Won't an i5 be enough anymore?

Few months back, i built a gaming rig with R9 280x and an i5 4670. While building the rig, i read everywhere that i5 would be enough and i7 isn't really essential for gaming.

Now, every new big game is coming out with i7 in the recommended settings.

Would i5 have a problem maxing games provided you have a good enough graphic card in such cases?

The 4670 is like 3-4 times faster than the consoles CPU so you will be fine (if your getting any serious performance loss than it's most likely going to be the developers doing a bad job versus your CPU being the actual issue).

When a game recommends an i7 it's either a load of shit or horrible optimization and not the CPUs fault

But almost every big upcoming game now is recommending i7. Could it be that now with new gen finally here, the games are gonna make a bigger and substantial use of 8 cores and hence i5 lagging?

Nope, these consoles only have 6 cores they can use for games. Those cpu's are very weak, The Jaguar architecture itself is only about 15% faster clock per clock faster then AMD's Bobcat series found in tablets and low end netbooks. Bobcat series is slower then the old Athlon X2's from 2006 clock per clock. Which means we are looking at a cpu that's slower then an Athlon 2 X4 at 2.6 ghz when all 6 cores are running at 1.6ghz. So no consoles are not the determining factor why fx 8's and i7's are being recommended. Take system requirements with a pitch of salt plenty of examples from the past of recommending the latest cpu's and asking for quad cores or even dual cores when the games ended up only used 1 or 2 cores. Another fact is the the physical processing power between an i5 and i7 are nearly the same which is why even with modern games that make use of eight threads the differences between i5 and i7 are slight.

The fact that these new games are recommending FX 8's and i7's means one of two things that game can make use of 8 threads or two that you will need the best from ether of those companies cpu's to have the game run decently because of bad coding. Needless to say an i5 will perform as well or better then a FX 8 and perform nearly as well as those quad core i7's.

Don't let hysterical people to scare you, every big game is not coming with i7 recommendation, every bad port does need more horsepower to overcome their crappy optimizations.

Why didn't you pay like $20-$30 more and got the K version? You could have overclocked it far. You'll be fine for a while, don't worry.

Nobody can tell you since the games aren't out yet.

Buy and play the games first with your current rig before upgrading. It'll take only one game to let you know if you need to upgrade or not.

With all the pregame hype, I thought I needed a whole new rig just to play Crysis 3 at minimum settings. It turned out my Phenom II X3 and GTX 560 Ti was adequate enough to play and finish the game at 1080p, Medium Textures, High Detail, FXAA. Not maxed out. But, it certainly wasn't Minimum either.

True, but tempted to call these i7 requirements for utter bs still.

Certainly, I agree that they probably are. I'm just pointing out that nobody can actually say either way.

I'm also bored of seeing this argument going backwards and forwards on a different thread every day.

It's only logical that games will start to use hyper threading. So yes an i5 would have been just fine a year ago, just like a 2gb 770 or 760 would have been good enough a year ago. I ended up going for the i7 3770k because everyone was recommend an i5, and I went for the 4gb card because well future proofing. I generally go by the rule if people recommend stuff go one step above. Your computer will still play games fine, you just might not be able to pull the highest of settings when games start to really use hyper-threading properly.

I have no idea what games you're talking about but I'm running an Intel i5-3570K and have yet to see any kind of issue at all in any game I'm playing.

I considered the i7 but my understanding was that it was not worth the difference in price...so far that has held true.

The choice with a 4gb 760 is flawed the gpu itself does not have the bus width and processing power to correctly use the 4gb buffer. The 770 in 4gb is nearly in the same boat. Also games that are optimized good change the data streaming requirements based on buffer size of the gpu which is why you dont see massive differences between 2gb vs 4gb even with massive resolutions and performance. Then yes more and more games will make use of 8 threads however there are already multiple modern games that make use of 8 threads and the difference between i5 and i7's are small nothing massive enough to make a huge difference in performance.

I can't see a 3570k struggling with any games in the near future.

You have to realize that most games are going to rely on your GPU more than your CPU anyway. I expect my CPU to last me another 3 years at least, and I say only that long because by then I'll have a serious upgrade itch.

What about my i5-2500k?

Barely any weaker than a 4670K most here say. If you OC it to 4.2-4.4 you should have no trouble with next gen games...

Some think an i7 will be needed

other's don't

I think an i7 will be better if you want to do high end

but that's just me

In 2 weeks you'll know more

The only game I saw recommending an i7 was Wolfenstein NO. The i7 turned out to be a 930, which is a 4-year-old CPU. So yes, your 4670 should be good for quite a while.

Hell, my Steambox PC has an AMD 6300, and that should be good for a while because most of the new games coming out are optimized for the weak CPUs in the PS4/XBone.

Hard to know truly. They lack the cores but they pack enough power. It depends mostly in what trend most devs will follow in the future when programming their games.

i7's dont have the cores themselves , i7's are quads with HT and have abit more cache. virtually not much different from i5's.

and you're virtually a pc expert

And your an idiot

sure copy and paste info

'and don't know what the info means'

by carraher

So do you still think the i7-3820 only supports pci 2.0?

Go cry some more..... the 3820 does not natively support pci-e 3.0 specifications

See, this proves again you're not an pc expert at all. You just copy and paste information without knowing what the hell you're talking about.

Even worse I already explained this to you and you already forgot.

The i7-3820 does support pci 3.0, intel has never changed this because there are still motherboards that don't support the bandwith of pci 3.0 on the x79 platform for sandy bridge. At the time of release there weren't any pci 3.0 gpu's as well. If you had looked at the bandwith or have done your research you would have known this

link to the article

Now get of your high horse, and if you want to give people advice, let the grownups speak first.

