Is This Even Fair? Budget Ivy Bridge Takes On Core 2 Duo And Quad

[flong777]

After helping numerous people on the forums with "budget" gaming rigs, for the life of me I cannot understand why they do not save their pennies a little longer and buy the 3570 instead of the myriad of cheaper choices. You can pick it up on sale for $180 and the cost difference to shift down just is insignificant compared the the performance jump you get for the extra $50.

Most people do not have a local Microcenter for those cheap i5-3570k and $50 discount on motherboards.

Looking at this article, I would say it demonstrates that i3-322x is a pretty decent option for gamers who aren't hell-bent on maxing out everything all the time. For people who have to buy their parts at normal market rates, the difference between i3+h77 and i5k+z77 is $100-150 for about 30% extra performance not counting overclocking.

Personally, I do not consider the i5-3570k any more futureproof than an i5-3470 or even i3-3220 since a 20% overclock over stock or 30-50% better performance than the lower-end parts is unlikely to make or break most games and applications. Sure, you won't be maxing out details on a "budget" system but then again, people who shop in the "value segment" for PC parts usually do not mind tuning things down a few notches until they get playable performance.

This article shows that the C2D-E8400 is still a somewhat workable gaming chip six years later but someone who holds on their PC for 5+ years is going to have a dozen other reasons to want to upgrade the motherboard too: faster PCIe, faster USB, faster SATA, new RAM standard, new CPU socket, simpler/cleaner layout due to more stuff integrated in the CPU/chipset, more power-efficient, etc. I ended up ditching my E8400 mainly because I needed 16GB RAM but 16GB DDR2 cost as much as i3+h77+16GB DDR3 so getting 16GB DDR2 made no sense.

Personally, I prefer buying only what I expect to need for the foreseeable future and put the $100-150 I save doing that (vs going high-end+OC) towards my next system 4-5 years down the road. As much as my inner-geek would like an i7-3770k or i7-3960X, I know I won't really need more than an i5-3330 any time soon so I compromised with an i5-3470 which had the best stock bang-per-buck at the time. Even if I went high-end+OC, I would likely still end up wanting to replace my PC ~5 years down the road due to everything else that changed anyway, thereby rendering any further "future-proofing investments" moot.

Not everyone is a hardcore/twitch/competitive gamer who needs/wants to max out everything all the time regardless of price tag.

Your last sentence is a very good point. Different people have different "needs for speed" as Tom Cruise said. I personally cannot stand a slow computer, it is like scraping your fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Other people are more patient than I am.

When I help others with their computers I do tend to see the world through the prism (paradigm) of what I like and what I feel is important. Different people may not feel the same way I do.

For those like me that need a fast computer and can't stand pauses and long download times and so forth, probably one of the cheaper, slower CPUs would suffice. But it seems that most people do want the fastest computer possible and in that case getting the 3570K with an appropriate mobo (and hopefully a 120GB SSD) is the smart way to go. That's why Intel makes all of these CPUs because different people require different levels of power in their PC.

 

[none12345]

So 5 years and a i5-3570k is only about 25% faster then a core 2 quad q9550? And if you take the clock speed increase into account its only what 5% faster?

What a joke...

Sure performance/watt is much better....but man how boring.

 

[flong777]

[citation][nom]flong777[/nom]I have a gold-rated 850W PSU and a Noctua NH-D14 and so if I need more power all I have to do is overclock and it doesn't cost me a dime. In the long-term view this saves me money. [/citation]

It cost you however many dimes you spent on your aftermarket cooler.

[citation][nom]flong777[/nom]I am saying that for $40-$75 more, the 3570K blows away the lower cost CPUs and $40-$75 is not a lot of money when you are building a computer. The 3570K will maintain its speed competence much longer than the cheaper CPUs and thus will save the builder money. [/citation]

At similar clock rates, the 3570k buys you a little more than 50% more CPU performance in multi-threaded apps than the i3 3220. Off the top of my head, the 3220 costs about $120. The 3570k costs about $220. Almost double the cost for 1.5 times the performance isn't a slam dunk.

If you're talking about cheaper i5s like the 3350p, the issue is even murkier, because cheaper i5s don't perform appreciably worse than the 3570k at stock speeds. And even locked-multiplier i5s can be overclocked a little -- just enough to give you a small boost without requiring you to buy an aftermarket cooler.

