 extra threads), however you do see a nice difference between a 3770K and a 3930K (2 extra physical cores).  The value of the 3770K does not depend on games utilizing more threads, but games being optimized to take advantage of hyper threading.  And considering that hyper threading has been around since Pentium 4, and given the way in which it works, I don't really see that happening to any large degree.

[Glenwing]

I say save the extra money, invest In time machine stocks, will that pay off, IT'S IRRELEVANT!!

 

There is no such thing as future proofing, buy what you need now to do what you you are doing now.

 

Its like buying clothes that are future proof for an 8 year old boy. He grows, and the rest of the world moves on no matter what clothes he is wearing (or not wearing because he bought future proof clothes).

 

I don't think there is any absolute future proofing, but you can take some "just in case" options to leave yourself at least some doors open.  For example if you choose a motherboard with the exact number of PCIe slots and USB headers you are going to use on your initial build, you don't leave yourself with any option for a sound card or SLI, or a new case with more USB ports in the future.  You leave yourself with no future upgrade options in other words.  If you leave some empty slots and open headers that is a form of future proofing.  So you can do some future proofing but of course you can't build a PC to be totally future proof.

[Opsilon]

 

I disagree with that; even on games which are known to use more than 4 cores the i5 and i7 generally perform the same.  It depends on the game and how it's optimized for hyper threading.  In gaming performance you won't see too much difference between a Pentium and an i3 (2 extra threads) however you will see an enormous difference between an i3 and an i5 (2 extra physical cores, same number of threads).  Likewise you won't see much difference between an i5 and an i7 (4 extra threads), however you do see a nice difference between a 3770K and a 3930K (2 extra physical cores).  The value of the 3770K does not depend on games utilizing more threads, but games being optimized to take advantage of hyper threading.  And considering that hyper threading has been around since Pentium 4, and given the way in which it works, I don't really see that happening to any large degree.

I disagree with this one, because i tried to disable HT on an i3, try crysis 3 on that, and you can clearly see that in games, but yes it is a bigger gap between an i3 an an i5, my other friend has a 3570k, so yeah, but since HT is  not a "real" core it is expected.

One more thing, isn't the OS one who tasks the cores of a CPU, why would the game treat it differently? same as Logan did in his 3770 vs 8350, you can see that, and it is even more visible with multi-gpu config. The i7 vs i5 in crysis 3 at same clock is very much visible

[Glenwing]

Opsilon, on 14 May 2013 - 12:58 AM, said:

I disagree with this one, because i tried to disable HT on an i3, try crysis 3 on that, and you can clearly see that in games, but yes it is a bigger gap between an i3 an an i5, my other friend has a 3570k, so yeah, but since HT is not a "real" core it is expected.

One more thing, isn't the OS one who tasks the cores of a CPU, why would the game treat it differently? same as Logan did in his 3770 vs 8350, you can see that, and it is even more visible with multi-gpu config. The i7 vs i5 in crysis 3 at same clock is very much visible

A dual-core is not really sufficient for gaming these days, so I suppose if your CPU is that starved for resources hyperthreading starts to actually help, somewhat... but really I don't see it as a viable future-proofing option. I mean you're spending an extra $100 so that in 4 years or something you'll be getting the equivalent of future i3 level performance vs future pentium performance... Better to save the $100 for a future CPU upgrade :P as it seems hyperthreading only starts to help when the CPU's performance is so low it's not great with or without it.

As for the task scheduling I don't know; most games hyperthreading on quad-cores has no effect, decreasing performance if anything even on games that are known to use more than 4 cores. A few games however do gain some benefit. Take from that what you will.

 

EDIT: You are right that hyperthreading support is not part of the game programming so I stand corrected on that point; however given the way in which HTT works again I don't think there will ever be a huge difference between an i5 and i7; even in Crysis 3 which is so multi-threaded the FX-8350 beats the 3770K, the i5 and i7 perform very close to each other.  And again you see a huge gap between the i3 and i5 despite having the same number of threads, and a much smaller one between the Pentium and the i3 noting the lower clock on the Pentium as well.

 

[Opsilon]

Dual-core is not sufficient for any modern DX10+ title.

I see an i7 as a good future-proofing option i mean you can still have a core 2 duo and overclock it to 4 ghz and have i3 performance, that is nothing, because dual cores are a thing of the past, but today when we are nearing the limit of silicon based chips, you will see less of performance increase with every generation, like i said my friend still has an i7 950 and it works like a charm.

 

As for the performance decrease, HT loses only about a few fps on max, but when you look at average performance, you don't even see or notice this, but an i5 will be out of date faster than an i7, sure you can oc it like mad, but you can oc the i7 as well, and your i7 will not be equivalent of a pentium ( or what ever it will be called ) down the line, it will still perform as a mid ranged machine ( will consume more power and output more heat ), i mean if you still have a core 2 quad, and overclock it reasonably you will have a nice performing machine, and still faster than an i3.

