fergusD

Honorable
Jan 6, 2013
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Hi,

Putting together a new rig (Mostly geared towards playing Planetside 2) - I know it relies on your CPU a fair bit and have been looking at some benchmark comparisons - it appears the i7 3770k give higher returns than the much more expensive i7 3970X and was wondering if anyone could shed some light on this?

1) Is this likely to hold true on future CPU reliant titles? (Lower core count CPU's giving higher returns?)

2) Is this accurate from anyone's experience?

Don't get me wrong - I think it's ace, a £240 CPU giving better returns than a £780 CPU - I was just a bit surprised that it was giving BETTER returns - suggesting it's not caused by a GPU bottleneck?

Thanks,
 

crisan_tiberiu

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Nov 22, 2010
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go with the 3770k, there isnt any modern title that will kneel even a i5 3570k ...so, better save the extra 540 for a gtx 680 or a Radeon 7970. But if you allready choosed one of theese video cards in your budget then go for an SSD a better MB and a better PSU. Its no point to ruin 540$ on the 3970x for gaming
 

blacknemesist

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Oct 18, 2012
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The I7-3790x is sandy bridge while the i7-3770k is Ivy bridge.
Ivy bridge is ~7% faster than sandy at same clock so the i7-3770k at 3.5ghz is the same than a i7-3790k running at 3,745ghz.
Since most games dont use the 6 cores of the i7-3790x the i7-3770k preforms slightly better because it has more speed per core.
Although when games use 6 cores the i7-3790x will jump over the i7-3770k.

I don't know this from experience but from reading,the ivy bridge is faster around 7% than the sandy bridge given the same core speed.
 
That is because Ivy Bridges is faster than Sandy Bridges. I would go with the I7 3770K but really an I5 will be more than enough. If anything the I7 is a waste of money because you are paying 100 dollar more for hyperthreading and more memory cache two things that games don't make use of. There really is no point in getting an I7 it won't give you any better performance than an I5.
 

Voltaire1778

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Jan 12, 2013
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Go with the i5 3570k, any game you play won't make use of the hyper threading in the i7 and they are bothy quad cores.