I'm not saying you're wrong; clearly the i5 3570k (if you're comfortable with overclocking) is the enthusiast's price-performance choice for the current generation of CPU. You can take the results of this excellent review of older CPUs in two different directions: on the one hand, you can argue that because CPU performance is advancing so slowly, it makes more sense than ever to buy the best CPU you can afford now because if it has a decent number of cores, it'll last for a very, very long time. The old idea that you should buy cheap now because even low-end parts in two years will lap the current high-end parts is long dead.

On the other hand, that reasoning can go in the opposite direction too: if CPU performance has slowed to a crawl, then a lower-end CPU will likely hold its value longer. And although the older CPUs in Tom's article perform surprisingly well in comparison with the new stuff, it's also worth noting that ~$50 parts from today compete favorably with $200+ stuff from years ago.

Budgets exist for a reason. For most any person looking to buy a new computer, the budget probably isn't a hard-and-fast limit, but it's important to pick a limit of some sort -- whether that limit's at $500 or $3000 -- because otherwise you might lose the plot. And I think you'd be surprised if you really believe that only teenagers buy budget rigs; in fact, older adults are probably more budget-oriented than the younger crew on this site, both because older adults have lower standards of performance, and because older adults have mortgages, car payments, spouses, children, and so on. That stuff adds up fast, and unless you're unusually well-off or unless you relish the idea of being up to your ears in debt forever, you eventually reach a point after which you have a real hard time justifying an expenditure of more than $1,000 on what amounts to a personal toy.

On the contrary, my theory is that the people who are fastest to point out that costs are trivial are younger people just out of school, living on their own, making what seems (to them) like a lot of money at their first (or second) "real job," and yet somehow nonetheless still living paycheck to paycheck because their entertainment/social expenses are through the roof.

Just a quick note, I got my Noctua NH-D14 on sale for $75 which is a great buy. I got my OCZ Vertex 4 128GB on sale for $75. If you buy when sales come out, you don't have to break the bank to get high-end components. I got my Corsair HX 850 PSU for $144 on sale. These three components have very long warranties and so I was not worried about replacing a defective one in the 30 day return period.

After owning the D14 I would recommend it to any builder on any budget - it is a beast. It keeps all of my components frosty cool and it was worth every dime for the peace of mind it provides.

The Vertex 4 is really fast. I boot Win 7 in 20 - 25 seconds and I could shorten that with more SSD optimization.

So budget builders can wait and buy PSUs, SSDs, case, HDDs and CPU coolers on sale and then get their mobo, CPU and RAM to finish their build in the 30 day return period to make sure everything works. That is one way to save major bucks and get better components.

 

[none12345]

My bad i didnt notice i was looking at an overclocked q9550 vs the i5-3750. But still 25-30% gain clock for clock 5 years later is really sad.

 

[SuperGamerBoy]

Great Review!

 

[Matsushima]

[citation][nom]flong777[/nom]I have a gold-rated 850W PSU and a Noctua NH-D14 and so if I need more power all I have to do is overclock and it doesn't cost me a dime. In the long-term view this saves me money. [/citation]

It cost you however many dimes you spent on your aftermarket cooler.

[citation][nom]flong777[/nom]I am saying that for $40-$75 more, the 3570K blows away the lower cost CPUs and $40-$75 is not a lot of money when you are building a computer. The 3570K will maintain its speed competence much longer than the cheaper CPUs and thus will save the builder money. [/citation]

At similar clock rates, the 3570k buys you a little more than 50% more CPU performance in multi-threaded apps than the i3 3220. Off the top of my head, the 3220 costs about $120. The 3570k costs about $220. Almost double the cost for 1.5 times the performance isn't a slam dunk.

If you're talking about cheaper i5s like the 3350p, the issue is even murkier, because cheaper i5s don't perform appreciably worse than the 3570k at stock speeds. And even locked-multiplier i5s can be overclocked a little -- just enough to give you a small boost without requiring you to buy an aftermarket cooler.

I'm not saying you're wrong; clearly the i5 3570k (if you're comfortable with overclocking) is the enthusiast's price-performance choice for the current generation of CPU. You can take the results of this excellent review of older CPUs in two different directions: on the one hand, you can argue that because CPU performance is advancing so slowly, it makes more sense than ever to buy the best CPU you can afford now because if it has a decent number of cores, it'll last for a very, very long time. The old idea that you should buy cheap now because even low-end parts in two years will lap the current high-end parts is long dead.

