I5 or i7 for gaming?

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Stingostanger

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Dec 28, 2016
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Hi everyone. I'm just about to upgrade my pc from an i3 6100 to either an i5 or i7. Currently, the i7 7700(nonK) is £261 and the i5 7600k/non K are both £200.
I have a Hyperx212 evo cooler and a non overclockable motherboard. What would people recommend buying for mostly gaming?
 
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That's down to you, its a moderate boost in Ghz. If you want more evidence of why i7 take a look at current and future AAA game recommended specs. More and more are recommending i7.
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JackNaylorPE

JackNaylorPE

Titan
BANNED
Oct 30, 2004
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1. Would depend on a) budget for MoBo / CPU / RAM and b) what else needs upgrading.

2. Overclocking will be limited by the Cooler... $37 extra for a Scythe Mugen Max would eliminate that concern.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-7600K 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor ($223.64 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI - Z270 SLI PLUS ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($106.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($145.88 @ OutletPC)
Total: $476.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-08-24 18:08 EDT-0400

If ya concerned about cores (I don't think we be there for a while), a 7700k will add $100



 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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The difference is 4 threads vs. 8.

I just read a recent comparison of a I5-2500K(8 threads) vs. ryzen 3-1200(4 threads) and 5-1400(8 threads)@4.0.
https://www.techspot.com/review/1474-ryzen-vs-older-budget-cpus/

What struck me was that performance of the 4 thread ryzen 1200 and the 8 thread ryzen 1400 were essentially the same.
That tells me that more than 4 threads really is not that big of a deal.
https://www.techspot.com/review/1445-core-i7-7800x-vs-7700k/

For the OP with a non overclockable motherboard, the 7700K will be better, not so much from the 8 threads, but the stock 4.2 clock rate is much better than the 7600K@3.8


At higher levels, there was a comparison between a 7700K with 8 threads and a 7800X with 12.
Again, there was little difference.

 
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Stingostanger

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Dec 28, 2016
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Thanks for your response! In that case, should I aim for the 7700 or 7700k for the extra few hz?
 
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Supernova1138

Supernova1138

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Mar 22, 2011
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Recommended specs are meaningless, games have always recommended i7s even back in the days when the game engines didn't scale at all beyond maybe 2 or 3 threads and the i5s and i7s offered virtually identical performance, with the i7 maybe being a hair faster due to being clocked 100MHz higher out of the box. Up until the release of Ryzen, games would have the FX 8350 as a recommended CPU just so that they would have something from AMD on that list, even if performance with the FX chips was crap in the game.

There are reasons to look at an i7 CPU for gaming now, especially if you are targeting 144Hz and can afford a high end GPU, but the recommended system specs given by game developers isn't one of them. Such requirements tend to just arbitrarily throw whatever happens to be high end at the time into that list, whether the game benefits from it or not.
 
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