i5 or i7 for gaming longevity?

[draconicessence]

I was thinking of upgrading my Pentium G3258 to either an i5 or an i7. I was curious as to if I should buy an i5 and save a few bucks, or an i7 and hopefully use it to game a few years more than an i5. But now I'm wondering if the i7 will be of any added benefit, even with hyperthreading. Will the Haswell architecture become obsolete 5-7 years down the road therefore making an i7's hyperthreaded gaming advantages (when future games take advantage of 4 physical and logical cores) pointless?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

i7 is the future.

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

i7, definitely. But I play games with a lot uof simulation and animations. In FPS shooters an i3 is enough even. Buy the Xeon 1230 or 1231 V3if on Haswell.

 

[gussrtk]

Honestly man, take the i5. Like 6500. There is no future proof. And what I mean by that is.... There is only "what you can put up with". i7 down the road in 4 years will also start becoming "not enough" and you will upgrade some small things... OC the CPU and you'll use it for a little while longer. But then you'll get fed up and buy a new system anyways. You can get 6500 cheap mobo, save a couple/few hundred bucks depends where you live. And in 3 years do same.

But that's my opinion.

It also depends which games you like to play, if you have a lot of O play, and your budget for today.

 

[Chugalug_]

I second what gus said, although the i7 (if you get a k variant) will be much more futureproof.
It all depends on your budget, an i5 will still be futureproof for the next few years, but with DX12 and the upcoming better utilization of hyperthreaded cores, the i7 is the definite choice.

 

[Martell1977]

If you plan to have the system for several years before upgrading or replacing it, get the i7. I bought my i7 almost 6 years ago and I still have no issues running anything I throw at it...and I haven't overclocked it yet. The i5 is the sweet spot for games now, but as things progress, the i7 will hold up longer. Odds are you will replace the GPU much sooner than the CPU.

So the real question is: how long do you plan on keeping the CPU? Short term (1-3 years), get the i5. Longer term (3+) i7 should hold up better.