On the other hand, that reasoning can go in the opposite direction too: if CPU performance has slowed to a crawl, then a lower-end CPU will likely hold its value longer. And although the older CPUs in Tom's article perform surprisingly well in comparison with the new stuff, it's also worth noting that ~$50 parts from today compete favorably with $200+ stuff from years ago.

Budgets exist for a reason. For most any person looking to buy a new computer, the budget probably isn't a hard-and-fast limit, but it's important to pick a limit of some sort -- whether that limit's at $500 or $3000 -- because otherwise you might lose the plot. And I think you'd be surprised if you really believe that only teenagers buy budget rigs; in fact, older adults are probably more budget-oriented than the younger crew on this site, both because older adults have lower standards of performance, and because older adults have mortgages, car payments, spouses, children, and so on. That stuff adds up fast, and unless you're unusually well-off or unless you relish the idea of being up to your ears in debt forever, you eventually reach a point after which you have a real hard time justifying an expenditure of more than $1,000 on what amounts to a personal toy.

On the contrary, my theory is that the people who are fastest to point out that costs are trivial are younger people just out of school, living on their own, making what seems (to them) like a lot of money at their first (or second) "real job," and yet somehow nonetheless still living paycheck to paycheck because their entertainment/social expenses are through the roof.

Just a quick note, I got my Noctua NH-D14 on sale for $75 which is a great buy. I got my OCZ Vertex 4 128GB on sale for $75. If you buy when sales come out, you don't have to break the bank to get high-end components. I got my Corsair HX 850 PSU for $144 on sale. These three components have very long warranties and so I was not worried about replacing a defective one in the 30 day return period.

After owning the D14 I would recommend it to any builder on any budget - it is a beast. It keeps all of my components frosty cool and it was worth every dime for the peace of mind it provides.

The Vertex 4 is really fast. I boot Win 7 in 20 - 25 seconds and I could shorten that with more SSD optimization.

So budget builders can wait and buy PSUs, SSDs, case, HDDs and CPU coolers on sale and then get their mobo, CPU and RAM to finish their build in the 30 day return period to make sure everything works. That is one way to save major bucks and get better components.

I don't mean any offense, and you are right in saying the 3570K is a good choice, but;
1. Apps are becoming more multithreaded, so in a few years' time an 8-core may last longer. The E8400 was basically the 3570K of the Core2Duo era, but now we see that everyone that has some cash to spend on their build has at least a quadcore, and the E8400 is outperformed by today's processors. A dualcore is no longer sufficient anymore for anything that requires powerful hardware and are basically obsolete for heavy tasks. Eventually, in the course of time, the same fate will befall quadcores.
2. I believe you are listing components that are too expensive. "Only $75 for this NH-D14." and "I bought this 850W PSU for only $144." This adds up to over $200. I personally (your opinions may differ, please no flaming) would recommend the Coolermaster Hyper 212 to budget builders, as would many, because the NH-D14 is an expensive high-end cooler and is GIGANTIC. Also, when you buy everything high-end, the budget blows. There are probably many under 18 that only have an allowance of only about $5 a week.
3. Not everything is always on sale. I live overseas and my local store (as well as online retailers)have almost no sales, and anything that's on sale is a really high-end part or a non-essential accessory.
4. Some people need theirs immediately. I built my rig for only $363 in Q1 using memory and HDDs that I already had, and I added the sound card later as the integrated audio broke. I also have a Lynnfield i5 rig but the motherboard has some problems along with the tiny fan sounding like a vacuum cleaner and taking 3-5 minutes to boot, along with a graphics card from 6 years ago.
5. This point supports your statement that you can buy high-end parts with a budget. I managed to fit in a SSD in $363, the compromises being the processor (more than enough for my purpose) and the motherboard (which I deeply regret because of the substandard quality). Windows 7 boots up like Windows 8 because of this neat addition.

I think you are suggesting parts not for people with budgets under $800, which can be described as 'budget', and perhaps a little overkill on some components. AMD's architecture is very inefficient, but the FX-8350 for a similar price is also overclockable and has 8 cores which futureproofs your build. I'm saying this with kindness as well.

