i3 + high end graphics card?

[cytg111]

why the difference between the i5 and i7 with no HT ?

 

[davie jambo]

i would not go dual core with console games to be heavily multithreaded (8 cores on ps4)

That doesn't seem very wise/futureproof

6 puny cores tbf

Having said that I'd not try to game on anything lower than an i5

 

[skipsneeky2]

From my own experience a core i3 2100 was a good enough match up against something of like a 6850. Even had a thread when i bought one showing some charts of usage in BF3. Held up well with a 6850 for another guy too. Max framerate pretty much was determined by the card still but it was balanced without either being over the top.

Personally a higher end i3 wouldn't be something i would match up with anything pass a gtx670/7950 in the demanding games like BF4. Of course any single card could tank with a lower fps then the i3 would deliver but overall for maximum performance with respectable settings i think a 7950/670 would be perfect.

 

[escrow4]

why the difference between the i5 and i7 with no HT ?

i7s have 2MB more L3 cache and its 16 way associative (apparently) vs 12 way on Haswell i5s.

 

[toyota]

This is the most accurate benchmark of the ones you posted.

It's a shame that sites no longer do proper benchmarking.
Here's how it's supposed to be done:

GPU Testing:
Build a machine with the fastest CPU available. Set the game to the highest resolution with the highest settings. Run the test.

CPU Testing:
Build a machine with the fastest GPU available. Set the game to the lowest resolution and lowest settings. Run the test. This ensures absolutely no GPU bottleneck is happening. This is why tests with chips like the Pentium 4 would show 300+ frames per second in Quake 3. A new chip might get 330 frames instead of 300 frames per second. That was an accurate comparison of real performance and future proofing.

Today, we get these garbage benchmarks that are virtually meaningless. People run the CPU test at 4k resolution with the highest settings and conclude that a $50 CPU is the same as a $300 CPU because all of the chips got roughly 50fps. They completely ignore the fact that the poorly designed test was actually testing the GPU, and all of the results were the same because it was the same GPU used in every test. 2 years from now, the people who bought an i3 will be scratching their heads and wondering why they can't play games released in 2016 but the guys with an i7 can.

that part is wrong. you lower the res but you turn on all settings except AA. many settings impact the cpu so running lowest settings tells you nothing at all about how a cpu will really perform.

 

[Deders]

It all depends on what aspect you want to test. If you are going for pure CPU performance then sure drop the res and minimum detail, but if you want to see how it performs in real life situations when making a decision on what you want to invest or recommend to people then that is the scenario that should be tested.

 

[Spungo]

i would not go dual core with console games to be heavily multithreaded (8 cores on ps4)

That's a really good point. Consoles are a big factor in this, and most games are multiplatform. I think the Xbox 360 was a 3 core system. PS3 was something like 1 main core and 7 workers. I can't remember exactly how it worked, but the PS3 was really weird and the Xbox 360 had a more familiar CPU design. There wasn't much reason to try dividing a game among 4 cores. I seem to remember GTA4 being one of the first games that really did well with a quad core. My E6600 could play that game, but it wasn't spectacular performance. The Q6600 could handle that game a lot better.

 

[l1amrob]

For the next couple of years, Im betting we will see much better CPU optimization in games for effects and AI. Developers will take advantage on this new gen console to "easily" port it to PC.

 

[ShintaiDK]

i would not go dual core with console games to be heavily multithreaded (8 cores on ps4)

That doesn't seem very wise/futureproof

The PS4 doesnt have 8 cores for gaming, it got 6. And they are very very weak. And the i3 runs in circles around those cores, even if you use all 8.

With that said I would get a quad. Specially since 99.x% of all new future games will be DX11.x and not DX12 or Mantle.