3rd Gen i5 vs 4th Gen i7.

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consultant2b

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Jul 13, 2013
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Hi Guys,

I would love to have some opinions, on how important the difference between a 3rd gen and 4th gen processor is in terms of speed and pricing?

In terms of speed would you rather go for a 3rd Gen i7 or a 4th Gen i5?

Also, I wonder how the pricing of the above two would compare?

Thanks
 
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Imagine you have a high performance application with the ability to suck ALL your CPU power on a single core, such as a game or video editing. If it is possible to split the instructions executed into more than one sequence, then it can be coded with threads and execute them in parallel, each thread executing each sequence independently. Since CPUs these days have 2,4,6,8 cores, etc. Those instructions are executed on separate cores instead of waiting for each other on single core. Now optimizing performance with threads is _hard_. First, it does not happen magically. The programmer has to write code for parallel threads. Moreover...
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Pinhedd

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Intel's third and fourth generation core i7 microprocessors are priced competitively within the same market segment. This means that the i7-4770k is priced slightly above the i7-3770k, and the i5-4670k is priced slightly above the i5-3570k. There is about a 100$ difference between the i5 and i7 series microprocessors.

If you want raw performance, the i7 series microprocessors win the match hands down. The dual front-ends enabled by HyperThreading delivers a wallop on both highly sequential and highly concurrent applications.

If you're just interested in gaming, an equivalent i5 is generally good enough.
 
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KillerGamer

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I'd go for a 3rd gen i7. However, for gaming, an i7 isn't that useful and so I'd take the i5. If you are into 3D rendering, video and photo editing, making music and other stuff, an i7 is the way to go. For gaming an i5 is good enough. 4th gen Haswell Intel Core i processors have proved to be lower in effciency and higher in terms of temperature. An i7 is usually more expensive than an i5 (Unless you're comparing a 3rd Gen i5 and a first Gen i7). Finally, as I said, an i7 is only useful if you're into 3D rendering, editing and music production, and if you aren't doing any of them and are looking for a gaming processor then i5 is the way to go. i7s come with 6 cores and 4 cores and have Hyperthreading (Search YouTube for this if you don't know) while i5s are quad cores without Hyperthreading. As I previously said, for gaming an i5 is just fine.
 
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jacobian

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Not much difference between generations it seems. The pricing is such that there isn't much difference between 3rd and 4th gen parts, but there is still quite a bit of price difference between i7 and i5 of any of these two generations. The best of the Haswell i5 parts is i5-4770 and i5-4770K (unlocked for overclocking), and they're still considerably cheaper than the i7 parts of both generations. At the same time, the i7 gives you effectively the same performance as similarly clocked i5 of the same generation as long as you run 4 threads or less. With more than four threads i7 gives you only a small boost (because i7 is still four core). If you have to ask, then you probably don't need that many threads. Most people should be pleased with i5 IMHO.


 
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consultant2b

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Thanks Guys. Very useful. My post relates to my original post here http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1959406/find-productive-laptop.html so my usage is neither for for gaming, nor heavy graphics work. However, I do have numerous excel files, word files, and chrome tabs open at any given time as well as quite a few software that are always working in the background. I feel my laptop's current performance issues are most likely due to RAM issues and hence, there is not a strong reason to move from i5 to i7. I do wonder if it would give me a performance boost with my current usage pattern? If it would, then the $100 difference is certainly worth paying for. Does hyper-threading help with my usage pattern and same for having a quad-core instead of 2 cores?





I am sorry if this is a very basic question, but what exactly do you mean when you say 4 threads? If you look at the screenshot here http://screencast.com/t/xzoqrAfWb6 I have nearly 1500 threads running and it often goes up a lot more, but I doubt we are talking about the same thing?

