Which is better - An i5 4th gen or an i7 4th

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
T

Thomas013

Honorable
Jan 6, 2014
10
0
10,510
Hello!

I have been looking a a couple of computers and have narrowed it down to 1. It does everything I want it to. However there are different types of the same computer. There is an i5 3rd gen, and i5 4th gen and finally an i7 4th gen. In my mind, I think the i5 has the least performance. However I'm not a computer expert and I would like to know which one is the most powerful and which is the least and which is in the middle. Also, does the performance depends on other components.

My Questions

1) Which is better; i5 3rd gen or i5 4th gen or i7 th gen? please answer in list

2) Does the performance of the CPU depend on other components?

Thank you ever so much for answering,
Thomas
 
Solution
killakallies
A good place to check the benchmarks on CPU's to compare them is linked below! The i7 3rd gen will outperform the i5's but seeing the benchmarks may help you to see in which areas.

As for CPU performance what you really are looking at is system wide performance. If you are doing high load tasks any bottlenecks you have in the system will become apparent rather quickly. Saying that, it's good to have quality high grade components throughout the system and not cut any corners as to ensure the system will function well at any load. For example, your CPU can be running at 100% in the best conditions but if you have a low quality hard drive with low R/W you will notice degradation in system performance.

Like to benchmarks...
Sort by date Sort by votes
N

natedawg72

Honorable
Oct 15, 2012
150
0
10,760
From my understanding there was little performance difference between 3rd & 4th gen, so don't be afraid to buy a 3rd gen i5.

1) 3rd gen i7 > 4th gen i5 > 3rd gen i5. These differences aren't huge though, if your use is general purpose/gaming then the lower cost option is better from a value standpoint.

2) Yes, but not significantly. The CPU itself is the by far the most important thing you'll need to decide on.

My advice would be to go with the one that fits your budget the best, aka the cheaper option. But it really does depend on your use case.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
killakallies

killakallies

Honorable
Jan 22, 2014
215
0
10,760
A good place to check the benchmarks on CPU's to compare them is linked below! The i7 3rd gen will outperform the i5's but seeing the benchmarks may help you to see in which areas.

As for CPU performance what you really are looking at is system wide performance. If you are doing high load tasks any bottlenecks you have in the system will become apparent rather quickly. Saying that, it's good to have quality high grade components throughout the system and not cut any corners as to ensure the system will function well at any load. For example, your CPU can be running at 100% in the best conditions but if you have a low quality hard drive with low R/W you will notice degradation in system performance.

Like to benchmarks:
http://www.anandtech.com/Bench/CPU/2
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
K

Koushik Majumder

Honorable
Sep 26, 2013
31
0
10,540
1. 3rd Generation i7 > 4tg gen i5 > 3rd gen i5 believe me, i have i7 3770 and i will never go back to anything else. Although only multi-threaded softwares will use the extra resources.
2. Yes, but the model/make (i7>i5 no matter what other components) of cpu is the most important.



 
Upvote 0 Downvote
jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

Champion
Oct 5, 2007
21,605
599
59,140


Actually there is a lot of things about the 4th gen that are different from the 3rd gen. First is the integrated VRMs. Second would be the much lower power states, it is able to use only 0.05A in the lowest power state, down from the 0.5A of 3rd Gen. Third would be the cache performance. L1 in Haswell is about 700GB/s compared to Ivy Bridges 365GB/s.

To answer The OPs questions:

1. 4th Gen i5 for gaming/normal use, 4th Gen i7 for encoding/video editing etc

2. Not always. Memory can hinder but most of the time systems are using DDR3 1600MHz which gives about 21-22GB/s which is already more than enough bandwidth. The GPU can hold the CPU back, but that's only if you have a low to mid end GPU.



I considered the i7 4770K but honestly I don't do enough to justify it. It doesn't benefit games, the majority of them anyways, and it doesn't benefit me the extra $100 I could instead spend on a better GPU, more RAM or better mobo, which I did this time with the Maximus VI Formula and a Platinum rated PSU.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Y

Yingda Wang

Honorable
Jan 1, 2014
641
0
11,160
1. haswell>ivy by 10%, i3<i5=i7 when gaming i3<i5<i7 when u do multithreaded applications like video rendering.
2. yes, some other components can bottle neck ur cpu. usually its the gpu, as 8-16gb of ram is enough for anything usually
a 670+ or a R9 270+ will be fine
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
N

natedawg72

Honorable
Oct 15, 2012
150
0
10,760


I was not speaking about architectural differences, but general performance differences (Or perhaps we have different definitions of performance, as I consider computational performance and power consumption/performance as seperate). I agree with you that the 3rd and 4th generations are very much different.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom