i5 - i7 : Does it matter for gaming?

[Davey360]

Hey

I have a question. Does it matter for gaming if a CPU is i3, i5, or i7 as long it's quad core and has a good frequency, around 3.0ghz or more?

Recently some games are asking for i7 on the recommended specs, but I heard i7 is mostly for video editing and 3d modelling so I'm confused.

Does this mean most games will soon require an i7 CPU?

Thanks!

 

[s4in7]

What games are recommending an i7? I've never seen one.

In 99% of all cases, an i5 is plenty for gaming. You'll see marginal increases in game performance with an i7, but it's not worth the extra cost.

Just get a Haswell i5 like the 4670k that way you have the newest socket and can upgrade way down the line when games actually start recommending a more powerful CPU.

 

[Davey360]

Thief for example recommends i7 quad core. Battlefield, i5 or i7.

So it just makes the game run faster? So if I happen to have an i5 I can still play games that recommend i7?

Thanks for the reply.

 

[CDdude55]

The i7's have HyperThreading which gives it extra threads and generally allows for a better experience in multithreaded software. Gaming these days is actually more multithreaded then it was a few years ago, especially with the arrival of the new 8 core APU consoles(PS4, Xbox One) though the games don't use all 8 cores. So you might see a bit of an advantage with an i7 especially down the road. A few years back i would have probably not recommended an i7, as we we're still limited by developers not using those extra resources, it's slowly changing.

Though gaming still is GPU centric, so it's better to focus on that mostly and just find a good CPU to balance it out. Meaning don't buy a $400 video card and pair it was a cheap i3 or i5. Spend as much on the video card as you did on the CPU give or take.