Question 4 PC Techies/Gamers

[Werewolf]

I'm shopping for a gaming rig right now.

Is there $400 worth of performance difference between a 4 core i5 no hyperthreading cpu and an i7 4 core with hyperthreading both clocked at 3.6 Ghz.

Ignore the GPU variable.

 

[LightningCrash]

In my opinion, no.

Also there shouldn't be a $400 delta between the two... can you give more details?

The only recent stock-clocked 3.6GHz i7 is the I7-4790, and it should only be ~$310-$325 to begin with. That shouldn't make for a $400 delta on an I5.
Also there is no recent I5 stock-clocked at 3.6GHz . Only the 2010 dual core i5s were stock-clocked at 3.6GHz

If someone wants to charge you an extra $400 to go from an I5 to an I7-4790 then that's probably just a ripoff.

 

[Werewolf]

In my opinion, no.

Also there shouldn't be a $400 delta between the two... can you give more details?

The only recent stock-clocked 3.6GHz i7 is the I7-4790, and it should only be ~$310-$325 to begin with. That shouldn't make for a $400 delta on an I5.
Also there is no recent I5 stock-clocked at 3.6GHz . Only the 2010 dual core i5s were stock-clocked at 3.6GHz

If someone wants to charge you an extra $400 to go from an I5 to an I7-4790 then that's probably just a ripoff.

Pricing comes from www.xidax.com and not on the CPU's but the whole built up thing. You can go in and custom configure what you want. The i7might both be 3.6 GHz, I was going off memory from a long list.

My thinking was that few games are coded to use multiple cores, (though that is slowly changing) and that the difference between an i5 and an i7 (you're right the i7 is a 4790, the i5 is a 4460 or something) would essentially be irrelevant unless one was doing stuff like video editing for example (which I'm not).

I'm trying to get something that will let me average 60 FPS on most current games with 4xAA and 4xMSAA turned on. Figured 8Gb system ram minimum but 16Gb better using at least DDR4 at 1866 and 4Gb DDR5 Vram on the GPU card minimum. Maybe SLI 960's or a single 970 or even a 980.

What I want would run me about $2450 and that's too much just to play games but $1800 isn't and I can get close to that but only with an i5, DDR3 at 1600 Mhz and a 4Gb nvidia 960.

I'd build it myself (been there and done that) but am getting too old, slow and lazy to want to bother anymore.

I'm open to suggestions? What factors might I be missing? I'd like to have a water cooled CPU (tired of cleaning okie dust out of the air cooled CPU fins), SSD main drive and 7200 RPM HDD. Multiple fans (like 3) a decent sound card, ethernet (don't need nor want wi-fi - got a wifi router that's used for PS, roku, wife's PC etc but not mine which is hard wired to the router). Standard DVD RW (who needs bluray for a PC anyway).

If I do decide to upgrade to the latest and greatest it'll be early June sometime.

Like I said - suggestions welcome.

 

[gunluvingirl]

When it comes to computers basically get the best you can afford at the time because in 6 mths it will be old tech since the life cycles are so short. If gaming will be the primary function then pick a good GPU and squeeze at last two or more of them into your pc to utilize the multiple GPUs for gaming.

 

[NightShade]

I recently started dealing with a FreeNAS computer I am building and I want to toss a little info out there on some benchmarking.

I mine a particular crypto coin from time to time and as far as a CPU benchmark it works pretty well. My wife's i7 laptop runs the coin around 440 Khash/s the same coin on my fx8350 runs around 500 Khash/s a pair of Xeon 5640's @2.6Ghz was able to hash at around 650 Khash/s The Xeon's cost me 55 dollars for both used, the fx 8350 costs three times that new.

The reason why I am throwing this info out there is that if I were to build a computer today I would pick up a workstation board that supports x16 PCIe cards with a pair of Xeon's of at least 5640 or higher (5660's go up from 4 core with hyperthreading to 6 core with hyperthreading and can be found on ebay around 80 each). The Xeon's I have with the board also supports 192GB of ram which is overkill for the most part but are TRI channel so even if they only support ddr3 1333 it is still very fast because it uses three channels rather than two at around 1600 and unless you are willing to buy fast memory with tight timing you will see better performance with the tri channel setup. You also have two cpu's with tri channel and they have an even faster interconnect that allows the transfer of information from one cpu's memory to the other at the bare minimum of say 4GB of ram populating just 3 of the slots for each cpu there will be 24GB of ram. With a pair of 5640's you get 8 cpu cores and hyperthreading and each cpu has 12MB of cache. Right now consumer cpu's are starting to step up to this level and you are going to pay nosebleed prices for it. By dropping to a little older tech you can get it at a reduced price. And if you play your cards right you can find one that has SATA as well as SAS. My server board is http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DT6-F.cfm but if you were looking for a workstation board I would go with something like http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/qpi/5500/x8da3.cfm And most games that are made today support at least dual core systems and a lot work with up to four beyond that is just candy for other apps to use.

The downside to my idea is that there is NO overclocking and you have to have a PSU with TWO cpu 12v 8 pin power connectors while a regular motherboard will only require one. A application that is not setup for multiple cores will not see performance gains unless you have one core that is very fast. You will have to get a case that supports ExtendedATX, the board is over 12 by 13 inches so basically massive. If you use off the shelf DDR3 ram that is non ecc and unregistered which is the majority of ram you will be limited to 48GB max. You will have to use a Professional or ultimate version of windows as the "home" version will not be able to use both cpu's Linux however has no such limitation. Finally crossfire or SLI will be a crapshoot. A lot of times the workstation boards are designed to have SLI due to their use with CAD CAM and other graphics intensive applications but they do not guarantee support from what I have read though crossfire does work on the board I linked above.

