Intel i5 3570k vs i7 3770k

[thrador]

For a price difference of $100, what sort of performance increase would you see between the i5 3570k and the i7 3770k given that they are 3.4GHz and 3.5GHz. Would this money be better spent upgrading a different component? More RAM or better Graphics Card? Looking to build from scratch but I'm no expert. Any help appreciated, thanks.

[PsychoDruid]

I would go for the i5 since it is realy good and upgrade something else like the gpu.

[Maharishi]

What's your use case? If it's just games you won't get much, if any, benefit from the 3770k.

[thrador]

Use will be mostly for games and programming. Very little if any video rendering etc.

[chazus]

The main difference between i5 and i7 is the core management (Hyperthreading) and the minor speed boost. Most games do not handle hyperthreading or multiple cores for that matter very well. If you are just gaming, then there is next to 0 benefit. Hyperthreading IS helpful for audio/video work, which some people do. But if you don't, it's a waste of money.

Very little if any video rendering etc.

If you're just talking about doing LPs, or streaming stuff, I wouldn't spend the hundred bucks. You'll get more mileage out of a better video card.

[Maharishi]

Use will be mostly for games and programming. Very little if any video rendering etc.

i7 has hyperthreading for virtual cores, which doesn't buy you anything in gaming

[c0rnel]

Use will be mostly for games and programming. Very little if any video rendering etc.

I'd go with the 3770k just because it's got larger cache and has supports hyper threading even if used just for gaming.

But if you're really tight on the budge then the 3570k is a nice chip as well.

[gearsofwow]

The 3570k is great for games, the i7 uses Hyper Threading, adding an extra virtual core for every physical core. That's the main thing (That I'm aware of) and games today currently do not support it, so the extra $100 would be better spent on another component.

*This is what I was told and have read, so if I am wrong please, by all means someone correct me.

[Kezotar]

go with sandy bridge not ivy bridge. Ivy bridge got stupid high temps

[chazus]

go with sandy bridge not ivy bridge. Ivy bridge got stupid high temps

O_o

Ivy Bridge doesn't have high temps. Yes, it has a slightly lower tolerance, but it's only an issue if you're overclocking a large amount. Nor does it address his question whatsoever.

[Kezotar]

O_o

Ivy Bridge doesn't have high temps. Yes, it has a slightly lower tolerance, but it's only an issue if you're overclocking a large amount. Nor does it address his question whatsoever.

it has high temps /thread. It reaches on prime 3 digits no clocked. It's sick

[Sykotic13]

it has high temps /thread. It reaches on prime 3 digits no clocked. It's sick

Please post an article with proof of this. I have yet to read or hear this before so I want to know what source you are getting this information from.

[vindicatorx]

I'd go with the 3570K I just installed one in a build I did recently and it's pretty awesome.

---------- Post added 2012-09-27 at 03:46 AM ----------

it has high temps /thread. It reaches on prime 3 digits no clocked. It's sick

Yeah I ran BF3 on Ultra settings for several hours and it didn't get past 75c I went with a Noctua Heatsink for it but yeah not sure where you heard they overheat.

[Evil Inside]

it has high temps /thread. It reaches on prime 3 digits no clocked. It's sick

If your temps get that high without, hell even with overclocking then you're doing something horribly wrong.

[a21fa7c67f26f6d49a20c2c51]

Can the people here clarify something for me. Reading this article at Tom's Hardware agreed with the consensus that Warcraft is CPU bound. Further, while they found that hyper-threading did 'little positive' for Warcraft frame rates you did see noticable improvements for all intel CPUs by increasing the clock speed. All of that seems to give credence to the advice that an i5 is just as good as an i7 if all other things are equal.

Compare i5-875k at 3.73 GHz to the stock frequency of 2.93 it seemed to pick up about a dozen frames per second (25% increase in frequency = 17% increase in frame rate). If you step back to the 655k which is (presumably?) a similar enough processor save for the difference in cache sizes (4mb vs 8mb) and hyperthreading the performance is noticeably worse: 71 FPS vs 94 FPS at 3.73 GHz.

They noted that at similar frequencies (3.73 Ghz) with an i5-655k, i7-875k, and i7-980X with 2 cores disabled showed noticably different performance levels: 74, 94, 104 FPS.

The important difference, to me, seems to be that performance increased more with cache than frequency. Their article drew the same conclusion stating "There's more to performance in Cataclysm than frequency. The quad-core Core i7-875K nearly hits the $1000 chip's mark using four cores and 8 MB of shared L3 cache, so perhaps this is a matter of cores and cache."

Granted Mists isn't Cataclsym, but if this holds, that seems to be a pretty good argument in favour of the i7-3770k over the i5-3570k. Your $100 buys you an extra 2 MB of cache. Assuming that splits the difference between the 655k and 875k (upgrading from 6mb to 8mb) that'll likely translate to an extra 5 frames per second in warcraft.

Are people arguing that 5% more FPS (plus whatever minor gains you see in other programs) isn't worth $100?
Is the argument that you'd see more gains by spending that $100 on something else like an SSD/video card?
Am I reading too much into the article?

[Zyzzyx]

If your temps get that high without, hell even with overclocking then you're doing something horribly wrong.

Agreed, chip is only rated up to 105c, and without serious overclocking, horrible cooling, and 100+f ambient (or a bad chip), the cpu isn't getting that hot.

Although, Ivy Bridge DOES run hotTER, at least compared to sandy bridge, but it really depends how picky you are about heat if you want to call it hot. With liquid, I can hit 70c in prime while overclocked. That's hot to me, but well within tolerance.