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Geek Culture / Is an i7 worth an extra $100 over i5?

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Phaelax
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Posted: 19th Jul 2012 06:24
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I was considering the i7-3770k, but the i5-3570k is $110 cheaper. The i7 has an extra 100MHz and hyper-threading, but is it worth it? I do use photoshop extensively, doing projects that have on occasion taken a few gigs of ram. And I play around with 3D rendering as well as audio recording. So my target is more than just gaming. I don't play BF3, which seems to be the only friggin benchmark tool kids use these days.

The price really isn't an issue for me, but I'm not one to spend extra money where I don't have to.

"You're not going crazy. You're going sane in a crazy world!" ~Tick
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Aaron Miller
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Posted: 19th Jul 2012 06:50 Edited at: 19th Jul 2012 06:51
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In my opinion, you shouldn't spend for either if you can avoid it right now. I'd just wait for their next wave of CPUs. If you require a CPU right now, I'd go with the i5 if I weren't doing any gaming. If I intended to game heavily, I'd go with the i7 (given the two choices).

However, you did mention 3D rendering. The i5 will be just fine. In 3D rendering you clearly want to spend more of the resources on the GPU than the CPU anyway.

I'm doubtful that you'd notice a difference between the i5 and i7 that warrants the extra cost.

Question: You are using a dedicated card though, right? (i.e., not the Intel integrated crapware...)

DISCLAIMER: I go with AMD because they're cheaper and, as far as I can tell, practically just as good. If I were in a position to build an entirely new rig with practically no budget, I would go with Intel for the PCI express 3 support.

Cheers,
Aaron

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Phaelax
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Posted: 19th Jul 2012 07:02
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The i7 would offer 0 benefit to gaming over the i5, that's why I mentioned everything else I would likely do. All the reviews I found online only compared them in terms of gaming performance and everyone concluded on the same thing; gaming-wise there's no difference.

I think you have gaming and 3D rendering backwards. Gaming relies way more heavily on the GPU these days, and rendering used the CPU a lot. Especially studio max which does utilize multiple cores and threads.

I do appreciate any feedback, but your advice just seems opposite of what I've come to know on the subject. Hopefully some others can fill in on the topic.

"You're not going crazy. You're going sane in a crazy world!" ~Tick
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Aaron Miller
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Posted: 19th Jul 2012 07:44
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Quote: "I think you have gaming and 3D rendering backwards. Gaming relies way more heavily on the GPU these days, and rendering used the CPU a lot. Especially studio max which does utilize multiple cores and threads."

I thought you were referring to real-time not offline. Sorry for the confusion there. However, iirc, most offline rendering packages are trying to move to GPU-acceleration in some form or another (especially for pre-visualization) anyway.

Quote: "Especially studio max which does utilize multiple cores and threads."

It seems they could probably gain efficiency by implementing GPGPU there. (Though, some of their algorithms are likely less GPU friendly than the real-time variants I imagine. Perhaps I should research physically-based rendering.) /offtopic

Again, sorry for the confusion and I hope you find your answer soon. Though, I suppose if my advice was based on things opposite what you intended to use it for, you could just reverse my answers and go with the result. (Yay! Pseudo-logic.)

Cheers,
Aaron

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Phaelax
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Posted: 19th Jul 2012 08:17
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I found this response on a forum:

Quote: "
3D Max, Maya, Lightwave, Blender are all heavily CPU dependent. They are all written to take advantage of as many cores as you can throw at them. GPU is used for effects and applying textures but rendering is all about CPU. While there may be some rendering software out there that primarily uses the GPU, I have never heard of one."


Another post said real-time GPU, pre-rendered is CPU. Which would make sense to me. I'm considering a GTX 560 GPU.


Several responses in this thread are worth reading if you're curious: (just a little off-topic)
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2059033

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Aaron Miller
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Posted: 19th Jul 2012 08:53
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That's quite informative, thank you. I went looking on Autodesk briefly and found this.
Quote: "A hardware renderer, to generate high-quality images faster"

That's vague, but I assume that refers to a GPU-option. Though, for the most part, it appears to be highly CPU-based. My basis for believing that the high-end companies were moving to GPU-accelerated rendering was from a whitepaper I read at some point. Don't remember its name or what it was even covering. So, that's not a very good basis, lol.

I do find it a bit jarring to see "rendering" refer to off-line rendering though. Usually I see it used solely for GPU-based real-time rendering. (That's the type of rendering I'm personally more interested in.)

With CPU-intensive purposes considered, I'd say go for the i7. Here's a benchmark. (I disabled audio before playing it and skipped ahead.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdwuWEKqW4I


I noticed that the i7 generally performed well over the i5 in the mpeg-2 (second pass) benchmark. (10:04.) I think watching that video will help you decide.

Cheers,
Aaron

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bitJericho
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Posted: 19th Jul 2012 12:59 Edited at: 19th Jul 2012 12:59
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No way is it worth it. HT might help in some cases, but probably unnoticeable, definitely not worth the 110 bucks.

That said, you can get an 8 core AMD for half the price, but it's not quite as good as the i5.

I'd personally go for more cores as I like to do lots of things with virtual machines.

If you're just straight up gaming/graphics/rendering, I'd check the charts and just get the best performing that was within my budget.

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Phaelax
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Posted: 19th Jul 2012 23:41
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Using CS4 on my desktop with a C2D (2.66ghz) the interface lags. (I think its mainly due to their new custom UI which is stupid) But my laptop has an i7 and CS4 runs so much better. But it could also be the extra 4gb of ram my laptop has. I decided to go with 16gb in the new system. Overkill? Nah, since I go over 4 every day it seems like and I've come close to using 8 a few times already.

"You're not going crazy. You're going sane in a crazy world!" ~Tick
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BMG
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Posted: 27th Jul 2012 13:35
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Don't know much about CPU differences, but having an i7 in my Macbook pro seems to help with rendering videos. Much quicker than my previous laptop CPU of the same frequency, I suppose mainly due to the hyper-threading? Or so I've heard anyway.

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bitJericho
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Posted: 27th Jul 2012 19:20
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probably the increased cache

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