i5 vs i7

[Tsumetai_Ryujin]

So I'm about to buy myself a new computer, but I'm not sure which processor. So I'm in dilemma between i7 860 and i5 750... the price difference is about 70€... is 860 really worth those 70€?? some comparison chart

I'm planning to take this motherboard and [urlhttp://www.gskill.com/products.php?index=223]this RAMs[/url]

So, what are your thoughts about my conf? and which CPU should I take? Do you have some suggestions, what to take instead of some of these components?

[madcow]

You should get the Core i5 660/661.

[Goggles]

You should get the Core i5 660/661.

But wwhhhyyyy?

[Tsumetai_Ryujin]

@madcow Could you give some arguments? :O

660 and 750 cost the same... actually, 750 is cheaper for 5.6$ :O :))
750 is quad core, 660 dual core...

I don't see anywhere to buy 661 in Croatia...

[madcow]

Nevermind, get the Core i5 750. It seems they have a lot of overclocking potential if you're into that and at stock speeds it's pretty much identical in performance to the Core i7 860.

I'd only bother going with a Core i7 CPU if you're willing to spend the extra money to get the LGA 1366 chipset with tri-channel DDR3 and even then that's a large extra amount of money for a small speed boost.

Apart from that, your motherboard choice looks good.

[.Sup]

get the one that has hyperthreading

[AusbilderSchmidt]

Ur Motherboard is a good choice, Gigabyte is allways good, Asus is also good, but to much more expensive


I know u can read german, so here is a link for all ur information do u need...thats a hardwaretest journal special for gamer, its called PC Games Hardware:

CPU Test
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,70200 ... /CPU/Test/

Motherboard Test:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,68132 ... oard/Test/

sure the i7 860 is more powerfull as the i5 750 about the 2800Mhz, but its only on the paper...i cant belive that u can feel it in the games...the i5 750 is momently the best price / performence choice...but if u say 70 € difference is ok for me then i would by the i7 860.
The i5 661 is a Dualcore CPU its only in old games faster...for all new games quadcores are the better choice...

actually day pricelist (Germany) of all IT Hardware u will find here:
http://www.hardwareschotte.de/

Intel CPU
Socket 1156
http://www.hardwareschotte.de/hardware/ ... el+LGA1156

Motherboards Socket 1156 here:
http://www.hardwareschotte.de/hardware/ ... ockel-1156

[Tsumetai_Ryujin]

get the one that has hyperthreading

So your vote goes to i7... why do you think HT is so important? Could you explain a bit?

btw, ty all for your answers ^^... but I still haven't made the choice... but I'm currently leaning more to the i5 ^^ (but now I'll wait for .Sups answer, maybe he changes my mind)

[AlbinoKalle69]

I read in a german computer magazine that the performance in a lot of games is reduced because of hyperthreading ('because of a increased administrative effort'). I'd recommend the i5 750 (or a AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.00GHz ).

[Goggles]

get the one that has hyperthreading

So your vote goes to i7... why do you think HT is so important? Could you explain a bit?

btw, ty all for your answers ^^... but I still haven't made the choice... but I'm currently leaning more to the i5 ^^ (but now I'll wait for .Sups answer, maybe he changes my mind)

I thought .Sup was referring to the P4 as a joke

I read in a german computer magazine that the performance in a lot of games is reduced because of hyperthreading ('because of a increased administrative effort'). I'd recommend the i5 750 (or a AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.00GHz ).

I know HT on Pentium 4s was shown to reduce performance with some applications, but this was due to resource allocation issue that (I think) has been completely changed in newer processors. Do you know what might be the cause of HT slowing down apps in the new processors?

[ph1l0r]

Applications making full use of multiple cores are surely coming but right now I'd rather have one core with a lot cache that's fast. than four slow cores sharing their cache between all of them. one of the faster i7 chips sure is one hell of beast but my bet is that buying core 2 duo will be fast enough the next 3 years and saves a lot money.

[.Sup]

get the one that has hyperthreading

So your vote goes to i7... why do you think HT is so important? Could you explain a bit?

btw, ty all for your answers ^^... but I still haven't made the choice... but I'm currently leaning more to the i5 ^^ (but now I'll wait for .Sups answer, maybe he changes my mind)

Theoretically it can offer 30% increase in performance if compared with the same spec'd CPU without HT. If you are using Vista or Win7 which are optimized for HT then I'd defo recommend it.

[madcow]

get the one that has hyperthreading

So your vote goes to i7... why do you think HT is so important? Could you explain a bit?

btw, ty all for your answers ^^... but I still haven't made the choice... but I'm currently leaning more to the i5 ^^ (but now I'll wait for .Sups answer, maybe he changes my mind)

Theoretically it can offer 30% increase in performance if compared with the same spec'd CPU without HT. If you are using Vista or Win7 which are optimized for HT then I'd defo recommend it.

But in the real world this boosted performance isn't realised. If you have a decent graphics card then it doesn't particularly matter what CPU you buy because all of them are too slow and bottleneck your system.

Check out the benchmarks for most applications (excluding synthetic ones) and you'll see that you gain very little performance with the faster chips. The Core i5 750 is a great [top] mid-range processor when you factor in price/performance compared to the more expensive ones.

[.Sup]

Theoretically it can offer 30% increase in performance if compared with the same spec'd CPU without HT. If you are using Vista or Win7 which are optimized for HT then I'd defo recommend it.

But in the real world this boosted performance isn't realised. If you have a decent graphics card then it doesn't particularly matter what CPU you buy because all of them are too slow and bottleneck your system.

Check out the benchmarks for most applications (excluding synthetic ones) and you'll see that you gain very little performance with the faster chips. The Core i5 750 is a great [top] mid-range processor when you factor in price/performance compared to the more expensive ones.

HT is not meant to boost performance in gaming anyway. It helps if you're doing a lot of encoding or running a lot of programs at once - multitasking so to say. So if this purely a gaming rig then you won't need HT but for everything else it will be quite useful as there are many multi threaded apps available. You can always disable it if the temps are a bit too high for your taste. But you have an option.

[madcow]

Even then it doesn't boost performance enough to warrant spending the extra €70.