CPU Is there any point in i5 (or anything mid-range)? Want a discussion...

Thats exactly what I'm planning to do, running a Q6600 and soon to replace my 8800GT's. But as it stands, they play my games on a 1920 x 1080 res so I'm happy. If, however I was running an older system, irrespective of platform I would WANT i7 because of its power. But that said, in games would it really be much better than an AMD system half the price with the extra spent on a better GPU? Lets not forget you can always overclock, something I'm doing now to prolong the need to upgrade. Oh and because its also a lot of fun!

I think a good feature in CPC tbh would be to take someone with an old rig that wants an upgrade and give them about £500 to see where the money is spent. To add to this, different systems that need upgrading, so a C2D/Q thats 2 years old, like my rig or a 4 year old AMD X2 system..Obv. that money is ONLY to spend on Mobo/CPU and GPU as most people looking to upgrade I would hope already have a decent case/PSU.

 

what you got to realise is that i5 processors are not rebranded Core2's. the i5 processors is just i7 with hyperthreading disabled. single core speed is just as good as i7, and overclocked to the same speed (say 4Ghz), games play just as fast as other 4Ghz i7 processors.

the i5 does everything better, you cannot overclock "550 BE or C2Q" to 4Ghz easily, and in gaming (as you have defined to be every-day task) there is a possible CPU bottleneck that has been removed.

value for money wise, i5 is the best processor, considering it overclocks to i7's speed and is able to provide same level of gaming performance.

 

with the i5 using DDR3 and also a QPI link to the memory controller, thats the main bottleneck removed. So you have a super quick link to the memory and PCI, instead of the slow-ass FSB like the C2D and C2Q.

 

That's fair enough. On balance, with benchmarks, you're probably right. However, i5 isn't cheaper than i7 by enough to justify it IMO. And what I'm talking about is value. Maybe you can't get AMD or C2Q to 4ghz, but you can get both to play all the latest games with the right GPU, no? The CPU might be a bottleneck in benches and/or lose you a few fps, but is it REALLY noticeable?

Aside from games, with browsing, media viewing and general OS usage/office tasks, I'd be willing to bet you can barely tell the difference.

benji, that's my point. How much difference does the average user notice for their cash. In your case, you're already gaming at a reasonably high res on "old" hardware with the "rubbish" FSB

 

notice difference? none, but there's the matter of are you going to buy just enough and forget about upgrade or are you going to buy a product with upgrade path and able to perform on-par with highest end for around 20% less. (£550 i7 920 with good motherboard feature-wise and 6GB RAM vs £450 i5 750 with a good motherboard feature-wise comparible and 4GB of RAM)

 

So, if you concede there's no noticeable difference, but are willing to pay £450 for a degree of future-proofing, why not pay £550?

I'm not asking people to agree with me, I'm not expecting that. Just wondered what other people thought to the logic of that.

 

think of it this way. spend 100 quid more now and get a slight increase in performance, but save yourself 200 quid + in the future because you dont have to change your motherboard and RAM.

 

Thank you. So I'm not going mad, the logic does makes sense.

 

But who says that you're going to upgrade to 1366 in the future? The 1156 platform will have enough longevity to outlast both the 1156 and 1366 sockets and well into the next architecture/socket, so that's irrelevant. I look at it this way: I save £100 now, because I'm a poor student and that's a lot of money to me, and spend it on something else, be it a graphics card, SSD, or something completely different.

You also seem to missing the point. I don't care if I can't notice the difference between an i5 and a dual core AMD for the 60-70% of the time I'm just browsing the web or word processing. That's not the primary reason I base choosing components on, so why would it matter whether I could tell the difference for those uses? I base my decision on gaming performance first and foremost, and right now, though particularly looking forward, a quad-core CPU is becoming increasingly essential for optimal performance and multi-core utilisation and optimisation really takes off. And in the realms of quad-core CPUs, the i5 750 is relatively well priced, considering its performance and the pricing of the competition.

 

But again, you are buying based on future performance. Not how much better it is now. On that basis i7 is the way forward. I'm not saying there won't be 6 core CPUs for 1156, but we KNOW there will be for 1366, don't we?

 

Yes, but at a price beyond what most people can afford. It remains to be seen how long it will be before they become more reasonably priced to fall within even enthusiast's budgets.

To simplify: the 1366/Bloomfield platform is high-end, the 1156/Lynnfield platform is mainstream. I can't really afford, nor justify the difference in price for the high-end platform, and as the mainstream pricing is more within by budget, the decision is really made for me. Of course, I'm still waiting for prices to decrease a little like they did after the i7s were first released, then it will make a bit more sense economically.

 

i can see where you're coming from a little better now. but i personally disagree with certain points of view, like a 20-25% increase in spending is easily doable. but you can't help that really. people have different perceptions on value. and for that matter, there are many different individual pc-related needs. and surely you can understand that there are those that only game, thats it. they have no use for hyperthreading, or really anything more than a fast dual-core, and for those it makes perfect sense to go am3 550 now that 775 is dead. and there are those that need multi-core, and dont care about dual or triple x16 lanes (which bit showed dual 16 is not that much better than dual 8 or 16 and 4). if they are on a budget, like me, i5 is the way to go. i can't justify a 20-25% increase for 5-10% more performance. sure i may save money in the long run because i may not have to completely upgrade platforms, but the money in my bank now means more to me than the money that may or may not be in my bank later...

 

There's always room for mid-range. Even for bottom-end stuff. My brother, for example, could happily live with a dual-core machine, and a decentish graphics card, because if he ever made the jump from console gamer to PC, he'd have the settings at console-quality, and be happy with it.

My mum would only need maybe a single-core machine, because she doesn't do much except Office and the web. There'd be no point getting the top-end stuff for her.

I, however, have a i7-920 and Quadfire. Let the epeen begin!

 

I never said that it was easily doable. I just think it makes a lot of sense to either:
a) If you want the best performance go i7
b) If you're on a budget, go AMD

But you're right, different people have different ideas of value. It's good to see that we can have an interesting debate on the issue and disagree, but understand each other. Very few forums offer that in my experience.

 

Double post

 

Yeah, but that's bottom-end right now, not mid-range. Which is precisely my point. The bottom-end is currently the best it's ever been and consequently I don't think the mid-range offers much over and above, for the amount of money it differs by.

 

i wouldnt call dual-core cpus bottom-end by any means.

bottom-end is currently netbooks/nettops with atom cpus, or those dirt cheap pcs with sempron cpus.

 

What I meant was, in the context of our current discussion:
Bottom-end = dual core
Mid-range = quad core
High-end = i7

 

It's interesting you say that you don't think that mid-range offers much above the low-end, because for me the biggest differences are between the low-end dual-core AMD CPUs and the mid-range quad-core i5s, while there are little gains between that and the high-end Bloomfield chips. At least you have major architectural differences and twice the number of cores between the low-end and mid-range CPUs to justify the extra cost; the higher end CPUs (in your scenario) simply come with extra features on the same architectural platform that you may or may not benefit from - they offer virtually the same performance clock-for-clock.

 

Agreed. Architecturally and benchmark wise, the biggest gap is between bottom-end and mid-range. However, my point was, that's also the biggest gap money wise and I don't believe it offers great value for that money gap, based on everyday usage (and gaming). I thought some people might have actually understood me now, but perhaps I'm not explaining very well.

Whereas i7 doesn't just offer more performance now, but for the considerably smaller money gap between it and mid-range, it offers a degree of future proofing and longevity rarely seen in PC hardware terms.