Hardware & Technical i5 or i7?

[insanephoton]

Like many of you, I'm looking to upgrade/replace my current rig and will probably end up with a Haswell z87 based rig. So far nothing is concrete or nailed down yet, even the budget has some flexibility in it but the question I'm asking is this: is it worth spending the extra money for an i7 cpu?

I've read articles about IvyBridge systems where they suggest that certainly for gaming, the 3570k mostly equals and in some cases outperforms the 3770k. So what do you think?

 

[Kerrash]

...: is it worth spending the extra money for an i7 cpu?...?

I have been considering the same conundrum from myself and my current opinion is: Not really no, you would be better off spending the extra on a faster GPU.

 

[Commander Thane]

I also came to the conclusion that the i7 isn't really utilised at the moment and costs as much as two i5s. Benchmarking also suggest different games get different benefits from the two processors, implying that the difference is in what the game is doing behind the scenes, rather than generating frames.

I've just ordered the following components to build a budget system, with some help from my buddies at fragland.com:

Xigmatek Asgard III Windowed Gaming Case - Black
Intel Core i5-3330 3.00GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W)
Gigabyte Z77-DS3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Superclocked 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD1002FAEX) HDD
OCZ ZS Series 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050)
GW2265HM 21.5" 1920x1080 6ms VGA DVI HDMI Monitor Black

Shopping around for parts (and the gfx card generously donated from a friend who's recently upgraded) I got the whole lot for just over £600.

 

[Nagual]

If it's just for gaming, there isn't that much to benefit from an i7 compared to a i5. More over, there isn't a huge benefit by going to Haswell over Ivy Bridge either. If you can find a good price for a 3rd gen i5, spend any savings on a good GPU, plenty RAM and a good PSU - Which you were going to get too?

 

[Slawkenbergius]

When I looked into it a year or so ago, I decided that an i7 probably wasn't worth it for me, and went with the 3570k.

 

[Sparticus]

I am still looking - not yet decided - there is some really good info in this thread

 

[Patrick_68000]

I5 Is excellent for games. But if you also do other things with your computer (office automation, video, photos ect ...) then I7 4770K is good for at least the next 5 years

 

[izzy]

I will change my old intel Q6600 for i5 4670K

 

[Steve_T]

Great thread guys. Really appreciate the info here. I will need a new PC to play ED on and as times are really tough, I wondered if I'd even scrape enough together by March (is that violins I can hear?).

I had assumed I'd need to go for the i7, but will definitely take the advice of i5 with a faster GPU.

 

[Philip Coutts]

I'd echo everyone elses thoughts, if it is purely for games and doing some run of the mill home computing stuff save your money and get an i5. Everyone I've ever spoken to has advised the same. Also sound advise to buy the best GPU you can with any savings from having an i5 instead of an i7. I recently received my new system which is an i5 4670k (overclocked to 4.1ghz) with a GTX 770 GPU and it goes like lightening for all the games I've played so far. If however you are doing some more complex stuff (video editing etc) than your everyday man then the i7 will be a better choice.

 

[Abysinth]

I'll be looking for an architecture first, so 1150 or 2011 since they are the newest, buy a better motherboard, slower (slowest?) CPU and low-end or medium GPU since it's simpler/easier to upgrade components that to upgrade the motherboard.

adding RAM first, then upgrading other components as money allows.

No one seems to be talking about AMD architectures? Are they that bad?

 

[insanephoton]

Thanks for all the responses so far, it pretty much confirms my feelings.

This article is a few months old but still worth a read

 

[Cosmos]

Like many of you, I'm looking to upgrade/replace my current rig and will probably end up with a Haswell z87 based rig. So far nothing is concrete or nailed down yet, even the budget has some flexibility in it but the question I'm asking is this: is it worth spending the extra money for an i7 cpu?

I've read articles about IvyBridge systems where they suggest that certainly for gaming, the 3570k mostly equals and in some cases outperforms the 3770k. So what do you think?

I always find tomshardware.com /co.uk to be really useful re computer components:

Best gaming CPUs for the money in October -

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,review-32806.html

And according to that anything higher than

Core i5-3570K

is a waste of money right now.