 

[spiraras]

Having gone the step to upgrade from my trusted Q9450@3.4 with Radeon 6950@6970 and a first generation Indilinx controller 64GB SSD to i5 3570K, Radeon 7950 and a Samsung 830 256MB I have to assess that the upgrade sucked. While all the synthetic benchmarks doubled or more there was no perceptible difference in startup (3 seconds more on the old system), app loading, web browsing and even gaming.

The only redeeming fact is the power consumption and hence noise but the $1000 bill is a bit harsh to swallow just for that - given the fact that I had some sentimental attachment to my old system that never failed me for a long 5 year old period.

Fact is that there is little incentive to upgrade from a C2D if you do not do gaming or video encoding - which basically covers the 95% of PC users out there...

 

[InvalidError]

Maybe when Haswell comes out it will be a good time to upgrade. I saw a TH article saying they overclocked a Haswell CPU to 8.0 GHZ - that would be unbelievably fast.

Assuming the overclock was not a fake, you do need to keep in mind that half the cores were disabled and HT was turned off, which effectively reduces the chip's performance per clock to ~40% of what it would normally be with everything enabled so the overclock only brings it back up to ~80% of normal performance. This extreme overclock actually ends with a net loss of available computing power!

The other thing to keep in mind is that the alleged overclock is done "live" after the OS is done loading, presumably with the least amount of software running possible so the CPU stays in its 10X lower-power idle state than Ivy Bridge most of the time to keep the cores pretty much at whatever temperature the CPU gets chilled to. I seriously doubt it would it would manage to boot at 8GHz, never mind doing actual useful work.

So at best, the 8GHz thing is only just-for-show: it may be possible but completely useless.

 

[jdquadrider1]

This is why PC sales have slumped lately. I believe it has little to do with competition from mobile devices because a 5-yr old PC doesn't really need to be replaced. It runs all the latest apps acceptably well.

 

[Fulgurant]

Just a quick note, I got my Noctua NH-D14 on sale for $75 which is a great buy. I got my OCZ Vertex 4 128GB on sale for $75. If you buy when sales come out, you don't have to break the bank to get high-end components. I got my Corsair HX 850 PSU for $144 on sale. These three components have very long warranties and so I was not worried about replacing a defective one in the 30 day return period.

I don't dispute that the NH-D14 is good at what it does. The point is that it isn't free. $75 is a pretty hefty chunk of the retail cost of your CPU; if the i5 3570k averages about $220 retail, then $75 is a whopping 34% mark up on the total cost of your CPU subsystem.

You could, in fact, almost buy an i7 3770k for the combined price of those two items. Is a heavily overclocked i5 better right now than a stock i7? Sure it is, at least for games. But I can't be sure that even a heavily overclocked i5 will necessarily age better than the stock i7 with hyperthreading. And worse comes to worst, the guy with the i7 can just pick up an aftermarket cooler later and try his hand at heavy overclocking too. InvalidError makes the argument about increasing core counts better than I can, so I'll just leave it at that.

(Unlike InvalidError, I've also left AMD's CPUs out of my post, but only for simplicity's sake.)

By the same token, someone who buys an i3 3220 today for ~$120 could buy another, analogous next-gen CPU (possibly even a 4-core i3 in a few years) for less than the difference between his current CPU's price and what you might've paid for your i5 + cooler. Granted, you get the benefit of higher performance now, but you probably also have higher standards. Can we honestly say for sure that the guy with the i3 is worse off, in terms of bang for buck?

The upshot of all of this talk is that speculation about future proofing is almost always fruitless. The general rule of system building is, and always has been, that you should buy the best stuff you feel you can afford at the time that you want to buy it, because there's always a better deal around the corner -- and if you let the prospect of future deals dissuade you, you'll never pull the trigger.

As to the rest of your points, I tend to agree that one should spend money on power supplies and cases. If they're of sufficient quality, those two components can be reused for two or more builds, and thus it's not sensible to cut corners on them. Everything else should be subject to the limits of your budget, not because a couple of hundred dollars is the difference between life and death, but because the line has to be drawn somewhere.

 

[Fulgurant]

That's a lot of points and you made some really good points. You're right, adults are also building budget rigs. Also you are right that the 3350P is much closer to the 3570K in performance. It does cost $180 though and you can't overclock it.

Thanks. So do you.

