about core i5 3470s

yakamaster

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Apr 15, 2014
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a friend f mine is gonna buy a i5 3470s processor. since he doesn't know nothing about this S series of i5 processors i thought starting a thread. he is getting this for gaming. is this a wise choice?for what specific purpose these s processors are built?can we use it for gaming?(he is getting because it is cheap and has a lower TDP)
 
Solution


If he had a 2-core CPU I'd say sure, go for it but he appears to have a 4-core so I'm not sure how much better performance he would get since I don't know what CPU he has. Just make sure the MOTHERBOARD supports it and his BIOS is also up to date if need be.

I made a mistake and used the "i5-3570s" which exists but I couldn't find a link through pcpartpicker. The i5-3470s only goes to 3.6GHz.

That's as good as you can get really unless getting an i5-3570K which is 3.8GHz Turbo but costs a little more and won't overclock unless your motherboard supports that.

So the i5-3470s seems like a good choice if he's adamant, but unless he's going to...
http://ark.intel.com/products/65701/Intel-Core-i5-3570S-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz

The main thing you really care about is the TURBO frequency. It's 3.8GHz which is comparable to other i5-3xxx CPU's if the same frequency. Not sure about the "S" suffix but I think it's not important; may refer to the lower end iGPU which he's never use anyway.

If he was building a new PC I'd recommend an i5-4xxx if he can find one for comparable value as Haswell is 10% better than Ivy at the same frequency. The i5-4460 has a max Turbo of 3.4GHz which compares to the i5-3470s since 1.1x3.4 = 3.74.

The i5-4670 has a max Turbo of 3.8GHz so it's exactly 10% better than the i5-3470s, and of course you can get an i5-4690K if you can justify the cost. I do for $1000+ builds usually but not below as the $50 difference might make sense elsewhere such as a better graphics card.

There are several choices but again I'd build with the Haswell i5-4xxx in general but it COMPLETELY DEPENDS ON THE OVERALL BUDGET.
 


If he had a 2-core CPU I'd say sure, go for it but he appears to have a 4-core so I'm not sure how much better performance he would get since I don't know what CPU he has. Just make sure the MOTHERBOARD supports it and his BIOS is also up to date if need be.

I made a mistake and used the "i5-3570s" which exists but I couldn't find a link through pcpartpicker. The i5-3470s only goes to 3.6GHz.

That's as good as you can get really unless getting an i5-3570K which is 3.8GHz Turbo but costs a little more and won't overclock unless your motherboard supports that.

So the i5-3470s seems like a good choice if he's adamant, but unless he's going to benefit a lot I think there's better ways to spend his money.
 
Solution
Read this: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2405317,00.asp

"Ivy Bridge is faster—but just a little. Performance generally improves more between "ticks" and "tocks" than between "tocks" and "ticks," and you can see this in the relationship between Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge. In our testing, for example, an Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge processor earned in our CineBench R11.5 multicore rendering test a score of 1.65, compared with a Core i7-2700K (the fastest Sandy Bridge chip) in the same system earning 1.58. The chips' scores in PCMark 7 (3,679 versus 3,867) and times in Adobe Photoshop CS5 (2 minutes 47 seconds versus 2:50) and Handbrake 0.9.6 (32 seconds versus 31 seconds) also bear this out. So you will see speed bumps, but they'll be small this time around."

So unless his current CPU has a fairly low Turbo he's not going to see much improvement at all.