Hyper-threading use in future games

[propancake]

I am confused as to why people recommend the i5 for gaming:

 

If the i7 has hyper-threading, and future games (in 3 or 4 years) are going to need more cores, surely that means that the i7 will last longer for gaming-and spending 100 dollars extra now is better than spending another 300 in 3 or 4 years, when the i5 may be a bottleneck. 

 

I say 3 or 4 years because that's when I assume the 9th gen consoles will be out, and games will be being developed for the use of more cores. Am I not understanding something though? For example, would developers only be making games for more cores and not necessarily for hyper-threading, which would make the performance of an i5 and i7 almost identical. 

 

As someone who doesn't like to upgrade too much this would be useful info but I guess its hard to tell what's gonna happen. 

[Guest]

I don't have my personal crystal ball so I can't tell. 

[Guest]

But we can predict, I for one have an i5, but bigger open world games can in some cases run better with an i7. 

[The Official Czex]

I am confused as to why people recommend the i5 for gaming:

 

If the i7 has hyper-threading, and future games (in 3 or 4 years) are going to need more cores, surely that means that the i7 will last longer for gaming-and spending 100 dollars extra now is better than spending another 300 in 3 or 4 years, when the i5 may be a bottleneck. 

 

I say 3 or 4 years because that's when I assume the 9th gen consoles will be out, and games will be being developed for the use of more cores. Am I not understanding something though? For example, would developers only be making games for more cores and not necessarily for hyper-threading, which would make the performance of an i5 and i7 almost identical. 

 

As someone who doesn't like to upgrade too much this would be useful info but I guess its hard to tell what's gonna happen. 

 

My logic is this: If you can afford something better that will last longer, go for it.

 

However, both the 4690K and 4790K will be nearly obsolete compared to newer technologies becoming mainstream.

[Fictionvl]

here's the thing, we recommend an i5 because currently games don't use over 4 cores.

the only game that would benefit of an i7 is probably Cities : Skyline.

 

but I see your logic, it may happen in the future, but by then people who already bought an i5 would easily upgrade to an i7, yeah it would cost a bit of money, but they chose to be on a strict budget when they first started their build.

[Samfisher]

I am confused as to why people recommend the i5 for gaming:

 

If the i7 has hyper-threading, and future games (in 3 or 4 years) are going to need more cores, surely that means that the i7 will last longer for gaming-and spending 100 dollars extra now is better than spending another 300 in 3 or 4 years, when the i5 may be a bottleneck. 

 

I say 3 or 4 years because that's when I assume the 9th gen consoles will be out, and games will be being developed for the use of more cores. Am I not understanding something though? For example, would developers only be making games for more cores and not necessarily for hyper-threading, which would make the performance of an i5 and i7 almost identical. 

 

As someone who doesn't like to upgrade too much this would be useful info but I guess its hard to tell what's gonna happen. 

Can't really say that.  The PS3 had 8 cores, and yet we're barely 4 cores as it is 10 years after the PS3 launch.

[Vedge]

The PS3 had 8 cores, and yet we're barely 4 cores as it is 10 years after the PS3 launch.

 

It had a CELL chip, which can't be directly compared to x86 architecture. In reality it had more like one "real" core and 6 auxiliary, with one reserved for the OS

 

 

 

For example, would developers only be making games for more cores and not necessarily for hyper-threading, which would make the performance of an i5 and i7 almost identical

 

i'm not sure i've seen games using hyper threading properly. For Fallout 4 for instance one of the fixes for the stuttering is to disable the HT. Besides that though, an i7 is a "better quality" chip (all parts came out perfect during manufacturing) and usually has higher clock speeds and boost speeds. This does not necessarily mean that you can't overclock an i5 to be on par with an i7. Hard to say if it's worth the extra money though. Most advise is based on what is best right now and NOT on future proofing. Also keep in mind that it will take a while before the "average number of cores" among PC users gets over 4 and developers aren't going to make games that deviate significantly from that average.

[BrightCandle]

The industry has been saying multicore support since like 2003 since dual cores first appeared and the xbox360/ps3 both used more cores to get performance. Yet almost all games do not utilise it well even to this day, the dual core support we have had is provided by Windows DX API not by the game itself.  So after 12 years of not seeing a lot of progress on this front but seeing the CPU's evolve to absolutely require multicore for the best improvement we are left a bit jaded on the whole topic. A number of games each year come out with good multicore support and run better on the 6/12 instead of the consumer 4/8 and 4/4 but the impact so far has been pretty small.

 

Even if hyperthreading works perfect its only going to be worth about +20% performance. For a 50% increase in price that isn't really worth it for most gamers. The $100 would be better spent in the future on the next generation CPU.

[Kevin_Walter]

Consoles have had multi-core processors for over a decade. Console generations are useless as a metric for determining the viability of current and future PC hardware. Consoles will always have the developers fine-tuning their games to work as well as they possibly can on the restricted hardware of the consoles they're developing those games for, but they're not going to spend an equal amount of time making sure the game is optimized to run well on your Dodeca-core Xeon. They're going to optimize it for the lowest common denominator, which at the moment just happens to be duals and quads.

 

The i7s are definitely useful for things like streaming, however.

[typographie]

If the i7 has hyper-threading, and future games (in 3 or 4 years) are going to need more cores, surely that means that the i7 will last longer for gaming-and spending 100 dollars extra now is better than spending another 300 in 3 or 4 years, when the i5 may be a bottleneck.

