how good is i5 for gaming?

[pkm]

I have a amd phenom X4 955 @ 2.4GHz cpu

How does i5 compare to that? Better or worse?

I am thinking of getting a new pc that's i5 but not looking to play the uber high end games at max settings. Just general gaming.

[chazus]

Better, however I'm not sure if it's worth the $300 between cpu and motherboard to upgrade it if you're just looking at good settings.

[Terridon]

My laptop has previous generation of i7. The new i5 is around same speed as that(point being my laptop runs games just fine)
Phenom is pretty slow compared to them. It's what.. 3-4 years old now?
Anyway. Click randomly through
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/c...marks,140.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/c...rk-7,3152.html

Overall: It's plenty for "general gaming"
Your gfx matters far more than the CPU.

[Holyshnikies]

If I was you, I would wait. Intel is getting ready to release there next cpu lineup here in a few months and are changing sockets too. Just wait for Haswell.

[chazus]

Overall: It's plenty for "general gaming"
Your gfx matters far more than the CPU.

Not true.

Considering you're on a WoW website, where most people play WoW. CPU is VERY important for gaming, specifically WoW.

An i5 would be an upgrade (and 3570k even more) but... The 955 isn't... terrible? It'd be an upgrade, but it might be worth waiting a year, unless you've got money to burn.

[Terridon]

Considered he said "general gaming" and not "wow", i will still stick to what i said.
Specially since a phenom 4 can drag wow just fine, and the i5 is a good deal faster.

Nothing wrong in what i said.
The gfx matters far more :P

Edit:
Just to make it extra obvious.
You can run every single game that doesn't have major problems, on something as old as a phenom 3 if you want to.
I dare you to run games on one of intels fameous bit older gfxs.

[seventysix]

don't feed into all the crazy hype about computer hardware, all these people flexing there epeen about cpu benchmarks are full of it, i5 is so overkill for gaming (If you want to multi task, as well as record or streaming gaming you need an i5 but an i3 will also get the job done. (90% OF GAMES ONLY USE THE FIRST 2 CORES OF YOUR CPU IMAGINE THAT)

I just built a budget rig for my girlfriend with
50$ Asus Miniatx board
60$ Pentium G2020 Processor (Dual Core)
100$ GTX 650 Nividia GPU
50$ 8 gigs gskill

everything else was shit I had laying around, and this PC runs WoW @ 40 FPS good - high settings in 25 man raid, GW2 @ 30 FPS good settings, BF3 30+ FPS good settings & LoL + Smite flawlessy. LEWL.

[chazus]

Nothing wrong in what i said.
The gfx matters far more :P

I would say "General Gaming" has a larger share of CPU bound games.

[seventysix]

And yeah he's absolutely right most games depend on the CPU more than GPU you could have an i5 with a 4870 and run wow close to max settings

[Cyanotical]

don't feed into all the crazy hype about computer hardware, all these people flexing there epeen about cpu benchmarks are full of it, i5 is so overkill for gaming (If you want to multi task, as well as record or streaming gaming you need an i5 but an i3 will also get the job done. (90% OF GAMES ONLY USE THE FIRST 2 CORES OF YOUR CPU IMAGINE THAT)

I just built a budget rig for my girlfriend with
50$ Asus Miniatx board
60$ Pentium G2020 Processor (Dual Core)
100$ GTX 650 Nividia GPU
50$ 8 gigs gskill

everything else was shit I had laying around, and this PC runs WoW @ 40 FPS good - high settings in 25 man raid, GW2 @ 30 FPS good settings, BF3 30+ FPS good settings & LoL + Smite flawlessy. LEWL.

this is complete crap, it's one thing to build what you can on a budget, its another to argue against hard facts and lie about something that may affect how someone spends their money

the i5 is the best gaming CPU for a reason, the best performance you can get is from the 3960/3970x (they are the same cpu), but the i5 delivers 98% of the same performance for 1/5 of the price

[Deleted]

Not true.

Considering you're on a WoW website, where most people play WoW. CPU is VERY important for gaming, specifically WoW.

An i5 would be an upgrade (and 3570k even more) but... The 955 isn't... terrible? It'd be an upgrade, but it might be worth waiting a year, unless you've got money to burn.

I'm not going to argue with you that CPU isn't important for WoW but it really doesn't require as much as it used to do. I mean, even my friend sitting on a stock clocked Phenom 9550 can easily turn up WoW to high without significant FPS loss in raids. If you want to up that to maximum a Phenom II 965 will suffice for 60+ fps even in the most intense raids. Although it's probably not a wise deal to buy either of these two mentioned CPU's since there are more games out there than WoW that actually do require a decent CPU :P

[seventysix]

uh, sure if you want to spend 200+ on a CPU? I never said it was the best, I said it's overkill for a budget rig for gaming, completely undeeded.

[Terridon]

I would say "General Gaming" has a larger share of CPU bound games.