Multiple GPU's are great for some stuff but some games do not work perfectly with it. I generally try and buy a card that is about the max I can afford today and in six months to a year get one that is identical at a lower price and run dual. You will find though that any games ran in windowed mode will not use both cards. It must be full screen so if you run WoW or Starcraft in windowed mode so you can have other information open on a second game you are just better off spending more money on the graphics card than you would if you planned to add a second card.


Do what you want this is MY theory on stuff and the way I do things when I game is I end up having the game running with software for the mouse and keyboard as well as a browser with music playing and often times a voice chat app. They all take CPU cycles and will work together better with more than 4 cores which is the reason why I upgraded from a Phenom II x4 965 to the fx 8350. Plus having access to a SAS controller opens up a CRAPLOAD of storage. My FreeNAS box will have 7 HDD's to start with and I can add 7 more later on. I will have 12TB of storage using 3tb drives and can have any 3 drives fail and not lose a thing stored on the array. The SAS controller can have a chip picked up if you are going to use windows that will give the controller raid 5 support or you can use windows software raid, still 14 total drive connections is hard to pass up.

 

[tRidiot]

If you're crypto-mining, the energy consumption of those older CPUs in a dual-CPU server board and the higher-end power supply you need will likely eat up more than your cost difference in the grand scheme. Yes, you'll probably make more in mining, but just looking at initial outlay, though you'll save some, the electricity costs if you run it continuously will be significantly higher - or at least I'd think so. Just to be clear, I have NEVER mined, so I haven't done any real research into it... I'm just an old-school overclocker. lol

 

[loudshirt]

What games are you planning on playing?

 

[Werewolf]

What games are you planning on playing?

I do RPG's and they get more and more graphically demanding all the time. Currently playing Dragon Age: Inquisition which I can only get about 30 FPS out of with my current PC and that's with graphics set to medium. I've become pretty good at tweaking the settings both in program and with the nVidia profiler and control panel. Haven't played SkyRim for a while but with all the mods and stuff I could eak out around 35 FPS with most things set to high.

DCS: World with A10C installed, F-15, SU-27, KA-50. Those things I can get around 30 FPS with med/high settings but that's only just flying around; if I fly a scenario with lots happening - well that = unplayable. I also play Rise of Flight with about the same results as with DCS. (I love flight sims and DCS and ROF are about the only ones around that even comes close to the likes of Falcon 4 and Red Baron/Knights of the Sky - at least that I'm aware of - not a fan of the IL-2 series at all).

I also play a number of naval wargames and some hex based wargames, the Close Combat series (3 that I still play) along with Combat Mission (which is the only wargame that is graphics intensive and not that much compared to RPG's). And I've been playing GTA V for the last two weeks which is pretty demanding graphically but I can avg around 30 FPS with it with most settings set to normal and some set to very high.

Got my current PC back in 2010. It has an i7 2670 that runs at 2.4Ghz with turbo up to 3Ghz. 8GB system ram and an nVidia GTX560 with 2Gb VRAM. It still does the job but stuff now is to the point where I can only run stuff graphically with FXAA turned on and no MLAA (or 2X sometimes) and never any MSAA (except on some of the older stuff I play).

PC is getting a bit long in the tooth and I'd really like to run games with AA and MSAA cranked up to at least 4, Ambient Occlusion turned on and get around 60 FPS.

 

[NightShade]

If you're crypto-mining, the energy consumption of those older CPUs in a dual-CPU server board and the higher-end power supply you need will likely eat up more than your cost difference in the grand scheme. Yes, you'll probably make more in mining, but just looking at initial outlay, though you'll save some, the electricity costs if you run it continuously will be significantly higher - or at least I'd think so. Just to be clear, I have NEVER mined, so I haven't done any real research into it... I'm just an old-school overclocker. lol

Will it use more power than a current level cpu yes. A pair of 5640's @ 80 watts each for a total of 160 watts a high end i7 is around 140 watts. When you overclock that i7 you're going to be well over the 160 and your idle wattage will be higher than the pair. Your also going to pay a huge premium for that newer tech and the 5600 series cpu's are dirt cheap. I did not say my idea didn't have some caveats and while I am basing some info off the crypto mining the overall performance per dollar spent on hardware especially the cpu is very good.

 

[Viper16]

When I researched my rig I built 6 months ago, I was reading about the importance of the GPU/RAM/SSD is higher than the the difference between a i5 to i7. Why not build it yourself? I built a i7-4790K, 780 GPU, 16gb of ram, 512GB SSD, PSU, CASE, etc..for around $1400.00. Hell I could help you if you need help, but I am in Tulsa Area.

I would not get anything below 970 GPU, even though the GPU is no future proof. Spring for a 980 if you can for future gaming. I would stay away from sli...its a pain and runs the case hot, and only a 1.5 performance increase IMO.

Wouldn't go less than 16gb, and wouldn't go less than i5-4690K (get the K they are cheaper, as they are unlocked [you can overclock if you like]).

Of course all this depends on the resolution of your monitor and if you choose to run 2k or 4k gaming resolutions.