CPU Selection (My Internal Debate)

[Arbiter_Arbiter]

My appologies if this thread has been done before but after searching around several forums I still have no solution to my debate. I will be upgrading my CPU/MB and installing windows 8.1 in the future.

My current build is roughly:

Asus P6t Deluxe V2
i7 920@ 3.6 GHz
GTX 780
3x2GB RAM
600GB HDD
240GBSSD
Windows 7 64-bit

computer usage=gaming

I would like another Intel CPU so I have limited myself to i5 4670k and i7 4770k but then the option of waiting for next gen CPUs (later this year) is an option because I do not need to URGENTLY replace my CPU as it runs wonderfully and I have only recently began to enjoy the easy overclocking abilities.

I know the 4670k can pretty much run any game and the 4770k is good for a lot of video rendering software and what have you. I am interested in whether the threading of the 4770k will be an advantage NOW in BF4 and LATER for future games designed with the same threading in mind.

I have the money to spend on either option, but just would like to spend the money wisely. BF4 is my main game right now so that is a major factor in my decision. I had to disable Hyper Threading on my i7 920 because it caused staggering issues in BF4. I am not certain is BF4 would run the same with the 4770 hyper threading.

 

[DarkSable]

Hyperthreading shouldn't affect games. The games it does affect are poorly coded.

The reason I say this is because hyperthreading only affects double-precision calculations - i.e. calculations that have to be accurate out to some hundredth decimal place. No game should be making more than a bare handful of these sorts of calculations - there's simply not any need for that sort of accuracy. There are a very very few (think about 5) games that gain a ~3% benefit from it, and about the same number that "support" hyperthreading but actually perform worse or have serious issues with it.

Battlefield 4 is one of those, and you'll have the same stuttering issues with hyperthreading on an i7.

Save yourself the $100 - you won't see any benefit for gaming, and a modern i5 like that, especially when overclocked, is MORE than enough for video rendering unless saving a few seconds means money - i.e. you do it professionally or for school.

 

[Arbiter_Arbiter]

Interesting information you presented. I thank you a lot because it confirms my belief. Even in the benchmarks the 4770k and 4670k perform almost identically with the 4770k having a slight advantage.

I was more worried about whether I should wait for next gen Intel CPUs since my i7 920 still works well for me right now maybe a bit slow with bf4 @1440p.

I also wanted to take into account the future of games and their design and if newer games will incorporate usage of multiple threads. I know, it is the future and only time will tell...

 

[DarkSable]

Let me again state this: hyperthreading ONLY applies to double-precision workloads. So even if games magically went from being dual-threaded (at best) console ports to quad/octo-threaded, hyperthreading wouldn't be of any more benefit.

The reason the i7 has a slight advantage is because the tests were done at stock, and the i7 has slightly higher stock clocks - after overclocking, they're basically the same.

As for waiting for the next gen, I wouldn't bother, because it's not just waiting for the next gen to be released, you then have to wait a few months for production to settle out so you don't have to worry about getting a highly binned chip or not.

In addition, I would be surprised if broadwell saw as much as a 10% performance difference from Haswell anyways, judging by the past three or four releases.