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i5 7600k or i7 7700k - is the extra worth it.

elboffor
Consultant
So im building myself a new pc, but hnsure about which chip to get. I can get the i5 7600k for £225 or the i7 7700k for £325.
Is the difference in price worth it for the improvement in vr?
More to the point, aside from the mild increase in clock speed which can most likely be matched via overclocking is there any benefit to having multi-threading?
On my current i7 950 ive always had it switched off and its been pretty flawless. But i think its time to upgrade. That said i have this chip overclocked at a rock solid 4.2 (its 3.07 as standard). According to oculus home it doesnt meet the minimum spec however and vr experience could be affected (utter horseshite).

So cmon guys what say you all?
£225 for an i5 or an extra 50% for the multi-threading. Bear in mind thos us purely a gaming rig, i do occasionally make images and videos but thats very much a second to vr gaming.
@cybereality im very much interested on your opinion on this. If anyone knows the technical difference as far as vr or future vr is concerned its you. So I'm counting your vote as 3 votes 😉
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54 REPLIES 54

jggorman
Honored Guest
I just upgraded from an i5 6500 to an i7 7700K and tested it in Lone Echo. I didn't notice anything better in VR and I say save your money and upgrade your video cards instead.

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
Necroe'd thread but still relevant. I swapped my old I5-4690 (4 core, 4 thread) to an R5 1600x (6 core, 12 thread) about a month ago (before getting OR) and the difference was pronounced. But there is a caveat to that, there is no difference in an ideal situation for the vast majority of games (ie benchmarking). The reason is very few will take advantage of more than 4 threads/cores. Some do though, like Fallout 4, Hitman, Doom and a few other big names.

The real advantage is in the non-ideal, every day situation. Windows 10 will install updates, run security scans and so on whenever it feels like it. There is absolutely no way to disable this for more than a brief period. You may also want to download or install a new game while playing another (please make this an option here like on steam, my system can take it). My old I5-4690 would choke under such load. It could download a game or play a game, but it couldn't do both without serious performance loss since those 4 threads had to be shared between different things. With the greater core/thread count of an I7 or R5/R7, that just isn't an issue. No sharing is needed and thus no performance is lost.

The above is particularly relevant in VR. Between OH, SteamVR and the game itself, there's a lot going on. Oculus in particular is really bad about going 100% in a single thread all the time.

Short version: clean system benchmarking shows no difference in most games but real world performance can be dramatically different.

elboffor
Consultant
I got the 7700k anyways. Brilliant chip.
Not even overclocled it yet but its good to knpe in the future i will have the headroom to do it.
By comparison to my old qx950 i saw an immediate tracking improvement and not once have i had any issues.
I run the fully bloated win 10 with mcafee and everything is set to update and scan do whatever it likes amd it never skips a beat.
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Wildt
Consultant
I've got a 2600K (@4.8ghz) and have been a loyal Intel customer for many years - hell, I even own a decent chunk of stock. But in the hope that developers will start to utilize more threads in their games, I'm not buying another 4 core chip, and their 6/8 core chips cannot remotely match Ryzen from a prize/performance viewpoint.

I've decided to wait and see if Intel makes a move - e.g. slash the current prices and sell Coffee Lake at a competitive price. I hope the 8700K is gonna be a winner with proper TIM and overclocking potential.

Otherwise I'm jumping ship for the first time in decades!
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WMR: HP Reverb

cleanupdisc
Adventurer
Noone really mentioned ram but i do suggest 16gb ram.

robertgalp
Honored Guest

e_m_d88 said:

Performance per dollar and with an overclock on the i5 7600k.  It's still a good cpu to get for gaming for the money. 


There are a few minor differences like:

  • Hyperthreading: All i5 processors are Quad Core and hence have 4 physical cores serving 4 threads. All i7 processors also are Quad Core but they are equipped with Hyperthreading technology which enables each core to serve 2 threads, hence the OS sees it as an Octa Core Processor rather than a Quad Core Processor.
  • Cache Size: RAM minimizes the use of Hard Drive similarly Cache minimizes the use of RAM. The more the Cache size, the more data can be accessed quickly. Most i5 processors(if not all) have a cache size of around 4MB (3,4,5 or even 6MB in some of them) but almost all i7 Processors have 8MB cache, which is significantly more, thereby allowing more amount of data to be accessed quickly.

Bagnet
Expert Protege
No one considering the i5 8400? great little 6 core chip. I have seen a significant boost from it and it performs very close to the 17 7600 chips in benchmarks. Seems to be the best value for price at the moment.. does need a new board but in my case coming from a 2500k it was a no brainer

KlodsBrik
Expert Trustee
Mostly because this thread is almost one year old :smile:
Be good, die great !

LZoltowski
Champion
Crazy how it dropped in price, you can pick one up for £250 - you can grab the 6 core 12 thread for £360 now
Core i7-7700k @ 4.9 Ghz | 32 GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance @ 3000Mhz | 2x 1TB Samsung Evo | 2x 4GB WD Black
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KlodsBrik
Expert Trustee
Well, if you think about it, it´s really not that much of a surprise.
 AMD Finally had something to throw back at Intel, so offcourse they had to lower their prices if they still wanted to be part of the market share.
Be good, die great !