 
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Master-flaw

Master-flaw

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A 4th Gen I5 will be just fine for your needs..Not to savy on laptops but I'm sure they made huge gains in that field with Haswell.
I think they run at around 2.5 Ghz on 4 cores. While yours is @ 1.8 on 2 cores...Gunna be a massive difference right there.
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.
Two examples:
1) The i5-4670K (or i5-3570K) have four physical cores, in short 4C/4T (four cores/four threads)

2) The i7-4770K (or i7-3770K) have four physical cores with hyperthreading of each one, in short 4C/8T

The i7-4770K can achieve up to about 30% improvement for programs that fully use it, such as HANDBRAKE. In games, when compared to the i5-4670K the advantage in most games is almost NOTHING, but in some newer games it's closer to 10%.

Unless you have a large budget, or specifically need the extra processing power for programs that can use it, the i5-4670K is probably your best choice.

The newer HASWELL (i.e. xx-4xxx such as i5-4670K) are minimally faster than previous gen, however pricing is often SIMILAR so I recommend Haswell unless you find a great deal. You must also factor in the motherboard. Haswell uses the 1150 socket, usually Z87 version for gamers.

I won't bother discussing other models. I believe all i3's have 2C, but some i5's have 2C as well.

*If you want to actually BUILD ONE, give a budget and we can make something from pcpartpicker. If you gave me $700 or less for the core hardware I'd probably be looking at an FX-6300 instead. Once I have enough for the i5-4670K and at least a GTX760 graphics card then the i5-4670K makes sense.
 
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jacobian

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By the way, the mobile Core i5 and the lower power mobile i7 do have ONLY 2 cores with hyperthreading. So, in the mobile space, the only difference between i3/i5/non-quad i7 is the clock speed. Thank you Intel for consistent product naming!
 
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jacobian

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Imagine you have a high performance application with the ability to suck ALL your CPU power on a single core, such as a game or video editing. If it is possible to split the instructions executed into more than one sequence, then it can be coded with threads and execute them in parallel, each thread executing each sequence independently. Since CPUs these days have 2,4,6,8 cores, etc. Those instructions are executed on separate cores instead of waiting for each other on single core. Now optimizing performance with threads is _hard_. First, it does not happen magically. The programmer has to write code for parallel threads. Moreover, for some algorithms it's impossible to parallelize the sequence of the instructions, so you can't code many threads if you wanted to. This is why the performance of CPUs per individual core is still _very_ important. Many programs just don't use threads a lot.



The thing is that most of those 1500 threads are effectively doing nothing or very little. Say your task scheduler, your power management, your clock, etc. When we talk about multiple threads, we implicitly assume that they _will_ be doing something very demanding.
 
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consultant2b

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Hi,

My thread is actually about the Mobile processors, as I am in the process of shortlisting laptops/notebooks and hence the question, thats why the Intel link to the mobile processors page. Sorry, for not being more clear on that.



Thanks mate. Very useful. Is there a program that tells you, how many threads are being used by each application and in your opinion for the following do you believe having additional cores makes a difference
- excel, word
- Chrome & chrome apps

It would be helful to have a way of knowing what sort of requirements the main applications that I use have (such as whether they rely on single core or can use multiple cores), in order to determine the best solution.
 
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Master-flaw

Master-flaw

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Yea iot looks like they still went 2 cores(HT) for the I5 Haswell and all have HT...
I would go for an I5 4th gen with 2.4 or more...it will be a lot faster than you even need and the only time going with a 3rd Gen I7 would gain you as much as the I5 is if you go with the QM models, and those are probably quite expensive. 4 cores hyperthreaded is a complete overkill for your needs anyway.

Also to note that Haswell did make huge improvements on power usage...so expect longer battery life out of them.
 
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consultant2b

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I agree. I have come to the conclusion that i5 is more than enough for what I need with a min. of 8gb of ram. However, I would also like portability but it does seem most portable laptops have i5's with low clock speeds. The one I like most that meets most of my requirements is: http://www.sony.com.hk/products/apps/product/simplePage.do?modelCode=54643242&lang=en

Do you feel the lower clock-speed can be a bottleneck?
 
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Master-flaw

Master-flaw

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I do but haswell does have better IPC(the locks the same but it's still faster) than your 2nd gen....
Thing is, it's not gunna be that much better...
I'd go with a higher clock either-way if you do want an improvement over what you have.
 
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