Looking for new pc, i5 or i7 advice needed

[qasim1991]

Hello Tom's Hardware community
I am looking for a new computer around the price range of 500-700. (may even go higher).
The 2 cpus I have been looking at are the i5 3570, and i7 3770. I am using an AMD athlon ii x4 atm. But want to try intel again.
I heard that there is hardly any difference when it comes to gaming between these 2. Is hyperthreading really important in gaming?

The card I have been looking at is the ati 7870.
I have seen benchmarks on this card and it has impressed me.
I am currently using a lil old 17 inch monitor but will look for a bigger sized one, maybe between 22-24 inch.

And what PSU is required for 7870?

Anyone got any ideas if I should buy the parts seprately or buy it as prebuilt.
the main game I am currently playing is GW2 and crysis. and will buy BF3 later on

So basically I just want to know, is the 7870 overkill? or will the i5 bottleneck the card in the future?
And if i5 is the way to go instead of i7.

any recommendations or advice would be really useful.
I have not really built a system on my own and would prefer a pre built system from good websites similar to the specs I want.

I am sorry if this is rushed but really would like advice of this thanks

 

[nekulturny]

Hi,

There is little to no impact with HyperThreading. The reason is, games aren't coded to know what a HyperThread is, much less how to use it. HT can in theory have an indirect impact on gaming performance since it aids in removing any kind of bottleneck from background programs, but the benches are something ridiculous like 1%, so no, its really not necessary to buy anything more powerful than an i5. For the most part, we have to get more games using all 4 physical cores before any game developer needs to worry about the theoretical cores (HyperThreads)

As far as monitor and video card, the 7870 is a nice buy, when selecting a new monitor I would get one that is HD 1920x1080p max resolution, a video card with the power of a 7870 would largely be wasted on anything less. No, an i5 3570K will never bottleneck a 7870.

As far as power supplies, a good quality power supply such as a Corsair TX650v2 is more than sufficient to run that rig. Always nice to have a little more power than you need, in a pinch, a good 500 watt PSU would do the job however. Always pick decent power supplies, wattage is only one factor in determining the right choice. Corsair TX (version 2) series are made by Seasonic, about as good as it gets.

As far as building your own vs prebuilt. You could give cyberpower a try, but, honestly building your own system is not that hard.

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

 

[qasim1991]

Hi,

There is little to no impact with HyperThreading. The reason is, games aren't coded to know what a HyperThread is, much less how to use it. HT can in theory have an indirect impact on gaming performance since it aids in removing any kind of bottleneck from background programs, but the benches are something ridiculous like 1%, so no, its really not necessary to buy anything more powerful than an i5. For the most part, we have to get more games using all 4 physical cores before any game developer needs to worry about the theoretical cores (HyperThreads)

As far as monitor and video card, the 7870 is a nice buy, when selecting a new monitor I would get one that is HD 1920x1080p max resolution, a video card with the power of a 7870 would largely be wasted on anything less. No, an i5 3570K will never bottleneck a 7870.

As far as power supplies, a good quality power supply such as a Corsair TX650v2 is more than sufficient to run that rig. Always nice to have a little more power than you need, in a pinch, a good 500 watt PSU would do the job however. Always pick decent power supplies, wattage is only one factor in determining the right choice. Corsair TX (version 2) series are made by Seasonic, about as good as it gets.

As far as building your own vs prebuilt. You could give cyberpower a try, but, honestly building your own system is not that hard.

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

Hi Nekulturny,
Thanks for the reply, ill give that website a go, and I forgot to mention ram, will 8gb ddr3 be sufficient for current games and future, intend to run windows 7, not sure which version but 64 bit at least.

 

[nekulturny]

Yes, 8GB is plenty, make sure its 1.5 volt DDR3, Intel CPUs are very specific about this. No point in anything rated for higher than 1600mhz as well.

I did a quick build on Cyberpower just now using specs similar to what I think you're looking for, I came up with almost $1300 as a price. I don't know of any other good custom pre-built sites like that one to recommend in contrast (I'm sure someone else will chime in on it), but I'm pretty sure you could cut off quite a lot of that money building yourself. I think I could spec out one the same for $800-900 if I tried.

 

[qasim1991]

Ok I've ordered the parts for my system, just waiting for it to dispatch .

Intel Core i5-3570K S1155 3.4GHz 6MB £179.98

XFX ATI Radeon 7870 1GHz 2GB PCI-Express 3.0 HDMI Core Edition £199.99

Asus Sabertooth Z77 S1155 Intel Z77 DDR3 ATX £169.99

Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz CL9 XMP £79.99

Zalman Z11 Plus High Performance Mid Tower Case £48.99

Corsair 650W Enthusiast Series TX650 Modular Power Supply £74.98

Total for these items: £753.92

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been moved from the section CPU & Components to section Systems by Mousemonkey