Haswell NDA lifted.

[vesseblah]

Should I wait for this Haswell 4770k to come out for sale, or just get a 3770k? And of course a new motherboard, since my socket type is only 775 atm (lol).

And note this is for gaming, no photoshop or music editing or anything of the sort. Just games, offline and online.

Definitely not waste money on i7, i5 is totally fine for gaming. If you're planning to not upgrade it for another five years like you did with Q8200 it really doesn't matter if you pick i5-3570k or i5-4670k. Haswell is slightly safer bet for future upgrading if you might upgrade in next year or two but Intel isn't really known for keeping motherboards compatible for many years.

[Lurgarl]

Definitely not waste money on i7, i5 is totally fine for gaming. If you're planning to not upgrade it for another five years like you did with Q8200 it really doesn't matter if you pick i5-3570k or i5-4670k. Haswell is slightly safer bet for future upgrading if you might upgrade in next year or two but Intel isn't really known for keeping motherboards compatible for many years.

I'd wait. Intel wants Ivy Bridge and Haswell to co-exist for longer than normal (or so it was said).
While the improvements are seemingly few from Ivy Bridge to Haswell, they are there and the latter is a better CPU. It's just not good enough to upgrade from the earlier to the latter.

And while this is (probably) subject to change, an i5 today is likely really close to an i7 in any kind of gaming application and I find for pure gaming, the jump in price is unreasonable.

Thanks for the input guys. I do want something that will last me another 5 years +, which means I probably will have to upgrade my mobo with a processor come 2018 or so. I'm going to look into the i5s and i7s, which will hopfully save me some money.

What's the major difference in i5s and i7s?

[BicycleMafioso]

The i7 has Hyper-threading and 2MiB of L3 cache more (8 vs 6) and comes at a measly 100 MHz higher, which is easily off-set by overclocking. Games don't make use of Hyper-threading.

[blargh312]

What's the major difference in i5s and i7s?

Hyperthreading, which is useless for 99% of games.

[Faithh]

What's the major difference in i5s and i7s?

The 100$ price difference.

[tielknight]

Thanks for the input guys. I do want something that will last me another 5 years +, which means I probably will have to upgrade my mobo with a processor come 2018 or so. I'm going to look into the i5s and i7s, which will hopfully save me some money.

What's the major difference in i5s and i7s?

Twice the threads (2 per core instead of 1) and a 8mb L3 cache instead of 6mb seem to be the main difference. A few iterations have slightly higher base clock speed and some have a slightly higher max(onboard) graphics frequency. That and I believe I read that the I7's will have access to the Iris graphics system later on as well, which is supposed to scale better than the intel HD graphics system.

TLR What tetris said.

[Zogarth]

The i7 has Hyper-threading and 2MiB of L3 cache more (8 vs 6) and comes at a measly 100 MHz higher, which is easily off-set by overclocking. Games don't make use of Hyper-threading.

Just a question... how come games does not utilize Hyper-threading?

[yurano]

Just a question... how come games does not utilize Hyper-threading?

Multicore optimization is difficult to do.

[BicycleMafioso]

Just a question... how come games does not utilize Hyper-threading?

Mostly because they are not very well optimised for multi-threaded operation.
Most games are still based around the assumption that people still have two cores (which is still the majority, I'd guess!) or are straight console ports with minor optimisation for the PC platform.

There are exceptions, and many of the newer big titles is ever so slowly moving toward more multi-threaded support. Battlefield 3 and Far Cry 3 (??) are two examples if I recall correctly.

These games are still quite a lot more dependant on the GPU past a certain minimum CPU-threshold though, so the Hyper-threading there makes little difference since the CPU is quite unlikely to be the component holding you back!

In essence, Hyper-threading won't hurt to have; But today it's mostly super-fluous.

[chronia]

There might be something to note however that multicore x86 optimalisation was hardly done in the past due to console porting and stuff like that. Now its not a given, but with both the PS4 and Xbox One being x86 multicore (8 cores) this might ofcourse change in the future. While it prolly doesnt do anything for wow and the likes in te future unless they really change the engine around (which is highly unlikely) having more cores/HT might actually do something for the coming generation of games.

[Deleted]

just me who thinks this cpu only matters/improves worthwhile in the mobile department?

[vesseblah]

There might be something to note however that multicore x86 optimalisation was hardly done in the past due to console porting and stuff like that. Now its not a given, but with both the PS4 and Xbox One being x86 multicore (8 cores) this might ofcourse change in the future. While it prolly doesnt do anything for wow and the likes in te future unless they really change the engine around (which is highly unlikely) having more cores/HT might actually do something for the coming generation of games.

Copy&pasting here what I wrote earlier today in another thread:

It's possible, but it depends 100% on the development tools Microsoft and Sony puts out as writing efficiently multithreaded code is not easy which is why it's not more widespread today on PC desktop. And Sony is notorious for it's shit quality development tools for PS3.

I'd say what'll happen is that 90% of games will run on single core, have one core reserved for multitasking of the console OS and last 6 cores left to run video streaming of the game playing on single core. Unity and other cross platform engine makers are in key position for making multithreaded games happen.

just me who thinks this cpu only matters/improves worthwhile in the mobile department?

I think that's pretty fair assesment. And mobile matters when desktop PC sales plummet.

[Faithh]

Any news around the HSP being soldered or again TIM with glue?

[Maconi]

Any news around the HSP being soldered or again TIM with glue?

Yeah that made me sad. It basically doesn't matter what cooler you put on an Ivy since the HSP is the weak point. It's cheaper though, and since they're going more for a mobile market rather than a performance/over-clocking market I suspect it'll be glue again.

[chronia]

just me who thinks this cpu only matters/improves worthwhile in the mobile department?

Ik think this depends also on what generation you are on now. If you are on ivy allready with a dedicated GPU, yeah it seems like a pretty bad investment. If you are however like me and still on x58 with something like a i7 920 (running for 4.5 years now, best PC i ever build in terms on longlivety, i did add a new GPPU and SSD though over the years) its becomes basicly a free 5-10% extra free upgrade as haswell will be positioned around the same prices as Ivy will be now after the first few high demand weeks, which is nothing to complain about when i finally pull the trigger on a new system.

For mobiles the improvements are bigger then for desktop indeed, but if your still on a pre sandy platform on desktop this wont be a bad upgrade either.

[n0cturnal]

just me who thinks this cpu only matters/improves worthwhile in the mobile department?

I'd say 10-15% IPC increase is a good deal for everyone playing CPU capped games like MMOs.

[Deleted]

I'd say 10-15% IPC increase is a good deal for everyone playing CPU capped games like MMOs.

then how come the performance in 3dmark/vantage is pretty much identical? (http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages...review,17.html)

[chazus]

then how come the performance in 3dmark/vantage is pretty much identical?

I Dont know how 3dmark works exactly, but given its listings... It looks like it doesn't make good use of IPC.

[n0cturnal]

then how come the performance in 3dmark/vantage is pretty much identical? (http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages...review,17.html)

I'd consider CineBench single threaded a better test for IPC, I have no clue how 3Dmark meassures CPU performance.



This article indicated the increased IPC http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/...5#.UappMZynckd

[yurano]

just me who thinks this cpu only matters/improves worthwhile in the mobile department?

A lot of people were hoping for Haswell to go back to solder. Aka, what Ivy Bridge should have been.

IHS solder + on die VRM = overclocker's wet dream