i3 3220 vs i7 860

[Josh The Pirate]

I'm thinking of upgrading my computer so that it can run games like bf4 better. At the moment I have an i3 3220 and when I told my dad, he offered the CPU from his PC which is the i7 860. I know that that is quite an old CPU but is it worth using considering I'd rather not spend a lot of money. Would it increase performance in games like bf4 and in general computing tasks?

 

[NormH]

in gaming the i7 wins. the i3 is faster per core and is better at general computing but speaking in terms of gaming the i7 with 4 cores and hyperthreading wins hands down.

http://www.game-debate.com/cpu/index.php?pid=912&pid2=479&compare=core-i3-3220-3-3ghz-vs-core-i7-860-quad-2-80ghz

 

[CTurbo]

You will probably see a increase because of doubling your core/thread count, but I wouldn't "upgrade" to a way older cpu. It won't fit your motherboard anyway.

 

[Supahos]

Intel Core i7 860 @ 2.80GHz 5,099

Intel Core i3-3220 @ 3.30GHz 4,211


There can be more to the story than this, and its not a huge upgrade but the 860 does bench better than the I3

 

[oxiide]

I'm thinking of upgrading my computer so that it can run games like bf4 better. At the moment I have an i3 3220 and when I told my dad, he offered the CPU from his PC which is the i7 860. I know that that is quite an old CPU but is it worth using considering I'd rather not spend a lot of money. Would it increase performance in games like bf4 and in general computing tasks?

I think in most actual real-world gaming scenarios, the i3 would be a bit faster than that old Lynnfield i7. The only thing that i7 has going for it over an Ivy Bridge Core i3 is that its got eight logical cores, that most games still get very little or no benefit from.

The Ivy Bridge architecture, on the other hand, is 15-20% faster in raw per-core performance and runs at a considerably faster clock speed on top of it, and that's what games tend to reward in a tangible way.

Its true that BF4 puts cores to better use than most games, but I bet if your performance in it is poor, its your video card at fault, not your CPU.

Intel Core i7 860 @ 2.80GHz 5,099

Intel Core i3-3220 @ 3.30GHz 4,211


There can be more to the story than this, and its not a huge upgrade but the 860 does bench better than the I3

What exactly do those figures even mean? What are the units?

You cannot boil down a comparison between two architectures years apart meaningfully to a single, oversimplified metric. It doesn't tell you anywhere near enough.

 

[Supahos]

It would be with the cores fully loaded. You are right many games it would be slighly slower than the I3, but Most new games can use 4 cores and I suspect in a 4 core game the performance would be pretty close between the two, and BF4 I would bet the 850 would pull ahead. I guess it depends on what he does the most with his build.

It is a bit of a sideways grade (not really up or down) if its free, IE mobo/cpu both free I might consider it I woudln't buy a board to put that in however.

 

[Josh The Pirate]

It would be with the cores fully loaded. You are right many games it would be slighly slower than the I3, but Most new games can use 4 cores and I suspect in a 4 core game the performance would be pretty close between the two, and BF4 I would bet the 850 would pull ahead. I guess it depends on what he does the most with his build.

It is a bit of a sideways grade (not really up or down) if its free, IE mobo/cpu both free I might consider it I woudln't buy a board to put that in however.

I mainly game on this PC and my graphics card is radeon hd 7850 if that helps

 

[Supahos]

Will you have to buy a board for the I7? or your dad still have it? I wouldn't spend any money to try it, but I would drop it in my case and try it out if it were all free. That is just my opinion however.

 

[CTurbo]

Honestly I wouldn't bother. Just save up until you can get an i5 for your LGA1155.

 

[Josh The Pirate]

Will you have to buy a board for the I7? or your dad still have it? I wouldn't spend any money to try it, but I would drop it in my case and try it out if it were all free. That is just my opinion however.

I get the board aswell, I wouldn't have to buy one

 

[Supahos]

Then its entirely up to you. Its a trial. If you have the chops (and time) you can try it, if you don't like it you can always go back

 

[oxiide]

It would be with the cores fully loaded. You are right many games it would be slighly slower than the I3, but Most new games can use 4 cores and I suspect in a 4 core game the performance would be pretty close between the two, and BF4 I would bet the 850 would pull ahead. I guess it depends on what he does the most with his build.

It is a bit of a sideways grade (not really up or down) if its free, IE mobo/cpu both free I might consider it I woudln't buy a board to put that in however.

Here's the thing, though: just because Battlefield 4 has something for all eight logical cores to do, doesn't mean that those extra cores really make a tangible difference to the end result performance. Not every thread is doing something equally vital to framerate.

In this case, however, I don't think that would even matter. In BF4 even if we were comparing the i3-3220 to an i7 of its own generation, the i7-3770K, I think we'd still see GPU-limited performance. The OP's i3-3220 is plenty to get him to 90-120 FPS, if he has the video hardware to do it.

I do not think the OP is going to see any difference between the two processors in BF4, and if he did, my money would be on the i3 rather than a 4-year old i7.