Tom's Hardware > Forum > CPU & Components > CPUs > How much slower is the I5 vs the I7 in Gaming performance?

How much slower is the I5 vs the I7 in Gaming performance?

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With Xfire.

Two setups.

I5 750 @ 4Ghz with 2 4770's in Xfire against a I7 920 @ 4Ghz with 2 4770's in Xfire? How much of a percentage gain would the I7 hold because of the extra lanes?


Message edited by PsychoSaysDie on 09-10-2009 at 08:59:31 AM
------------------------------ Core I7 920 D0 @ 4.2Ghz
MSI X58 Pro-E
32GB SSD, WD Blacks In R0
Sapphire HD 5870's In XFire
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So far the benchmarks with overclocked i5/i7 LGA1156 suck and suck big time. Although a few sites mention their overclocking work with the systems i've yet to see any complete benchmarks comparing overclocked i7 920s, overclocked PhenomIIs or overclocked Q9x50s. One site that did feature overclocked benchmarks for the i5/i7 don't have any comparisons with other CPUs. Check out these gaming reviews at Tweaktown which show numbers for the stock clocked i5 750 with turbo mode on and overclocked to 4.2GHz with turbo mode off. The numbers don't make sense to me, but it's one of the few sites that have shown them.
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/2 [...] ndex8.html

Reply to dirtmountain

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2379.html

1. How does incorporating 16 lanes of PCI Express 2.0 onto the Lynnfield die affect performance? The answer depends on how many graphics cards you’re using, but is mostly academic with this generation of GPUs. The more pressing concern should be finding a Core i5 that’s fast enough to actually let modern graphics cards stretch their proverbial legs. It all goes back to the concept of building balanced PCs. If you’re going to spend close to a grand on 3D horsepower, you’ll need a heavily-overclocked processor in order to keep pace. With a single Radeon HD 4870 X2, we saw some theoretical advantages to serving all 16 lanes through an on-die controller versus using X58.

2. Will Core i5 handicap you right out of the gate with multi-card configurations? The aforementioned gains evaporated in real-world games, where Core i7’s trended slightly higher, perhaps as a result of Hyper-Threading or its additional memory channel. With two cards installed, Core i5 simply didn’t gain as much performance as Core i7 at high resolutions. It wasn’t, however, noticeably handicapped, and was still able to deliver more performance than Core 2 Quad (also limited to a pair of x8 connections via P45).

3. Are eight lanes per card enough? Almost certainly, yes…in this story. There is a perceivable performance ding associated with halving PCI Express bandwidth when two cards are installed. However, if you flip over to our Core i5 and Core i7 gaming analysis, which tests these two new chips with Turbo Boost turned on, you'll see that in most cases, the higher clocks measured there are able to make up some of the losses at low resolutions, while high-res tests demonstrate very close performance between the mainstream P55 platform and higher-end X58-based configurations.

4. How will P55 compare to X58, P45, and 790GX? Naturally, X58 has an advantage in that it’s able to serve up twin x16 links and communicate with the CPU across a 25 GB/s+ QPI interconnect. P55, P45, and 790GX all force you to split connectivity up unto smaller links if you run multiple graphics cards, though. Integrating that functionality into the processor die looks to be a good thing for Core i5, especially given the motherboard/processor prices we're expecting immediately after launch.

Reply to Maziar

dirtmountain wrote :

So far the benchmarks with overclocked i5/i7 LGA1156 suck and suck big time. Although a few sites mention their overclocking work with the systems i've yet to see any complete benchmarks comparing overclocked i7 920s, overclocked PhenomIIs or overclocked Q9x50s. One site that did feature overclocked benchmarks for the i5/i7 don't have any comparisons with other CPUs. Check out these gaming reviews at Tweaktown which show numbers for the stock clocked i5 750 with turbo mode on and overclocked to 4.2GHz with turbo mode off. The numbers don't make sense to me, but it's one of the few sites that have shown them.
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/2 [...] ndex8.html




Thanks for the link dirt. Think i'm going with an I7 rig because i need Xfire :)

------------------------------ Core I7 920 D0 @ 4.2Ghz
MSI X58 Pro-E
32GB SSD, WD Blacks In R0
Sapphire HD 5870's In XFire
Reply to PsychoSaysDie

As I've just posted, Lynnfield is limited to only two x8 channels, unlike Bloomfield's dual x16 PCIe channel setup. At least, that's what the Intel guys said.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] ice-change

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XPS M1330 | T8300 | Dell 0U8042 | 2GB DDR2 800MHz | NVIDIA 8400M GS | WD2500BEVS-75US | 1280 x 800
Reply to r_manic


Oh my lord. Too lazy to read the reviews/benchmarks on THG's home page and see for yourself. :hello:

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by zipzoomflyhigh on 09-10-2009 at 04:57:49 PM
Reply to zipzoomflyhigh

zipzoomflyhigh wrote :

Oh my lord. Too lazy to read the reviews/benchmarks on THG's home page and see for yourself. :hello:




I was looking for more of an estimated percentage :)

------------------------------ Core I7 920 D0 @ 4.2Ghz
MSI X58 Pro-E
32GB SSD, WD Blacks In R0
Sapphire HD 5870's In XFire
Reply to PsychoSaysDie
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