Question i5 3470 -> upgrade i7 2600 or i5 3570k

LukasPT

Reputable
Jun 24, 2016
4
0
4,510
Hello I have this HW specs

CPU - i5 3470 - OC 3.6 - 3.8 I guess, increased base freq, not know exactly now
MB - MSI Z77 g45
GPU - GTX 1060 3GB
500W PSU

Is it worth upgrade to i7 2600 non K (45 usd) or i5 3570K (few buck, maybe 25-30?).

I streaming through OBS by with NVENC GPU. Playing games, but not new heavy AAA. Work with Affinity Photo (Photoshop equivalent app) and using normally PC.

Is it worth i7 with HT and 4 more cores? Or K version of i5? Few FPS at games is not worth it for me. Will be CPU load lowered with running app in the background or not?

I want to upgrade someday the whole PC at new architecture after 1 or 2 years, maybe later, I don't know. But help me this upgrade to delay the whole PC upgrade?

Thanks for advice
 

Eximo

Titan
Ambassador
If you were going to throw money at that system, might as well be an i7-3770. Get the most out of it while you can.

3570k would be a very minor improvement. I7-2600 will get you more threads, but slightly less per-core performance. And, depending on the motherboard, you will drop from PCIe 3.0 to 2.0 on your x8/x16 slots.
 

Eximo

Titan
Ambassador
i7-3770k then, and a decent heatsink for some overclocking. i5-3570k is a little more appealing since you could overclock it, but it would still be a relatively minor improvement.

Streaming will benefit from more threads certainly. So if that is the biggest consideration then an i7 is a good idea. Depends on what you want to spend on this intermediate step, but for 1-2 years, a used i7 is a decent investment.
 

LukasPT

Reputable
Jun 24, 2016
4
0
4,510
i7-3770k then, and a decent heatsink for some overclocking. i5-3570k is a little more appealing since you could overclock it, but it would still be a relatively minor improvement.

Streaming will benefit from more threads certainly. So if that is the biggest consideration then an i7 is a good idea. Depends on what you want to spend on this intermediate step, but for 1-2 years, a used i7 is a decent investment.

But when I am streaming through GPU card, not through the CPU? Do more threads lower my overall CPU load? Or with more thread benefit only a few apps?

So i7 2600 is not so much worth right? Single core power will go down. I know i7-3770k is better but at Czech Republic cost between 100 and 140 USD, sometimes more.
 

Eximo

Titan
Ambassador
CPU still has to process the commands sent to the GPU and deal with the results afterwards.

Reducing load isn't really the way to look at it. You essentially gain bandwidth, so the CPU can do more with each clock cycle. 1 core with 1 thread can do one job at a time, so it will bounce between tasks to make it appear simultaneous. Hyperthreading essentially allows two concurrent paths through the core, so it can do two jobs at once. Very simplified and it isn't quite like having 8 cores, but logically that is the case.

Many softwares benefits from more threads, but it certainly isn't all of them. More and more games are running more than 4 threads pretty hard, it will start to become noticeable. i7 CPUs also have more cache, the fastest memory, than i5s, so there is also some gains there.

3770k are sought after because it is the fastest chip available for the 1155 socket. Same is true of the i7-860 and i7-4790k. A little early for the used market on 7700k, you can still technically buy those, though not much reason to. Only you can judge if the cost is worth it.