 

You are right HT will not make a huge difference, but that is only in games, i7 can do a lot more work in less time than an i5 if using heavily threaded applications, like the 8350.

 

 

 

 

That is all nice, but the 8350 does not beat the i7, not to mention when you oc them

 

http://www.google.hr/imgres?imgurl=http://media.bestofmicro.com/O/M/375430/original/Crysis3-CPU.png&imgrefurl=http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crysis-3-performance-benchmark-gaming,3451-8.html&h=468&w=452&sz=17&tbnid=RbjeFtZO-8O3IM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=87&zoom=1&usg=__6vZIUWTNPDzdEoC0DKPwmwJPF2M=&docid=6XdwUcl-VXQELM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Mx-SUZPZIcmH4ATmyYCoCA&sqi=2&ved=0CC4Q9QEwAg&dur=2525

 

this one has no i7 3770 but you can see that even an i5 gets you more minimum fps, and is more playable.

 

http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page6.html

 

those are just some i found. To be fair even i would buy an 8350 over an i5 any day, you get more for your money, and it is even cheaper, i would still have money for an ssd XD, but an i7 is something else

[Glenwing]

Even in the benchmarks you just posted the i5-3470 is hardly lower than the 3770K.  The 8350 is also not far behind and in the benchmarks I posted it was not too far ahead; they're all pretty much in the same neighborhood and the 8350 beating or not beating the 3770 wasn't really my main point.  In a game where that uses more than 4 threads like Crysis 3 or BF3 the i5 and i7 are very similar to each other. Hyperthreading just doesn't make much difference in games, even between an i3 and a Pentium when more threads are valuable and the difference is more pronounced it's still not that significant.  I don't think it's worth the 50% price increase over the i5 at any rate.  The i7 may hold up slightly better over the years but the i5 isn't going to go off a cliff either.  I don't think the difference between them will amount to anything huge over the years.

 

I won't dispute older CPUs still hold up well over time and this will continue... but again the point is there won't be much difference between the i5 and the i7.

[Opsilon]

Even in the benchmarks you just posted the i5-3470 is hardly lower than the 3770K.  The 8350 is also not far behind and in the benchmarks I posted it was not too far ahead; they're all pretty much in the same neighborhood and the 8350 beating or not beating the 3770 wasn't really my main point.  In a game where that uses more than 4 threads like Crysis 3 or BF3 the i5 and i7 are very similar to each other. Hyperthreading just doesn't make much difference in games, even between an i3 and a Pentium when more threads are valuable and the difference is more pronounced it's still not that significant.  I don't think it's worth the 50% price increase over the i5 at any rate.  The i7 may hold up slightly better over the years but the i5 isn't going to go off a cliff either.  I don't think the difference between them will amount to anything huge over the years.

 

I won't dispute older CPUs still hold up well over time and this will continue... but again the point is there won't be much difference between the i5 and the i7.

Yes you are correct, but there is one more thing, the fact that 8350 and he i7 are faster than an i5 k series is not how much fps you get in games, it is the workload they can take.

 

So it's like this: you have 4 threads on an i5 and 8 on i7 and the 8350, as long as you do not use full resources of 4 threads, they perform neck and neck, that is fine, most of games today do not push an i5 to 100% of a core load, but, let's say we add more things to that, add streaming, rendering, and what ever you want to that. i5 will get to that 100% and your system will slow down, on the other hand the i7 and the 8350 will not, i know you will not do all that stuff at the same time, but as standard games and applications today need more and more threads, you will hit that performance decrease sooner. Your system will responsive at that point as well if you have more threads.

 

same as the people that had cash for a c2q and took an c2d instead 4+ years ago, the performance loss was more evident as soon as more heavy applications came into play. Maybe you can't put details on the highest setting with a c2q today, but can't play any modern game on a dual core today with medium an 1080p, and that i saw with my own eyes, your gpu will do nothing and your cpu will struggle

[extremescouter]

As others have said, gaming really doesnt take advantage of CPU cores, as shown by the pretty bad performance of 8 core AMD processors in games. However, if you ever want to do any video or photo editing, the 3770k will be a good fit for you. If you just want it for gaming and never see yourself getting into video or photo editing in the next 4 years or so, go with the 3570k. I went with the 3770k, and have been happy with it for the past 9 months.

[SkilledRebuilds]

When I bought my i7 2600k, I was actually after the i5 2500k

But when I walked in and stated what I wanted, I brainfarted...

 

I said 2600k, meaning the 2500k, simple slip of the tongue,.. he comes up to me with the i7, and I'm like...Fuck it why not, considering I do a little bit of video editing and had a few hundred dollars over budget just in case of having to swap stuff if something was not in stock. Now I want a 3930x or the 4###x 6 core beast! Shits & Giggles & Thrills