i5 vs i7 - What's the difference?

Sam_216

Prominent
Mar 1, 2017
21
0
520
Hi guys

The question of the thread is very broad - What I specifically mean by the question is this;

If I had an i5 at 4.2ghz and an i7 at 4.2ghz - is there any performance difference? (Imagining that there is no OC Potential for any CPU and they're are at base speeds)

In my situation, I'll be getting a 1080Ti and I want to reduce bottleneck - I have an i5 4670k 3.4ghz OC'd to 4.2ghz, - I'm thinking of upgrading to an i7-7700k which has 4.2ghz base clock - and attempting to OC up to around 5Ghz. This is an 0.8Ghz increase, If Ghz is the only advantage of an i7, will 0.8Ghz make that much of a difference?
 
Solution
The i7 has hyperthreading so can have 8 queues of work. There are a few games that benefit from the extra threads, it seems newer games are being designed to take advantage of the extra threads.

However a lot depends on what your are doing. The higher the fps the higher the CPU load. So a game which can benefit from an i7 may actually see no gain if gaming at 4k 60Hz/FPS, however the same game and gpu could see a gain if gaming at 1440p >100 FPS.

My thought, if you have the money to invest in a 1080Ti & a monitor which can utilise such a powerful gpu then the cost difference between an i5 & i7 is nearly insignificant compared to total setup cost, why not just get the i7 giving you the best chance to make the most of your setup.
The i7 has hyperthreading so can have 8 queues of work. There are a few games that benefit from the extra threads, it seems newer games are being designed to take advantage of the extra threads.

However a lot depends on what your are doing. The higher the fps the higher the CPU load. So a game which can benefit from an i7 may actually see no gain if gaming at 4k 60Hz/FPS, however the same game and gpu could see a gain if gaming at 1440p >100 FPS.

My thought, if you have the money to invest in a 1080Ti & a monitor which can utilise such a powerful gpu then the cost difference between an i5 & i7 is nearly insignificant compared to total setup cost, why not just get the i7 giving you the best chance to make the most of your setup.
 
Solution

Sam_216

Prominent
Mar 1, 2017
21
0
520


Thankyou - that answers my question perfectly - May I ask your opinion on 6 cores vs 4? To my understanding the majority of games don't utilise 6 cores, is this correct?
 

manddy123

Admirable


Yes, they don't.
Otherwise AMD older CPU's would be amanzingly good.