Looking for PC Building Advice

[MeNaCe-NZ]

I think also for clarifications sake we should probably point out that i5's do hyperthread ( they aren't single core cpu's ) they just only do it for 4 threads as opposed to the i7's 8.

 

From what I understand without doing any current research there are very few games etc. that manage to utilise all 4 threads properly let alone 8 and that is the core of the i5 vs i7 debate.

 

I guess that yes, it all comes down to what you want to do and how much you currently, and will in the future, have to spend.

 

If you are a gaming enthusiast but are limited by money you can spend ( i.e. you spend a long time saving to buy up your rig when you do upgrade ) then it would certainly make sense to put that little bit extra into an i7.

 

I guess the other factor to consider is what sort of socket is currently supported and how long that is likely to be around. I believe Broadwell will use socket 1150 but Skylake won't ( almost reads like Broadwell is a bit of a write off with how close behind the Skylake chips will be but then pricing etc. need come into play ).

 

Either way it sounds like 1150 is coming to the end of it's life and socket type has always been a major factor ( more me at least ) in deciding on what chip to buy.

 

For example if I intended to have an extended life time and only upgrade to an i7 as hyper threading support increased I would want to ensure that the socket type I was looking at would still be intended to be around for quite some time so I only need upgrade the CPU. Else yes it is best to just go for the i7 off the bat to future proof.

 

Personally though I'll no doubt early next year upgrade again which will result in a new m/b and cpu and make the move to ddr4.

[FlamingManofIron]

Just a heads up... That is a great CPU, mis-matched to a very average GPU...

 

Just curious, but why such a mismatch? Did you go with the i7 for non-gaming needs and only want something modest to play games with?

 

Any system with a i7 deserves at least a 290 or a 970, if not a 290x or a 980... Otherwise the CPU sits around waiting for the GPU to be ready for it.

 

It's a mix of priority issue. I need something that can at stock speeds, improve MATLAB calculation time for single threaded computations that cannot be parallelized. On my 3.0 ghz it takes 6-7 days, and so having a 4.4 ghz will drop the calculation time to 4-5 days. Right now I'm just using the onboard VGA for non gaming purposes.

 

I have a $2500 CDN budget, (so $2000 US) so dropping the gpu let me get a higher grade of cooling and purchase a battery backup for my PC. AND no GPU will drop case temperatures, a bugaboo when you're running a PC for days at a time near 100% load. I've got to get calculations done by the end of May to get my MSc project done by the end of June.

 

But, once I'm done, I really wanted a nice gaming rig for once. It's been 6.5 years since my last PC purchase.

 

And when I do get a GPU? Let me tell you, selling your wife on a $200 purchase vs a $500 purchase "just for a game" is a lot easier. I guess I could sneak a $500 GPU, but I don't like lying and we do have a joint bank account. I'll keep your suggestions in mind though - I'll see where prices are in 6 months.

Edited March 17, 2015 by FlamingManofIron

[LadyVix]

**update**

I'll be buying

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157506

 

And

 

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117369

To start. If I can rub 35 fps in 16m then I'll wait for new r300 series.

You won't regret that setup.

 

I recently replaced an old i7 960 X58 setup with a Maximus VII Formula MB and 4790K processor. I loved it so much that this weekend I purchased another 4790k to put in a Asrock Z97 Extreme6 MB to replace my 3570K Asus P8Z77V-Pro combo. (960 system is now my new PLEX server/mail server/Ventrilo server, and the 3570K system will be my new file server/FTP server//VM box)

[Ghisallo]

I gotta disagree that the i7s are a waste compared to i5s. If your i5 is 3.5 GHz stock then you are 500 MHz slower than my 4.0 GHz stock i7. If SWTOR only uses one core then why not have a better one? Sure you can over clock the 3.5 to 3.9 and get close to my 4.0 but then why not clock the 4.0 to 4.9 and get even further apart?

 

I've gotten into the habit of buying a new PC about every 3 years now so I went with an i7-4790k and I feel that I'll still be happy with it in 2018 where I'm not sure I could say that with an i5.

 

Well you can actually downgrade going from a i5 to an i7. Go from an i5 with 8 or 6mb of cache to an i7 with 6 or 4mb and you are worse off.

 

Also you can over clock the i5s as easily as the i7s. The actual difference you would see performance wise (if cache is equal) is in the single digits of fps. In return for that you are looking at double the cost or more for that modest (at best) increase. If all you are doing is playing games it really doesn't make sense.

 

It does make sense to spend that money if you either render video or stream your game play live though. Also it will make a more legitimately modest difference if/when more games start taking advantage of hyperthreading.

Edited March 18, 2015 by Ghisallo

[Malastare]

I think also for clarifications sake we should probably point out that i5's do hyperthread ( they aren't single core cpu's ) they just only do it for 4 threads as opposed to the i7's 8.

 

That's not what hyperthreading is. Please be careful when mis-using terms like this. Hyperthreading does not mean "can run more than a single thread". It has very specific implications that are important to consider when comparing CPUs.

 

Both the i5 and the i7 have four cores. The i7 supports hyperthreading, the i5 does not. The implementation of hyperthreading currently being used makes the i7 appear as an eight-core CPU to the OS. However: it has only four actual cores, just like the i5.