Don't make me get the old thread where i explained this to you already

OMG ROFL pci-e 3.0 unlocks the bandwidth that the 3820 can support not the other communication specifications that pci-e 3 has

FROM INTEL

"As per the product specifications, the LGA2011 based processors are designed supporting PCI Express 2.0.

Intel® does not warranty that these devices will be working at 3.0"

You still don't seem to get it

This is old information. There were no pci 3.0 boards at the time of release of the x79 platform

I suppose when the president says ' the sky is red' you believe it?

You gotta look up man 'the sky is blue'

even worse, this intel guy simply read the product spec just like you did lol

And you still dont see the point do you? all i7 3000 based cpu do not support pci-e 3.0 specs, only are designed for 2.0. You answered your point "There were no pci 3.0 boards at the time of release of the x79 platform" which is why 3000 series do not natively support pci-e 3.0. Hence the year they were designed and made. Only the i7 4000 series on sandy-e natively support 3.0 and LGA 1155 based intel cpu's.

I suppose the fact that they didn't have pci 3.0 boards to test it with doesn't link in your brain with 'intel doesn't warrant pci 3.0'

The sandy bridge e doesn't magically support 3.0, it's because the capability is already there.

And there's no difference between pci 3.0 and pci 2.0 besides bandwith.

It's not because they didn't have any boards to test it with they didn't implement the capablility.

Otherwise it wouldn't work

@klunt_bumskrint

As much as I like discussions, I would like to see it not fall down to calling each other for idiots.

Please stop quoting huge chains

Lets not fight guys,

As for the games requiring an i7, both Wolfenstein and Watchdogs recommend an i7. Lets see how it is.

Though, i don't expect a good i5 to lag in performance in future games as long as the gpu is a good one.

Thanks for the replies guys.

im running only a second gen i5 2310 2.9 and i get along just fine maxing all the latest games paired with only a gtx 570

Those same people that said i5 would always be enough for gaming also used to say 4gigs was enough for gaming also. They never looked to the future, now 8 gigs is much better for a gaming pc, and i7 makes alot more sense. By the end of the ps4 generation of consoles probably every game will be using 8 threads in games...

i5 did make sense for the last gen of consoles, most games used 2-3 threads at most.

Can you find me any benchmarks that justify purchasing an i7 over an i5 when your primary use is gaming? In fact can you find me any benchmarks that i7 is anything more than 5% faster than an i5?. Also in pc gaming buying expensive hardware with the thought that will last you alot of years before the need to upgrade is counterproductive. You are much better off buying something mid/mid-high end rather high end and upgrading just a bit sooner. A $300 i5/mobo combo will easily last you 3 years considering how weak new console cpu's

As for new games recommending i7's that is only watchdogs and wolfenstein ( and in case of wolfenstein that is a 5 year old i7 930 )

Also reasonable people recommend you the best bang for your buck that will last you a while and i5 is better price/performance wise compared to i7.

Oh and new consoles can only use 6 threads for gaming and i'm more than certain 4 i5 cores are way faster than a low end cpu with low IPC and low base frequency

Well if they don't optimize for four threads, who knows what the performance will be on an i5. Since they recommend it and the new consoles use more than four threads , you probably will be better off with an i7.

There aren't any games that are only next gen yet (so only on next gen consoles) so we can't tell you this upfront.

In two weeks we will know a lot more

They will optimize for four threads for a long time because modern cpu's clean those console cpu's clocks. =P, but the fact is that developers wont exclude the vast majority of their user base.

What they recommend should be taken with a pinch of salt since they also recommend FX 8's which are no where near i7's performance and they still lose against i5's with multithreaded apps and games that do make use of 8 threads. They are only recommending i7's and FX 8's is because the game is ether a poorly coded and recommend the best of each brand of cpu to get a standard of quality or can use 8 threads if available.

BF4 is a prime example of an game that shows how weak those six cores are in those consoles. Even exclusive games like ISS show the affect of how slow the cpu's are.

Another example of why requirements should be questioned and not blindly accepted. Is Thief also recommends a i7 or FX 8 ,but yet an i5 is only 2fps slower then i7 with a 290x. And a FX 8350 is 10 fps slower then i5. When mantle came out for thief, the 8350 gained enough fps to be on par with i5 while i7 with mantle gained nothing.

Fact is that the games that are designed on consoles wont need more then a modern quad core from now until the end of the generation.

shut up carraher you've already proven you don't know what the hell you're talking about

you just mad your wrong,

its ok

I'm not mad, it's ridiculous you keep on giving advice

while you clearly don't know what you're talking about

I sincerely hope that either a faster quad core(than todays 4670) or a hexacore will be needed for PC exclusive games at the end of this console generation though.

lol thats hilarious you haven't given one shred of real solid proof and explained the what and why. Your talking about yourself not knowing anything...... You going from an i5 2500 to an 3820 then selling that and started looking at the xeons etc then claim that your 3820 magically gave you performance that beats an i7 3770k with a stronger gpu and yet claim its because of the onboard pci-e controller that support 40 lanes on a 7870xt where it wouldnt do crap. Then you claim just because your running dual channel memory allows 3820 so much better when in fact single to quad channel does hardly nothing for the cpu's performance. so yeah your the one that shouldn't be giving advice.

You have no idea who your talking to and how many people ive helped over the years on the original pc hardware forum.

If and when more then 4 cores will be needed is when its a pc centric made game that requires much more processing power. i7's are nothing more then i5 with extra cache and HT basically so current quad core i7 will be in the same boat as i5 if games start requiring 6+ cores.