Why do so many people have i7's, but average GPU's?

[Internet Swag]

I'm not bashing them, they can do what they want, but still it's a little odd seeing people with K edition i5 and i7's but having GPU's like the 750 ti or a 260x

[AlwaysFSX]

Because logic.

[nsyedhasan]

Because you need an i7 to game.

 

/joke

 

Where?

[Phoenix70]

because the average pc consumer is an idiot that buys prebuilts for 900 that have an r9 270 and an i7

[Guest]

Because Alienware.

[simtransporter]

Well, people obviously get K edition CPUs so that they can overclock them... but as far as people with i7s and mid range GPUs I have no idea why they choose to do that.

[I_Got_Lost]

I gotta i5-3470 with a 8600 Gt. works well on low graphics.......

[Ngrungebb91]

I was a huggeeee idiot when I bought my first parts. i7 930 with 2 GTS250's... BLAH. Should've just bought a GTX480 and an i5, I wasn't smart back then at 15 years old. But alas.. My i7 930 is still kicking ass with an updated GPU.

[Tech_Dreamer]

price to 'perfomance' i guess, they much rather get a palyable enviornment (as in minecraft quality) rather than a visual eye candy, those guys are called enthusists, they wil never ever do a machup like that,

[Misanthrope]

I think it's an inherited issue from PC builders: how many times have you seen your typical "gaming" machines on stores and such that give you i7s and skimp on the GPU and just put a 750 or 760 at most? That's why you have to pretty much go custom to really min/max the system.

[TetraSky]

Because they think the CPU is still relevant these days/aren't really gamers.

I would take a i5 with the best GPU I can afford any day over a i7 with a low end GPU.

[OGFatal]

I gotta i5-3470 with a 8600 Gt. works well on low graphics.......

Hi-five

[Probenja]

because the average pc consumer is an idiot that buys prebuilts for 900 that have an r9 270 and an i7

 

Because Alienware.

 

http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-x51-r2/pd?oc=dpcwxy03s&model_id=alienware-x51-r2

 

http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-aurora-r4/pd?oc=dpcwny1&model_id=alienware-aurora-r4

[Victorious Secret]

Penis measuring contests

[VG Docs]

My guess is one of two things:

 

1. They want a great CPU in order to play the games they want extremely smoothly, even if that means lack of visual fidelity, possibly a competitive gamer or someone who wants to live stream/record videos without spending that extra few hundred dollars.

2. They're like me, saving up for one part at a time. I've got a 4670k and a radeon 6950. I saved up for a 4670k so that I wouldn't have to worry about a CPU bottleneck even when I do buy a video card, which will likely end up being a GTX 770/R9 280x/Radeon 7970 or better. 

[Thebman712]

people that render alot need beefier cpus than gpus

[Thebman712]

My guess is one of two things:

 

1. They want a great CPU in order to play the games they want extremely smoothly, even if that means lack of visual fidelity, possibly a competitive gamer or someone who wants to live stream/record videos without spending that extra few hundred dollars.

2. They're like me, saving up for one part at a time. I've got a 4670k and a radeon 6950. I saved up for a 4670k so that I wouldn't have to worry about a CPU bottleneck even when I do buy a video card, which will likely end up being a GTX 770/R9 280x/Radeon 7970 or better. 

same here bro, i always though when i was buying this that i was going to upgrade it so now i have a i7 and a 645, but tomorow i will be putting a 280x in and a new psu

[Foxxer]

I've seen i5's rapping i7's day and night. Might be bragging rights.

[ROK]

Most prebuilt PCs have specs that the an ill-informed consumer will look out for- powerful CPU and lots of ram. Most people won't recognize an AMD or NVIDIA gpu on a spec sheet but an i7 and 16GB of ram will look powerful. My friend has a prebuilt that has an AMD 6800k and 12gb of ram. Makes no sense whatsoever but all it takes is enough washed out tech blogs and a best buy rep to convince someone those are balanced specs.

 

Also, anyone who does creative work will benefit more from an i7 and some extra ram than the fastest gaming GPU.  Not everyone builds their rigs for pure gaming and nothing else.

[Silent_R493]

In my case I'm a Hardware Enthusiast and I wanted the best performance I could afford.   Went i7-4770K and GTX 770.   I only 1080P game so GTX 770 was a solid choice. also was going to swap out after a year or so of service once GTX 800s are out.

 

 

To each is their own.  IMO.  If you have the cash and you want it....buy it.   It won't make sense if your going to run High/Low setup long term.   I ran my old GTX 550 Ti for a month before I recovered cost from moving to Haswell from my old AMD AM2+.

[Owade73]

Prebuilds and budgets..

[The_Strict_Nein]

I'm getting into video editing and streaming, so I feel I would appreciate the extra threads.

 

Plus, the 760 is more than enough for the games I play on the regular maxed

[toms94z71]

If you put a pretty strong cpu in your build from the start it can last through several generations of graphic cards, I mean 2600k sandy bridges still have no problem running multiple r9 290xs or a 780tis and they will probably still be just fine with the next couple of series of gpus from both amd and nvidia. 

[AllstaRawR]

I have an i7 with a 670 because I use the computer for a lot more than gaming.

 

I do a ton of work in AutoCAD for work. Those threads are really nice for that. I'd have an i5 if I was just gaming.

[Misanthrope]

If you put a pretty strong cpu in your build from the start it can last through several generations of graphic cards, I mean 2600k sandy bridges still have no problem running multiple r9 290xs or a 780tis and they will probably still be just fine with the next couple of series of gpus from both amd and nvidia. 

 

No you cannot, not with any certainty anyway. You could get through many in theory, and if trends continue it is likely, but if multi threading becomes more important you could be looking at 4 or 8 cores minimum within a very short ammount of time, something that whenever or not is likely to happen it would be good if it did happened sooner than later because we're pretty close to maxing out single core performance anyway, in fact look at GPUs they're so far ahead precisely because they're specialized at multiple threads.

In the end, future proofing really should only be relevant to very immediate and announced products with a high likelihood of actually making it to retail like buying a z97 mobo to have the option of broadwell, but it's impossible to see more than 1 generation ahead and even that is a stretch, even if promised a lot of the current z97 boards could end up officially supporting broadwell but having performance and stability issues we just don't know.