i5 or i7 for gaming?

[Shinpool]

I read in several forums that i5 is more than enough for gaming. can someone explain why? is it true that using i7 for gaming is a waste of money? i am saving for a gaming pc, i can start buying the parts this november, but i am not entirely sure about my build.
cpu i7-6700
mobo asus b150 pro gaming aura or msi z170 A gaming M3
gpu msi gtx1070 duke
hdd seagate 2T
psu Tt smart 550W
ram fury ddr4 16g
cpu fan deep cool 400 or cooler master hyper 212x

any thoughts? the mobo depends on the cpu. not really sure whether i5 or i7.

[Le_cutter]

If you have a 1070 I think I7 could be nice. i5 would just not limit the CPU but if you want to change the GPU later it would limit.

[Spanky]

msi z170 A gaming M5 is better choice.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/Cr2gJV

[Birdy.J]

If you are just using your PC mainly for games. An i5 is sufficient for your need. It would be better if you could afford an i7 at least you don't need to worry about upgrading your CPU for another few yrs. And when I post this I own an i7 myself because the i7 is only $50 more then i5 so why not.

[SundownKid]

Originally posted by deadpooh!?:

I read in several forums that i5 is more than enough for gaming. can someone explain why? is it true that using i7 for gaming is a waste of money? i am saving for a gaming pc, i can start buying the parts this november, but i am not entirely sure about my build.
cpu i7-6700
mobo asus b150 pro gaming aura or msi z170 A gaming M3
gpu msi gtx1070 duke
hdd seagate 2T
psu Tt smart 550W
ram fury ddr4 16g
cpu fan deep cool 400 or cooler master hyper 212x

any thoughts? the mobo depends on the cpu. not really sure whether i5 or i7.

Using an i7 is a waste because most games only use 2-4 cores. Some games require quad core CPU's but there is no game that requires more. There are some games that utilize more cores, but not that many.

An overclocked i5 will give you the same or better performance than a locked i7 for most games. Of course, an OC'd i7 will be better than any i5.

Thermaltake smart is a poor PSU, look at different brand.

[Kartoffelsuppe]

I would say i5-6600 is the better choice for you right now.

When games really start to use more cores and are more demanding on a CPU, you would want a CPU with more cores, not HT.

DX 12 benchmark[core0.staticworld.net]

[Spanky]

I'd choose the i5 processor becuase it not the best and it has been around longer.

[Hare+Guu!]

i7 is better. Devs are finally not being lazy and coding for multi cores. With directx12/vulkan, it should be easier for them to do so. Only get an i5 if you're dirt poor, but even then, you might as well just try to buy a used i7 (even for a slightly older architecture) for better performance in the end.

[pasa]

I asked this question a lot, this far nothing convincing for i7/HT (on gaming). Namely saw a single wideo with i7 performing better, but it has zero information on settings or resolution. So not fit for evaluation and might be just a demonstration that you can mix up settings to bottleneck the cpu calculating perfect grass blade physix that might not even be visible. Or falling back to same performance as soon as you leave the "still".

OTOH i7 lately has bigger freq gap, and it always has little more cache over i5. Those may provide a little extra. Without OC it may provide extra frames. And with OC all predictions are moot.

[pasa]

Originally posted by Hare+Guu!:

i7 is better. Devs are finally not being lazy and coding for multi cores. With directx12/vulkan, it should be easier for them to do so. Only get an i5 if you're dirt poor, but even then, you might as well just try to buy a used i7 (even for a slightly older architecture) for better performance in the end.

Just by issuing multiple threads will not get you more performance and more parallelism. i7 has the same 4 cores as i5. The other 4 has only a small part duplicated. It is great to have *if* the threads stay away from the shared part. Waht includes most of the floating point operations. AFAIK most gaming stuff use exactly that part heavily. Meaning that unless the programmers carefully limit the threads to 4 instead of the auto-selected 8 may get penalty on the performance instead of gain due to worse cache utilisation meanwhile the parallelism is not happening.

Though you may be able to run some code cracking in the background on i7 while playing the game with way less impact on performance -- my guess is few people do that currently. :)

[Shinpool]

thanks for the input guys. since i am not planning to OC, i think i am gonna take the i5. maybe after a year or two i will upgrade to i7, and kinda tight on budget too.

[banzaigtv]

You should inquire about this in November when you start your build. More games may demand i7s at that time. Q4 is usually when developers raise the bar on system requirements.

[ექსტრემალური ვიდეოnave]

i5.

[Shinpool]

Originally posted by banzaigtv:

You should inquire about this in November when you start your build. More games may demand i7s at that time. Q4 is usually when developers raise the bar on system requirements.

this is a good idea. thanks for the tip

[EliteGamer]

i7 if money is not a problem.