Intel i5 3570k vs i7 3770k (or 2600k)

[chill24]

So I've just built my first PC and I have a question. This place always seems to have the answers.

I know the i5 vs i7 thing has been run into the ground and there's no reason to get an i7 right now for games. However, for future use (or future preparation) I think more cores will be used for games in the next year or two. Its looking like the consoles will have a few cores, so I think game design for PC should fall around that.

I know the ivys aren't as overclockable as the sandys, but I'm looking to get 4.4, maybe 4.5 ghz on air. Would I be able to take the i7 to that safely? And at that level, does the i7 draw signigicatly more power?

I'd like this to last me a couple years at least. Maybe I'll up the power and add SLI, but that's it.

Thanks for any help!


Build:
Win7 Pro 64

Xigmatek ASGARD PRO USB 3.0 CCC-AE37BS-U02 Black Steel + Aluminum and Aluminum Mesh Bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
(In addition to the 2 fans that came with this case, I have another on top pulling air over the ram into the CPU cooler)

ASUS P8Z77-V LK LGA 1155 Intel Z77

Intel i5 2400s (Yes, I know. It was free)

OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W

ZALMAN CNPS5X Performa 92mm FSB

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

Galaxy 67NQH6DN6KXZ GeForce GTX 670 GC 4GB

 

[rds1220]

So I've just built my first PC and I have a question. This place always seems to have the answers.

I know the i5 vs i7 thing has been run into the ground and there's no reason to get an i7 right now for games. However, for future use (or future preparation) I think more cores will be used for games in the next year or two. Its looking like the consoles will have a few cores, so I think game design for PC should fall around that.

I know the ivys aren't as overclockable as the sandys, but I'm looking to get 4.4, maybe 4.5 ghz on air. Would I be able to take the i7 to that safely? And at that level, does the i7 draw signigicatly more power?

I'd like this to last me a couple years at least. Maybe I'll up the power and add SLI, but that's it.

Thanks for any help!


Build:
Win7 Pro 64

Xigmatek ASGARD PRO USB 3.0 CCC-AE37BS-U02 Black Steel + Aluminum and Aluminum Mesh Bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
(In addition to the 2 fans that came with this case, I have another on top pulling air over the ram into the CPU cooler)

ASUS P8Z77-V LK LGA 1155 Intel Z77

Intel i5 2400s (Yes, I know. It was free)

OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W

ZALMAN CNPS5X Performa 92mm FSB

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

Galaxy 67NQH6DN6KXZ GeForce GTX 670 GC 4GB

The I7 doesn't have more cores it has four cores just like the I5 but also has hyperthreading a technology games don't even make use of. There is no such thing as future proofing, There is no point in buying an I7 now because you think that down the road games will actually make use of hyperthreading. If and when we ever hit that point it won't be any time soon and when we hit that point todays I7's will be obsolete. If you are building a gaming computer now get an I5.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

It would take a major change to how they program games for them to take advantage of hyper-threading on the Intel® Core™ i7's. Unless you are going to do something on top of the gaming like video editing or something else there really isnt a reason to look at the Intel Core i7-3770K over the Intel Core i5-3570K for a gaming system.

 

[chill24]

Gotcha. I was hoping it could be seen as 4 more logical cores, but if it takes specific coding for hyper threading then I see that. Thanks!

 

[InvalidError]

Gotcha. I was hoping it could be seen as 4 more logical cores, but if it takes specific coding for hyper threading then I see that. Thanks!

The HT cores behave just like extra cores, there is no special coding required for using HT logical cores vs physical cores.

The extra coding complexity comes from factoring the software in such a way that it can leverage the extra thread-level parallelism in a sensible and efficient way. If your algorithm can be divided in 2-3 mostly independent parallel components or as a streaming pipeline from thread to thread, it can be easily and efficiently be split in three threads to leverage this much parallelism whenever it is available. If you start splitting hairs in two just to increase thread count to 8+, the amount of effort and performance gain may not justify the trouble and cause more problems than it is worth.

Video compression algorithm lend themselves quite well to threading since the frame can be divided into as many regions as there are cores to perform motion search, filtering, FFT, DFT, blending, etc. The algorithm could also divide work between cores across multiple frames, multiple streams and multiple stages of the image/video processing pipeline. Video processing has tons of opportunities to leverage parallelism.

Building programming projects also has many opportunities with the build job manager dispatching object files to each core which enables it to leverage however as many cores as are available as long as there are more object files to compile than there are cores.

 

[chill24]

Best answer selected by chill24.

 

[chill24]

Good to know. I'll take my chances that more cores will be used for more apps in the near future. Thanks!

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey