Hardware Why the Core i3-7350K Is a Good CPU

No, no, no, no and more no.

It's still NOT justifiable, even if you've shown us that in a few select benchmarks, at 1.3GHz faster, it is as fast as a quad in certain tasks.

When you need a true quad, it will fall flat on its face. Yes, Intel have gotten stupid with their pricing, and yes Brexit is to blame too; but in no sense can you possibly justify a near 200-quid dual core in 2017. Hello! We had the first dual cores over a decade ago! Anyone who bought this CPU over a (even used) 6*00K would be an utter fool, and I would hope that it never got recommended to anyone's worst enemy.

Remember, Skylake > Kabylake is nothing more than a frequency increase and offers literally zero improvement. It's the 920 C0 > D0 all over, except now this is Skylake D0.

Factoring in the cooling for 'the same overclock' isn't really fair either. Naturally a dual core *should* use less power than a quad - that is a mute point.

I still can't believe it is recommended by you guys.

Sorry for the rant. I am lost for words and it literally baffles me.

 

Try and justify it all you like it's still tragically expensive. Your argument about how it performs very well in modern games and so on is valiant but thwarted by the Pentium G4560 which is also dual core with HT and performs amazingly in gaming.



Which costs £60, one third of the price of the I3. Now granted it's not as quick, but it seems to be more than quick enough for a decent gaming experience. You could then invest in a better GPU.

Any way, to be quite honest I would imagine within a few months this argument will be dead, cemented and then buried once AMD bring out their budget CPUs.

 

I wonder if Intel realise how cheaply you can pick up a Xeon these days? For comparison, I recently bought myself an 8c 16t Ivy Xeon clocked at 3.5ghz. It scores right around 1200 points in Cinebench, double that of the I3. It cost me £100. Now yes, boards are hard to find but there must be many people out there who have followed a similar path to myself.

Again though I will mention the Pentium.



Personally I would have one of those and wait to see what AMD do. Get the cheapest board money can buy 'cause you're not overclocking it any way.

 

It's not as fast as the I3, no. But it costs a third of the price and seems more than capable of delivering at least 40 FPS in the games it was tested in.

I just couldn't bring myself to pay £185 for a DC/HT CPU. It's a joke and should be condemned. Especially when they blocked the overclocking of the last gen I3s.

If we give the nod to Intel that it's OK to charge these sorts of prices they will just think it's OK.

When games got hiked up to £50 I refused to pay it. I still haven't played a few of the latest games because I can not get what I think is a good price on them. As such I avoid them.

Same goes for Nvidia's 10 series. I'm just not going to entertain it.

 

I challenge BT to put a G4620 up against this i3.

 

At stock frequencies of each component. Not a 4.8 or 5 GHz test vs 3.4 GHz ......

 

The I3 will obviously win from a "points value" perspective. IE - it should score more points than the Pentium across the board obviously. However, lest we forget; the Pentium is probably EXACTLY the same chip but with a derped clock.

I guess it all comes down to what you think you need. For £185 you can get the Pentium along with something like this.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/xfx-...ddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-23h-xf.html

For the same price. I guess it comes down to what you would rather have.

 

if that Pentium can make 4.8GHZ - then for £90 would it better value than the i3

 

You can't OC them, that's the problem with the Pentium and why the i3 is SO outrageously expensive.

 

IMO Intel have finally let the cat out of the bag with the Pentium. Over the years they have done some cracking little Celerons and Pentiums but they have always held back HT for more expensive CPUs.

Looking at the min FPS in those videos it's clear that it is more than enough for any budget gaming rig. Which of course puts it in a lower category as the I3 is hardly what you could call budget really.

Very true but the Pentium seems to have more than enough muscle to swat aside any game.

Just recently I stopped using my 5820k/Titan X rig because it is the only rig I have now that isn't fully pro water cooled. As such she's a noisy girl. I much prefer the refined Xeon with its ridiculously low volts and temps.

So I have been gaming with the Xeon. It's an Ivy clocked at 3.5ghz. And tbh? gaming has been amazing. I do have a Fury X in here but it's been plain sailing. Obviously I haven't been running any FPS counters but I haven't needed to. Which brings me to my point... How much is enough?

The Pentium definitely seems to be "enough" really. And for £60 it leaves a nice chunk of change in your pocket to get a proper GPU.

 

I'm so lucky I bought my used 4690k from Cex last year when I did. I paid £120ish iirc at the time and they're a lot dearer now.

Da costs, dey be risin.

 

I don't know what you're smoking, but it's probably illegal - even in Colorado. I can't really believe you're trying to justify this CPU as anything other than an expensive pile of bantha pudo.

 

The i3-7350K is between a rock and a hard place, isn't it? The problem is that it's not hugely cheaper than an i5K, as you still need a Z270 or equivalent motherboard in order to overclock (and let's face it, that's the entire point of this chip). On the other hand, if you went for a cheap and cheerful Pentium then you'd still get HT, albeit at a lower frequency, but you'd be able to save yourself even more money by getting a cheaper motherboard chipset.

I honestly think that if I were going to buy a Z270 board and an i3-7350K (so you're probably looking at £300-plus right there), I'd just save up the extra £60 and get an i5-7600K instead. In fact, looking at Scan right now the i3K is £183 and the i5K is £230, so the price difference is actually under £50.

 

I think we are arguing two different points here and conflating them. One issue is the CPU itself and yes it is a very good CPU. But the second issue is the price and it is just not acceptable.

So we can praise the CPU all we like but would you say a Vectra is a good car when you are paying BMW money.

 

It's over priced by a long shot, it's a massive premium over previous budget offerings, have a look here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggYCY8hpWJo

 

Its nice to see that you are including frame timings. I prefer to see the full frame-time plots but I'll take a 99th percentile bar chart over nothing frame time related.

 

The bottom line is it's a DUAL CORE, irrespective of the hyper threading it's still a DUAL CORE - as a community and as a consumer that is about as much use as rocking horse sh*t.

Factor in the price and Intel can go do one!!