The 3350P can kinda-sorta overclock, as seen in Paul's excellent Q1 2013 System Builder Marathon article. That overclock ain't gonna win any awards, but it'll give you a small boost that eats into the advantage of a 3570k + aftermarket cooler.

And $180 is about 18% cheaper than $220. When you toss in the cost of the cooler to justify the latter investment, the gulf widens.

Again, the point here isn't to dismiss the 3570k as an excellent choice. I'm just saying that the choice isn't entirely one-sided. There's a tendency on tech sites to fall prey to enthusiast myopia. Most people really don't care about the real-world performance gains from an extra 500-700 MHz. In many use cases, the extra speed really isn't even noticeable.

Maybe I'm a little curmudgeonly; back in the day when I was an overclocking enthusiast, the entire point of the exercise (or so I thought) was to wring top-end performance out of cheaper parts. Nowadays, at least on the Intel side, it seems like you pay extra to gild the lily by overclocking. 😉

 

[InvalidError]

And $180 is about 18% cheaper than $220. When you toss in the cost of the cooler to justify the latter investment, the gulf widens.

Most people really don't care about the real-world performance gains from an extra 500-700 MHz. In many use cases, the extra speed really isn't even noticeable.

Don't forget the extra cost of overclock-oriented z77 boards vs value-oriented h77 ones. That can add another $50-100 to the K vs non-K gap, bringing the total platform cost difference possibly over $200: +$50 on the CPU, +$100 on the motherboard and +$50 on the HSF if otherwise sticking to stock HSF.

As for the real-world difference, some people may do worse than not caring for or noticing the difference: they may even end up never tapping any significant amount of it (aside from benchmarking) in the first place due to their usage patterns not requiring that much processing power. On my i5-3470, I rarely see CPU load exceed 70% even though I usually have a ton of stuff running at the same time.

 

[Fulgurant]

Don't forget the extra cost of overclock-oriented z77 boards vs value-oriented h77 ones. That can add another $50-100 to the K vs non-K gap, bringing the total platform cost difference possibly over $200: +$50 on the CPU, +$100 on the motherboard and +$50 on the HSF if otherwise sticking to stock HSF.

It's a good point you make. I tend to ignore the cost argument with respect to motherboards, because you can find really cheap z75/77 motherboards. Personally, I might worry that those mobos are a little chintzy, but I don't want to get into a lengthy side argument about the potential quality differences between a $70 or $80 z75/z77 mobo and a comparably priced b75/h77.

It's also worth noting that with a z75/z77 mobo, you can overclock even a locked i5 a little bit. So I think it's simpler just to treat the mobo cost as equal.

That said, you're right that the cost differences flong describes are more considerable than they might look on first blush. Even if we take the best-case scenario of a $180 i5 3350p versus a $220 3570k + $30 Hyper212 cooler, we're still talking about an extra $70, or 10% of the total budget for a respectable $700 rig.

That's a lot, relatively speaking. An extra $70 might be the difference between a small SSD and a larger one, or the difference between going without an SSD entirely and grabbing a small one. The average person, I think, is far more likely to notice and appreciate the benefits of an SSD (or the convenience of a larger SSD) than he is to notice or appreciate that his CPU's running at 4.5 GHz instead of 3.7.

An extra $70 could also buy you anywhere from 1 to probably 7 decent games on Steam. One thing I think we all tend to dismiss or gloss over is the cost of the software; if I spend $1,000 on a gaming rig instead of $700, my games might look prettier, but I also might've priced myself out of buying a whole lot more of 'em.

 

[kammak743]

thanka for this article, made be realise how old my core2duo at 2.07 Ghz (stock clock) realy is
I will probably replace it with an i3 3220

 

[ingtar33]

i think i'd take an i5-3570k with it's 4.5ghz overclock over an i5-3350p with its 3.8ghz single-thread only turbo overclock.

Toms has done a pretty good job selling the non-k chips around here... based on single threaded performance only. once you start to multitask, turbo overclocking scales back to standard turbo settings. Unless you spend a fortune on certain z series motherboards which will keep those turbo settings regardless of threads (a Sabretooth for example).

Its no surprise Toms found the P series chips with a turbo overclock almost matched the K series without any overclock... most games are single threaded. so the turbo overclock they gave it will hold firm on a cheap motherboard. But this won't be the case in multi-threaded games.

