i5 vs i7 which is better for performance for gaming ? and which one has better performance to price ratio still for gaming ? with the latest games like assassin creed 2 ... modern warfare 2 ...
i5 is designed for games, i7 is designed for video editing and encodes. The i5 750 (£150) is faster than the i7 920 (£205) in games as a result.
i also read that i5 and i7 were nearly alike except for price ... but i also read that i7 is much better for x-fire ... is it a really big difference if i want to have x-fire on i5 than on an i7 ? will i lose much if i x-fire on an i5 ?
It's the truth. That's how intel designed the chip, and it shows through in benchmarks. Granted, the difference between the i5 and i7 is tiny (the i5 750 is typically 1% faster than the i7 920) but the fact remains, an i5 with motherboard and 4GB of RAM costs £300, an i7 with motherboard and 6GB of RAM is a minimum of £420 or so. The extra cost is wasted if you're a gamer as the i5s are better designed for the job, i7 allows full bandwidth crossfire, i5 does not unless you buy a board with a PCIe splitter on it (these are so far very rare). However, unless you run a very high end gaming setup with £400+ of graphics cards you will probably never notice that the extra PCIe bandwidth isn't there.
I7 (and even core2quad) is also better for more complex system designs, as even with the splitter, an I5 system still only has a pair of x8 slots, where the I7 boards can support a pair of x16 slots, an x8 slot, an x4 slot, and a x1 slot. Also, there are two kinds of I7 chip...the real one (on the 1366 socket) and the scam one (on the 1156 socket). If you do go I7, get the real deal on the 1366 socket.
The LGA 1366 version(Bloomfield) is the only core i* processor that is upgradable to the core i9(not yet released) but it has been shown to be somewhat slower than the current i7s(Lynnfield) so its a tough choice I suppose. Also Lynnfield i7 - hyperthreading = i5 They are nearly identical except for hyperthreading so I would go for an i5.
No, the I5/socket 1156 I7 is much more neutered than that. Neither are capable of tripple channel mode, neither support chipsets that support more than 16 PCIE channels. BTW...the tiny speed gains are not due to optimizations in the I5, they are because there is no southbridge. The system sacrifices upgradability for simplified design...this is where the tiny gain in performance is gotten, it is also where the I7 shows it's real power, supporting multiple video cards and various other accosories all at once. Personaly, I could not upgrade to I5...a core2quad would be a lot more usefull for me because it would at least have enough PCIe channels.
Yes the LGA 1156 versions are missing triple channel mode but they probably never needed that much spreed in the first place so dual is fine. As for the 16 channels I agree it was a stupid choice but there are no noticable hits from using a i5 or i7 over an i7 920.
Killerbug: If you really want, you can get an nforce 200 based board for i5 for more PCIe bandwidth (though obviously, nobody sane would do that), but the i7 requires one as well in order to get more than 2 16x slots. There is nothing to stop Core i5 boards having 4x slots and 1x slots, and they do already have them. Even the P55-UD3 has two 1x slots in addition to the two 16x. The UD4 has three 1x, the UD5 has two 1x and THREE 16x slots. 4x slots are rare these days as it's so easy to just put 4x products in spare 16x slots, as all the 16x slots are rarely filled. There is no logistical reason to buy an i7 board over an i5 for 99.8% of consumers other than if you want faster dual graphics, that's all there is to it - and if you're that fussed about having dual graphics, just wait for the P55-Big Bang-Fuzion from MSI. Seriously, posts like that are going to sell average users i7s, and they're going to be throwing away $150+ a time. That's a lot of money being wasted. zulo: The i7 860 & 870 (LGA1156) actually do have hyperthreading. They are to all intents and purposes the same as i7 CPUs, but obviously with the dual channel memory and PCIe bandwidth limitations. The i5 750 is the only chip without, but for games, the benchmarks speak for themselves, the i5 750 beats the i7 920. Hate to break it to you Killer, but i5 boards do have a southbridge. Where do you think the 1x PCIe slots and all the other I/Os come from? It's not all done in the CPU. Your comment about taking a core 2 over an i5 is pretty laughable, as the only way you get more PCIe bandwidth with a Core 2 is with X38/X48, which are relatively rarely used. Likewise with AMD, you only get it with a 790FX chipset, not a 790GX or 790X (your sig glosses over the motherboard so I can't tell which board you have). Long story short, Killerbug would have you buy an i7. Don't.
1.) I need at least a pair of x4 slots (prefferably x8 slots) for my RAID cards. I need a x16 slot for my video card...so my outdated POS system needs 32 PCIe channels...that is without any other PCIe devices, not even crossfire. This is why I say the core2quad would be better for my purposes. 2.) The Intel press release for the I5 stated that they would have a all-in-one northbridge, and no southbridge. This is why they build 16 pcie channels into the northbridge. If you can in fact use the southbridge from a I7 board with a northbridge from a I5 board, then it would seem that this combination would give you more PCIe channels than any other platform...I would love the I5 at that point. Yes, the 790FX has lots of PCIe channels...that is the only thing that has saved me from having to spend about $700 to move to an I7. Long story short, I'm saying that if you intend to do any big upgrades in the near future, to avoid the I5 because it will not acomidate these. If you just want a basic system with one video card, and a few PCI cards, then get an I5. If you want "Performance Gaming"...then the I5 is out of the question.
1. I have never seen a dual 4x board, but it doesn't really matter, as you could use a three slot board and share the 16x bandwidth between it, I think that some P55 3-slot boards allow 8/4/4, and with PCIe 2.0x, 4x speed is 2GB/s, ample for any RAID card. Either a Core 2 Quad or i5 would serve you fine for your system, even though it is very unusual (you're the only person I've met to have two separate RAID cards in your main PC) 2. There is no northbridge, it's in the CPU. That effectively makes the southbridge, the northbridge. Given what it actually does though, it's clear that it is still a southbridge, same functions, same size heatsink, same place on the board and so on and so forth.