Everything use CPU. I'm just stating the mere fact that there's plenty of cpu-power even in the older CPUs

And yeah he's absolutely right most games depend on the CPU more than GPU you could have an i5 with a 4870 and run wow close to max settings

I'm personally running WoW at ultra settings with a phenom 3 in my gaming computer.
My laptop have a i7, but i use that for more boring things than games.
You might simply just be bad at configuring the computer, but you sure as hell don't need an i5 to "run close to max settings"

I don't know when people got this idea that the CPU should be the more important thing. It has not hold in reality :P

[glo]

Anyone stating that modern CPUs aren't needed for WoW at near highest settings clearly either:

A. Do not raid (especially 25s)
B. Do not play the larger BGs
C. Keep shadows turned off
D. Keep AA off
E. Gimp their view distance

Stating otherwise is BS, there's mountains of benchmarks and research available online that show near 100% gains from old AM3 processors compared to SB/IB Intel chips. Not to mention even with my rig in my signature, I'm still dipping into the 40s on a very populated realm in the middle of SW with near max settings. 25m raids are especially brutal on my setup. Even with top of the line hardware (think $1,000 i7-3970x + GTX Titan) you still can't max the game and keep above 60 FPS in many situations.

Additionally, there are a shit ton of newer games that require strong CPU performance. BF3, Planet Side 2, Crysis 3, SC2, Skyrim and Guild Wars 2 just to name a few.

[Milkshake86]

My laptop has previous generation of i7. The new i5 is around same speed as that(point being my laptop runs games just fine)
Phenom is pretty slow compared to them. It's what.. 3-4 years old now?
Anyway. Click randomly through
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/c...marks,140.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/c...rk-7,3152.html

Overall: It's plenty for "general gaming"
Your gfx matters far more than the CPU.

That laptop i7 is probably not even faster than the 955 in question nor is it anywhere in comparison to an i5-2500k.

---------- Post added 2013-03-23 at 04:32 AM ----------

Anyone stating that modern CPUs aren't needed for WoW at near highest settings clearly either:

A. Do not raid (especially 25s)
B. Do not play the larger BGs
C. Keep shadows turned off
D. Keep AA off
E. Gimp their view distance

Stating otherwise is BS, there's mountains of benchmarks and research available online that show near 100% gains from old AM3 processors compared to SB/IB Intel chips. Not to mention even with my rig in my signature, I'm still dipping into the 40s on a very populated realm in the middle of SW with near max settings. 25m raids are especially brutal on my setup. Even with top of the line hardware (think $1,000 i7-3970x + GTX Titan) you still can't max the game and keep above 60 FPS in many situations.

Additionally, there are a shit ton of newer games that require strong CPU performance. BF3, Planet Side 2, Crysis 3, SC2, Skyrim and Guild Wars 2 just to name a few.

Noone hard Qs large BG's ever they suck, AV is not vanilla AV at all so that point is irrelevant and the amount of actual play space relieves a ton of that data stamping.

[chazus]

I don't know when people got this idea that the CPU should be the more important thing. It has not hold in reality :P

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...k,3348-13.html
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/62

Every gaming cpu benchmark in the world would like to have a word with you.

Notice how Intel's are all 30-60fps higher than the older AMD's?

[seventysix]

Everything use CPU. I'm just stating the mere fact that there's plenty of cpu-power even in the older CPUs


I'm personally running WoW at ultra settings with a phenom 3 in my gaming computer.
My laptop have a i7, but i use that for more boring things than games.
You might simply just be bad at configuring the computer, but you sure as hell don't need an i5 to "run close to max settings"

I don't know when people got this idea that the CPU should be the more important thing. It has not hold in reality :P

never said you needed an i5 was stating you can have a really good cpu and a shitty GPU and get amazing frames in wow, you missed my first post about having shitty pentium 4's g860 g860 g2020 kick the shit out of the game.

[Deleted]

Anyone stating that modern CPUs aren't needed for WoW at near highest settings clearly either:

A. Do not raid (especially 25s)
B. Do not play the larger BGs
C. Keep shadows turned off
D. Keep AA off
E. Gimp their view distance

Stating otherwise is BS, there's mountains of benchmarks and research available online that show near 100% gains from old AM3 processors compared to SB/IB Intel chips.

Additionally, there are a shit ton of newer games that require strong CPU performance. BF3, Planet Side 2, Crysis 3, SC2, Skyrim and Guild Wars 2 just to name a few.

They aren't needed for WoW. They are better and more efficient than older CPU's no doubt, there's not even an argument to be had there. i5's are clearly and provably a better processor overall. But on the off-chance you're only playing WoW or are able to settle with medium/high graphics in BF3/PS2/SC2 and Skyrim/GW then OP's 955 is enough. Myself have an old CPU(965 BE) and I haven't had a problem maxing out any of the previously mentioned games at good or better FPS.

The only game I've seen a noticeable lack of CPU power in is Crysis 3. This is where my old CPU no longer can perform at highest and I'm forced to a mix between medium and high to get on a playable 40 fps level. Again, I'm not arguing that i5/7's power is wasted on this generations games, it's not. It's utilized to it's fullest potential in games and we can see that on comparison charts. But it's not required to run games at high or highest settings. It does it better, but not required.

To OP: Yes, i5 is a much better processor and if you intend to build for the future it's the wisest and most cost efficient processors, end of story.

[seventysix]

Jevlin pretty much summed it up end topic lol

[Milkshake86]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...k,3348-13.html
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/62

Every gaming cpu benchmark in the world would like to have a word with you.

Notice how Intel's are all 30-60fps higher than the older AMD's?

I'd like to see Raid benchmarks, enough people in 25m Guilds on Twitch streaming on Phenom II's.