 

I have a very hard time imagining a scenario where a Core i5 is a serious bottleneck risk where a same-generation Core i7 is not. It's the same core, with the same IPC, and more or less the same potential clock speed. Hyperthreading is the only significant difference, and if the rate of adoption of multithreading so far is anything to go by, I don't expect any sudden leaps and bounds. We've had 8-core/8-threaded processors for a very, very long time now.

 

Something to consider is that most people still have a dual-core processor, and probably one that's a few years old at that. In 3 or 4 years, the majority may have a quad-core, but the point is that developers cannot ignore quad-core systems if they want their games to run well for the largest percentage of users. Chances are very, very poor that most people will have a $300 i7 by then, even an old one.

[jjohnthedon1]

here's the thing, we recommend an i5 because currently games don't use over 4 cores.

the only game that would benefit of an i7 is probably Cities : Skyline.

but I see your logic, it may happen in the future, but by then people who already bought an i5 would easily upgrade to an i7, yeah it would cost a bit of money, but they chose to be on a strict budget when they first started their build.

fallout 4 battlefield, battlefront, witcher3, gta v

Crysis3,

[Fictionvl]

fallout 4 battlefield, battlefront, witcher3, gta v

Crysis3,

 

All these games are easily ran by an i5, my 3570k before upgrading to skylake ran all these games easily paired with a 970

[jjohnthedon1]

All these games are easily ran by an i5, my 3570k before upgrading to skylake ran all these games easily paired with a 970

thats fine for 60 fps, all i5s should hit 60 fps but if ur on a 144hz screen the difference between 70 and 90 is a big jump

[App4that]

My logic is this: If you can afford something better that will last longer, go for it.

 

However, both the 4690K and 4790K will be nearly obsolete compared to newer technologies becoming mainstream.

I call shenanigans. There isn't enough of a difference between the 4790k and the 6700k or 4690k and 6600k to have one go obsolete first. The difference is there, but nothing worthy of that statement you just made my good Sir.

[Demm]

We don't know for sure if games are gonna be using more cores, and if so how many more. Don't waste your time wondering about that. And second, in 3 or 4 years our CPUs are not going to be viable anyway... there's always going to be something better and newer coming along, especially with the market nowadays. That's the thing  with gaming isn't it. If you are gamer and you really want the best performance you are going to spend money after these 3 or 4 years anyway, so there is no point in spending that much money on better PC, since you will probably have to buy new one because the i5 and even the i7 are going to be old. 

 

For example: If i5 now gets you 50 FPS in said game, and i7 gets you 60 in the same game, in 3 or 4 years those CPUs are going to be giving you 30 and say 40 in a modern game.

As and advice: If you are planning to be gaming after 4 years don't worry about what is going to be future proof, because nothing will be. But if you want to keep your PC for long and are not planning on gaming that heavily, then the $100 investment its not a bad option... That's my opinion anyway.

[SteveGrabowski0]

There are already games i7s are better in, games will use 8 cores if they're there now unlike 2013 and before. It really depends what kind of system you're building as to whether the price premium you'd pay for an i7 is worth it though. If you're going with an expensive dual gpu setup like SLI 980 Ti or Crossfire 390x to push 120+ fps, then it would be stupid to skimp on the cpu, since the $100 difference between a k-series i7 and i5 isn't a big fraction of total system cost but will give you a few more fps. If you're just running a single 960/380/970/390 to play games at 60 fps then that $100 is a much bigger fraction of your total system cost and won't be likely to give you any more fps if you're playing with vsync. Even locked Core i5s rarely have trouble maintaining a locked 60 fps in AAA games. The important thing is balance. Don't go buy an i7 and a 380/960 when you could get an i5 and a 390/970, as the latter will be a way better gaming machine. Or don't drop $1300 on gpus and cheap out on cpu when an overkill gpu setup pushing 120 fps is going to force the system bottleneck back to the cpu.

[The Official Czex]

I call shenanigans. There isn't enough of a difference between the 4790k and the 6700k or 4690k and 6600k to have one go obsolete first. The difference is there, but nothing worthy of that statement you just made my good Sir.

 

I have to disagree; the lack of DDR4 RAM support, fewer PCIe lanes, and the death of LGA-1150 make Haswell a no go for anyone thinking about upgrading in the future. If they have to jump ship from Haswell a few years from now, they'll have nowhere to go but Skylake/Canonlake/Kabylake. Plus, the ever increasing demands of AAA titles will probably make the 6700K obsolete, as well. At least, with the 6700K, they can jump to another chip on the socket.

[App4that]

I have to disagree; the lack of DDR4 RAM support, fewer PCIe lanes, and the death of LGA-1150 make Haswell a no go for anyone thinking about upgrading in the future. If they have to jump ship from Haswell a few years from now, they'll have nowhere to go but Skylake/Canonlake/Kabylake. Plus, the ever increasing demands of AAA titles will probably make the 6700K obsolete, as well. At least, with the 6700K, they can jump to another chip on the socket.

Sockets last 2-3 years, the 1151 will suffer the same fate. DDR4 won't matter as far as gaming, DDR3 is enough where most people play which is 1080p. You guys crack me up with the sky is falling shit.

[The Official Czex]

Sockets last 2-3 years, the 1151 will suffer the same fate. DDR4 won't matter as far as gaming, DDR3 is enough where most people play which is 1080p. You guys crack me up with the sky is falling shit.

 

Imagine replacing a MOBO in 5 years on a 4790K... The prices are already rising as stock is gone and demand still stays.

[App4that]

Imagine replacing a MOBO in 5 years on a 4790K... The prices are already rising as stock is gone and demand still stays.

Don't buy a cheap motherboard, sounds harsh but I have a 5 year warranty. So no worries.