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I5 versus 17 proccesor

inovator
Consultant
If you have a 1070 graphics card. Would an i7 processor give you a better experience than an i5 processor. And if so why? I appreciate any answer. Thanks
17 REPLIES 17

JeremyC85
Heroic Explorer
Yes, the 7 is clearly two numbers higher than the 5. That's a rise of near 40%!

Percy1983
Superstar
If just gaming there wouldn't be much gains assuming the same architecture and clock speed.

Of course an older i5 vs newer i7 would show some gains as would a newer i5.

What have you currently got and what are you looking at?
Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 + 16GB RAM 1866mhz + i5-3570K at 4.5Ghz + Coolermaster Nepton 140XL cooler Sapphire 8GB RX 580 Nitro+ 256Gb SDD Samsung Evo 850 +3x2TB in raid 0 with 64GB SSD cache Thermaltake Level 10 GT Snow Edition + Toughpower 875w

Anonymous
Not applicable
I7 = 4 cores and 4 virtual cores = multithreading, good for intensive processing like video editing, etc. Not much real world benefit if any for gaming however. I5 - 4 cores ( no virtual cores).
Also I believe the I7 has slightly larger L2 cache, again no real world benefit as far as gaming goes.

I myself however  run an I7 4820K and have been for the past three years or so, as I do mainly gaming on my PC I actually have the virtual cores disabled, I seem to get more consistent performance and slightly cooler core temps with it disabled ( I have my system overclocked to 4.5 GHz as well).

My suggestion - if the money is no concern, go ahead and splash for the I7. If it is, you would likely be happy with the I5. However as others have suggested you might list your current system specs, depending on what you are coming from you may or may not see a real world benefit with a motherboard/cpu upgrade...


inovator
Consultant
Thank for your answers. It confirms what I heard before especially what dburne said.

JeremyC85
Heroic Explorer
The i7 7700k (newest/best out)  can be had for a little over 300$ if you search for a deal. Not bad at all IMO. Of course you will probably need a new motherboard to use it as it is a totally different chipset. 

I say go for the i7 if it's in your budget, but a gpu will always be more important for gaming 

Lemming1970
Rising Star
I went for an i7, but from what I've read there is little to no difference in gaming performance. Just remember to get a k version so you can overclock it 😉  Mines at 4.7ghz to a free 17.5% upgrade 😉


Modded Coolermaster RC-1000 Cosmos/1000W Corsair HX Series i7 6700k o/c to 4.7ghz Corsair H100i water cooler. Zotac 1080Ti 16 gb DDR4 o/c to 3000mhz Predator XB271HU 27" 2560x1440 IPS G-Sync 165Hz

zboson
Superstar
I hear amplifiers that go to 11 are better than ones that go to 10.

Seriously, it's silly to say i5 vs i7.  There are i5 Kaby Lake processors which are better i7 Nehalem processors.  You really have to specify the architecture.

I guess we should to assume you meant in the same architecture (e.g. Kaby Lake i5 vs i7) ? Still even there you have to compare specifics. You also have to divide it into mobile and desktop processors.  The biggest difference in general between i5 and i7 cores is that i7 has hyper-threading whereas i5 does not. That's true for desktop processor but not in general for mobile processors. For i3 they usually (or maybe always) don't have turbo.

Here are some useful metrics for i3, i5, and i7 Kaby Lake processors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaby_Lake#Desktop_Processors

inovator
Consultant
Hi lemming u also make a good point. From what you said it doesn't seem u noticed a difference if u had an i5 in the past to compare.

JaimieVandenber
Heroic Explorer
When I was building my VR rig, Skylake i7 6700K vs i5 6600K was generally considered about 5-15% quicker in game-style benchmarking. I bought the i7, but I should definitely have saved the £100 and got the i5, I've never come close to stressing it.