 

[Fulgurant]

i think i'd take an i5-3570k with it's 4.5ghz overclock over an i5-3350p with its 3.8ghz single-thread only turbo overclock.

Toms has done a pretty good job selling the non-k chips around here... based on single threaded performance only. once you start to multitask, turbo overclocking scales back to standard turbo settings. Unless you spend a fortune on certain z series motherboards which will keep those turbo settings regardless of threads (a Sabretooth for example).

In the article I referenced earlier, Paul overclocked an i5 3350p (stock 3.1 GHz, Turbo 3.3 GHz) to 3.7 GHz best-case, scaled down 3.5 GHz at full load.

That's certainly not a great result, but it's not quite as bad as you describe. 4.5 GHz is about 128% of 3.5 GHz, which means that on a performance-per-dollar basis, the overclocked 3570k in your example might break even with the 3350p. It might also fall behind, depending on what specific price you find on the chip and on your aftermarket cooler. Again, the point here isn't to criticize people who buy the 3570k; the point is that the 3570k isn't the slam-dunk best option.

Oh, and Paul used an $85 motherboard to get that overclock on the 3350p.

 

[jesot]

This article made me a little sad. I'm running an E8400 still. I don't have any problems with it. It's a beast. I have never had problems running games with it...

But this article also makes me excited to be upgrading to a 4770k next month.

 

[ingtar33]

Oh, and Paul used an $85 motherboard to get that overclock on the 3350p.

yes... a modest single thread overclock. i can hardly consider it an overclock when you consider that it's variable based on load unless you spend a fortune on a mb that won't scale it back... and then you have to ask the question "why didn't i just get a K series CPU?"

If all you plan to do is play single threaded games then the P/non-k series cpus are fine. great deals even. But i've found Tom's staffs love affair with those chips to be a bit... delusional. they aren't great deals. Not for performance enthusiasts anyway.

 

[Fulgurant]

yes... a modest single thread overclock. i can hardly consider it an overclock when you consider that it's variable based on load unless you spend a fortune on a mb that won't scale it back... and then you have to ask the question "why didn't i just get a K series CPU?"

I supplied worst-case numbers taking the overclock's load scaling into account, and still couldn't come up with a slam-dunk case for the i5 3570k on a price/performance basis.

We're talking about an overclock (for the 3350p) at full load from 3.1 GHz to 3.5 GHz (3.7 GHz single-threaded). That's nothing special, true. But a ~13% overclock at full load is certainly worth mentioning. It's certainly not logical to dismiss the full-time 400 MHz overclock while simultaneously insisting that the extra 200 MHz of load-variable speed is deathlessly important.

If all you plan to do is play single threaded games then the P/non-k series cpus are fine. great deals even. But i've found Tom's staffs love affair with those chips to be a bit... delusional. they aren't great deals. Not for performance enthusiasts anyway.

With all due respect, the bolded statement is flatly asinine. If you think Tom's has been running a benchmark suite exclusively or even primarily comprised of single-threaded games, then you're still living in 2006. And if you really think an i5 3350P even at stock speeds can't run modern games extremely well, then you've lost all perspective. Have you read the article that goes with this comment thread?

 

[smeezekitty]

[citation][nom]Fulgurant[/nom] The bolded statement is flatly asinine. If you think Tom's has been running a benchmark suite exclusively or even primarily comprised of single-threaded games, then you're still living in 2006. And if you really think an i5 3350P even at stock speeds can't run modern games extremely well, then you've lost all perspective. Have you read the article that goes with this comment thread?[/citation]
+1 A CPU doesn't need to be overclocked to perform well. It certainly helps but it isn't necessary.

 

[kitekrazy1963]

Intel and budget just doesn't seem to mix.

 

[ingtar33]

I supplied worst-case numbers taking the overclock's load scaling into account, and still couldn't come up with a slam-dunk case for the i5 3570k on a price/performance basis.

We're talking about an overclock (for the 3350p) at full load from 3.1 GHz to 3.5 GHz (3.7 GHz single-threaded). That's nothing special, true. But a ~13% overclock at full load is certainly worth mentioning. It's certainly not logical to dismiss the full-time 400 MHz overclock while simultaneously insisting that the extra 200 MHz of load-variable speed is deathlessly important.