 

Hyperthreading is a slightly different sub-architecture which allows a core to keep track of two different threads at the same time. There are a lot of operations a CPU performs that require waiting for other components. A hyperthreaded core will continue to do work on a second thread while one thread is waiting for RAM or the GPU or the network card or whatever. It sounds like it would be the same as having two cores, but its not. Ultimately, the CPU still only performs work on one thread at a time, it's just capable of switching back and forth way faster than normal.

 

The main benefit from this comes when you have a lot of threads that are using the same code and are running for a long time, such as video encoding or photo manipulation. In that case, hyperthreading might give you a 50% boost in performance. If you keep switching out which threads are running, then the CPU has to keep loading and unloading the threads and it doesn't get a good chance to really take advantage of hyperthreading. This is the more common behavior of games. In that case, hyperthreading might give you a 10% advantage (maybe even 25%) in a nicely threaded game. Or it might actually run 3% slower, if the game doesn't interact with CPU caches nicely.

 

TL;DR: Hyperthreading is not the same a multi-processing. A quad-core CPU is far better than a hyperthreaded 2-core CPU, and only slightly less powerful than a hyperthreaded quad-core.

Edited March 18, 2015 by Malastare

[Kurin]

I strongly suggest you go to ecollegepc.com, select the Intel Gaming computer, and go from there.

 

Things you want:

 

Intel i5-4690k processor

Intel Z97 based motherboard

BIG power supply

16 GB Memory

SSD (for the OS and the game)

As much video card power as you can afford.

 

75-100 fps is no problem (what I see), if you spend the money, throughout most of the game worlds. However, no pc can fix the horrid frame rates on 16 man Sword Squadron, etc. I fall under 50 fps in these horribly optimized areas that BioWare seems incapable of getting a handle of.

[ATAMIANM]

There are a number of sites that compare builds if you want to do it yourself. I've been thinking of doing this myself, as my desktop is getting pretty old. Here are a couple of sites:

http://elitegamingcomputers.com/good-cheap-gaming-computers/

http://lifehacker.com/5840963/the-best-pcs-you-can-build-for-600-and-1200#

 

There are also a number of youtube videos that go through the entire assembly process. Some claim you can build your computer in just a few hours from the parts. There is a significant cost savings.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

That's not what hyperthreading is. Please be careful when mis-using terms like this. Hyperthreading does not mean "can run more than a single thread". It has very specific implications that are important to consider when comparing CPUs.

 

Both the i5 and the i7 have four cores. The i7 supports hyperthreading, the i5 does not. The implementation of hyperthreading currently being used makes the i7 appear as an eight-core CPU to the OS. However: it has only four actual cores, just like the i5.

 

Hyperthreading is a slightly different sub-architecture which allows a core to keep track of two different threads at the same time. There are a lot of operations a CPU performs that require waiting for other components. A hyperthreaded core will continue to do work on a second thread while one thread is waiting for RAM or the GPU or the network card or whatever. It sounds like it would be the same as having two cores, but its not. Ultimately, the CPU still only performs work on one thread at a time, it's just capable of switching back and forth way faster than normal.

 

The main benefit from this comes when you have a lot of threads that are using the same code and are running for a long time, such as video encoding or photo manipulation. In that case, hyperthreading might give you a 50% boost in performance. If you keep switching out which threads are running, then the CPU has to keep loading and unloading the threads and it doesn't get a good chance to really take advantage of hyperthreading. This is the more common behavior of games. In that case, hyperthreading might give you a 10% advantage (maybe even 25%) in a nicely threaded game. Or it might actually run 3% slower, if the game doesn't interact with CPU caches nicely.

 

TL;DR: Hyperthreading is not the same a multi-processing. A quad-core CPU is far better than a hyperthreaded 2-core CPU, and only slightly less powerful than a hyperthreaded quad-core.

 

Ok so ... http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/hyper-threading/hyper-threading-technology.html

 

Based on that, it is blatant false advertising then? In particular this statement: "Intel HT Technology is available on the Intel® Core™ processor family "

 

That should probably be more specific and blatantly say "i7 processors".

 

It doesn't even use the word "some".

 

Quite disappointing from intel there.

[Teenki]

Ok so ... http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/hyper-threading/hyper-threading-technology.html

 

Based on that, it is blatant false advertising then? In particular this statement: "Intel HT Technology is available on the Intel® Core™ processor family "

 

That should probably be more specific and blatantly say "i7 processors".

 

It doesn't even use the word "some".

 

Quite disappointing from intel there.

 

It's actually pretty confusing. And really a very dumb thing to do by Intel imo. i3s and i7s have hyperthreading but i5's don't. But there are laptop i5s that have hyperthreading thus making it all more confusing.

[Papazmurf]

Ok so ... http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/hyper-threading/hyper-threading-technology.html

 

Based on that, it is blatant false advertising then? In particular this statement: "Intel HT Technology is available on the Intel® Core™ processor family "

 

Not that I agree with the wording, but to be fair it does say available. When you market as available that generally means it could be optional. Nothing they could be taken to court over.

[Elracor]

Ok so ... http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/hyper-threading/hyper-threading-technology.html

 

Based on that, it is blatant false advertising then? In particular this statement: "Intel HT Technology is available on the Intel® Core™ processor family "

 

That should probably be more specific and blatantly say "i7 processors".

 

It doesn't even use the word "some".

 

Quite disappointing from intel there.

 

That's where the always-so-beloved footnote comes in:

1 Available on select Intel® Core™ processors....

 

As others have said, HT is not only a Core i7 feature. Many desktop i3s have it, and a lot of laptop i3s + i5s have it as well.