Why does Intel Core i7-7700K perform better than AMD Athlon X4 880K

Michael Scott · Nov 9, 2017

I know for most people this is common knowledge, but what it is about these two CPU's with the same amount of cores and smiliar clock speeds that sets them so far apart?

Also, why is the Intel Core i7-7700K 4.2 GHz cheaper than the Intel Core i7 6700K 4.0 Ghz?
If I were to buy an i7, shouldn't I get better value for money by buying a SkyLake 6th gen rather than the CoffeeLake 8th gen? NB I have a B150 motherboard.

Wayfall · Nov 9, 2017

Easy, newer architecture and also two of the other things that tend to have the most impact on a CPU's performance are its clock speed and the sizes of its Level 1 and Level 2 cache.

That AMD CPU is old and current programs and games are coded/optimised to work with the new current gen parts.

Also i have had a Athlon x4 750K as my first CPU back in 2014 and it bottle-necked a Sapphire R9 270.... The moment i stuck as 1150 socket board in with an Haswell-DT i5 4460 as my pc was blazing as it had newer architecture. I tehn got a GTX 970 and Haswell-DT i7 4690K (mostly for the hyper threading) after that and now i have a Broadwell- E hexacore i7 6800k build with a GTX 1080 for 1440p Gsync gaming.

In other words in 4 years hardware has gotten blazingly fast, tech now wipes the floor with tech that was released back in 2014.

Your x4 880K is based off AMD's Kaveri 2014 architecture while the i7 7700K is based off the Intel's newer Kaby Lake-S CPU architecture which released this year in January (2017).

AMD are way behind Intel, even their Ryzen CPU's can't keep up with Intel's new chips. Intel's even got Coffee Lake out now for godssake already, Intel win on the man power and know-how side easy.

maxalge · Nov 9, 2017

Michael Scott :

clock speeds are irrelevant when comparing different architectures

the i7 7700k compared to a athlon x4 is

like a 800 lbs silverback gorilla compared to a 2 year old

sure they may have the same number of arms BUT the gorilla is massively stronger than a kid, it is capable of a lot more work.

if you have a b150 then the i7 7700 is the best cpu you can get

with coffee you need a whole new mobo

13thmonkey · Nov 9, 2017

Wayfall :

This gives the impression that programs are coded to disadvantage older chips, it's a lot more nuanced than this.

There are two factors at play, IPC (instructions per clock), newer chips tend to have better IPC, i.e. they need fewer clock cycles to run the same functions.

Some software can take advantage of hardware functionality that is now built into chips that used to be done in software, some decryption for instance was a software function and is now accelerated on hardware, this is not so common however, but is incredibly effective when it happens.

In reality it's lots of incremental improvements, and those two chips are 5-6 generations apart, and from a time when AMD was just starting to lose out to Intel, following core 2 duo, although that chip is newer than that the architecture is older.

Michael Scott · Nov 10, 2017

I have a B150 LGA 1151 socket motherboard. If I were to buy a new CPU, the best one I can get is the i7-7700k. Should I buy this, or get a new Coffeelake motherboard and an 8th gen. i7? NB I want value for money.

Search

Why does Intel Core i7-7700K perform better than AMD Athlon X4 880K

Michael Scott

Honorable

maxalge

Wayfall

Splendid

maxalge

Champion

13thmonkey

Titan

Michael Scott

Honorable

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page