With all due respect, the bolded statement is flatly asinine. If you think Tom's has been running a benchmark suite exclusively or even primarily comprised of single-threaded games, then you're still living in 2006. And if you really think an i5 3350P even at stock speeds can't run modern games extremely well, then you've lost all perspective. Have you read the article that goes with this comment thread?

usually whatever follows "with all due respect" is an insult. see that holds true here.

Listen. i'm not trolling you, nor am i saying what you think i'm saying, we're simply talking past eachother, and you're getting more and more agitated thinking i'm saying things i'm not. I'm not knocking an i5's performance. In the grand scheme of things ANY i5 is a high performing cpu.

I think what started this misunderstanding is i didn't quote the comment i was responding to, which of course left my initial comment without the necessary context (especially since the innitial comment wasn't directed at the post directly above mine).

I was commenting on people's general discussion about cheap intel mbs and cheap non-k chips being a better buy then a higher end settup. There was a great deal of confusion in the comment, with some weird expectation that this low end cpu would match an overclocked K series or something. Elsewhere in the forums, not too much sooner, i was chatting with someone who was trying and failing to overclock their non-k intel... and i was getting frustrated becuase he seemed to be quoting a Tom's article expressing how awesome the i5 (non-k) will performed overclocked.

In general, turbo overclocking is what i'd call "extremely light" overclocking. The way Tom's portrays (in their i5-3350p reviews for example) the performance of these chips is very idealized. And in my experience well outside the range of what an end user might experience.

Lets put to bed the whole "turbo overclocking" thing... cause we all know it produces an imperceptible change in performance for the most part.

Lord, if a PhII x4 965 is generally inperceptibly slower then an i5-3570k, no one will be able to tell the difference between a stock i5-3350p and a turbo overclocked one.

My general stance on this issue is actually the opposite you think it is. I don't think the end user will ever be able to tell the difference between one quad core or another... be it a core2duo quad core, a Phenom II x4, an FX4300, a i5-3350p or an i5-3570k. Generally in 95% of day to day operation there will be almost no way to tell them appart without a stopwatch.

which leaves us with the performance end of the scale under heavy loads... where more cores, or higher clocks will rule... and a turbo overclocked i5-3350p will be noticeably slower then an actual overclocked i5-3570k.

as a result i think the general conversation about cheap motherboards and impressive performance in locked chips is sorta funny. because there really hasn't been a great deal of cpu inovation in the past 5 years that the end user can detect, appart from high end high cpu usage aps.

and if you're buying/building a new pc and not building it for the "other" 5% of the time where all that extra power IS evident, then you have no reason (unless you're on something worse then a core2due) to upgrade.

 

[Fulgurant]

Listen. i'm not trolling you, nor am i saying what you think i'm saying, we're simply talking past eachother, and you're getting more and more agitated thinking i'm saying things i'm not. I'm not knocking an i5's performance. In the grand scheme of things ANY i5 is a high performing cpu.

Fair enough.

In general, turbo overclocking is what i'd call "extremely light" overclocking.

Agreed.

My general stance on this issue is actually the opposite you think it is. I don't think the end user will ever be able to tell the difference between one quad core or another... be it a core2duo quad core, a Phenom II x4, an FX4300, a i5-3350p or an i5-3570k. Generally in 95% of day to day operation there will be almost no way to tell them appart without a stopwatch.

Also agreed. Which is why I was arguing against the opinion, expressed earlier in the thread (not by you), that budget builders are shooting themselves in the foot by not picking up the 3570k.

EDIT:

which leaves us with the performance end of the scale under heavy loads... where more cores, or higher clocks will rule... and a turbo overclocked i5-3350p will be noticeably slower then an actual overclocked i5-3570k.

Yeah, the 3570k will be about 28% faster, while likely costing more than 28% more money. That was the only point I was trying to make. Turbo overclocking is a minor side note, referenced mostly because I didn't feel like getting into an argument about different chipsets and motherboards.

If, in other words, we assume that both CPUs use the same overclockable motherboard, then we're left with a simpler price comparison (3350p versus 3570k + cooler). But if we assume that both CPUs use the same motherboard, then we can't ignore that turbo overclocking exists either.

 

[sanilmahambre]

It is like having a competition between Son , Father and Grand father

 

[makah21]

Would have like to see the performance difference with ddr3 for the core 2 group. The performance from ddr2 to 3 made a huge difference for my q9550.