Question Would it be worth it to upgrade from an i3-8350K to an i7-8700T?

nfs_boy

Honorable
Nov 19, 2016
59
0
10,540
I have some stuttering issues in a few games, and I was thinking that if I upgraded my 4 core i3 to something with more cores, the stuttering would be diminished. I'm still on a budget, however, and all of the i5s I saw were 6 cores, which I wasn't sure was enough to get rid of the stuttering. Then, I saw some i7-8700Ts on eBay (which have 6 cores, 12 threads). They were in my price range, but I found out the i7's performance wasn't that much better than my i3 (on userbenchmark:https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8700T-vs-Intel-Core-i3-8350K/m480804vs3935). So what do you guys think?

My Rig:
RX 580 4GB
i3-8350k
4x4GB 2666mhz Ballistix Sport RAM
Samsung 850 Evo 250GB (Windows)
WD Blue 1TB 7200RPM
 
Userbenchmark is not all that relevant for evaluating gaming performance....; more and more games do better with 6 cores, and many scale fairly nicely though at least 10 cores (BF1, BF5)

If your mainboard will support a standard 8700, I'd go that route; the 6 cores and 12 threads will remove your current core/thread starvation syndrome..
 
Userbenchmark isn't all that great an indicator unless literally all you play is CS:GO or some other game that is entirely single threaded. Getting an 8th gen i5 or i7 will help, especially if you are playing newer AAA titles that cause a 4 core/4 thread CPU to choke. Apparently the 8700T does have an all core Turbo clock of 3.8GHz, so assuming you get decent cooling on it (do not use the Intel stock cooler, it throttles all i7 CPUs from 8th and 9th gen) and your motherboard isn't a bottom of the barrel H310 board with poor power delivery, it might be a decent choice. On games that don't scale above 6 cores/threads, most i5s will perform better due to higher Turbo clocks, though I think the 8400 also has a 3.8GHz all core Turbo.
 

Countgreen

Honorable
Jun 24, 2017
281
9
11,065
Don't use user benchmark to compare CPUs and GPUs. It's not a good representation of what the performance is. Tom'shardware, Gamers Nexus, Linus etc are better resources for looking at CPU performance.
Use something like MSI Afterburner to watch CPU, GPU, and ram usage during gaming. This will help you determine what is the bottleneck.
Games prefer higher clock speed over cores, but if all four cores are being utilized 100% six cores might help.
Look at the 8700 no T It's about $20 to $25 more expensive but will give you higher core speeds.
 

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
Userbenchmark is a tool, a source of comparative info. It's by no means Gospel or taken to be as such.

The way it works is very simple. You are looking for a fast car, the choices userbenchmark shows you is that red cars get more speeding tickets than blue cars, therefor your impression is that red cars are faster. Far from the truth.

Games differ in needs. Some games like the above mentioned CSGO thrive on clock speeds balanced by IPC. I get 300fps from a i7-3770k and don't use but 2-3 threads out of 8. Some games are the opposite, like the above mentioned BF5, which thrive on thread count, balanced by clock speeds and IPC. My i7 would get around 70fps at best, the 3rd gen not having the IPC to support shoving the game through fast enough to get more.

Even your i3 will rock CSGO to @ 300fps ish, but won't show any real difference moving to an i5 or i7 because threads count isn't an issue. In BF5 you'd almost double the fps by moving to an i7 9700 over your i3.

Userbenchmark doesn't explain the difference between the red car's 8cyl GT, and the blue car's 4cyl grocery getter, it just says 'out of 100 other users with the same model car'.....