Intel Core i5 vs. Core i7: Which processor should you buy? Whether you’re building your next PC or shopping for a new computer online, one of the questions that comes up from time to time is whether the Intel Core i5 or Core i7 is a better bargain. The short answer, “It depends,” isn’t all that helpful, so we’ve broken the data out in more detail and for both mobile and desktop processors. Here’s what you need to know. Desktop Core i5 vs. Desktop Core i7 Intel’s Skylake (6th generation) differentiation and feature sets haven’t really changed much since Haswell (4th generation). The Core i7 features quad-cores with Hyper-Threading enabled and Intel’s HD Graphics 530 solution. The Core i5 family offers quad-cores without Hyper-Threading, and either HD Graphics 530 or 510 GPUs. Most people, including gamers, should be fine with a Core i5 desktop CPU. Core i7 chips tend to help more with engineering, video editing, audio post-production, and other tasks that require as many processor threads as possible. For graphics, the HD Graphics 510 has 12 execution units (EUs), while the 530 has 24. Avoid the 510 in any case where you intend to do anything substantial with the GPU. But the long-standing rule of thumb remains true: No Intel chip is particularly strong in the graphics department, apart from the EDRAM-equipped Iris Pro variants (none of which exist in socketed consumer hardware). Enthusiast gamers should always opt for a discrete GPU. Corei5-6500 Corei5-4430 4790K Corei7-5820K i7-6900K-1 Corei3-6100 The Core i5-6500 is a 3.2GHz base-clock CPU that starts around $200. It also uses the latest Intel motherboards. <> <> 123456 One significant difference between the desktop and mobile markets (the latter of which we’ll get to below) is how Intel positions Hyper-Threading. Almost all of Intel’s desktop Core i5 chips across the last six desktop product generations are all quad-cores without Hyper-Threading, while its Core i7 family consists of quad-cores with Hyper-Threading. (Intel’s Core i5-4570T is the single exception to this — it’s a dual-core + Hyper-Threading chip.) Older Core i5 / Core i7 chips top out at 32GB of RAM, but Skylake raises this to 64GB for both types of processor. What about desktop PC performance? To compare performance between the Core i5 and Core i7 families, I turned to Anandtech’s excellent CPU Bench database. While AT doesn’t have records on every chip released by Intel or AMD, they’ve got a solid selection of comparable parts. I opted to check the Core i5-4690K versus the Core i7-4770K. The 4770K has Hyper-Threading, a base frequency of 3.5GHz, can Turbo up to 3.9GHz, and has 8MB of L3 cache. The Core i5-4690K has the same clock speed, but no Hyper-Threading and just 6MB of L3 cache. That’s about as perfect a match-up as you can ask for. The graph below was generated by comparing Core i5 and Core i7 in each and every benchmark and taking the geometric mean of the results. This diminishes the impact of outliers, though in this case, the arithmetic and geometric means are quite close to each other. I’ve split the data into three sections — general compute, gaming performance with 1x GTX 770, and gaming performance with the GTX 770 in SLI. CPU-Perf. Aggregate performance between the Core i5-4690K and Core i7-4770K. Data from Anandtech CPU bench There are some differences in the data sets that we need to discuss. The aggregate General Purpose ratio doesn’t reflect the impact Hyper-Threading can have on various applications. There are a number of applications where Hyper-Threading makes no difference, a handful where it decreases performance (though never by more than 8 percent) and a several benchmarks that show gains of 10-30%. If we set a 3% threshold for a tying score, Hyper-Threading gives the Core i7 a win in 21 out of 36 tests. It ties the Core i5 in 14 tests, and loses to it outright in just a single benchmark (x264). In workstation and consumer CPU workloads, Hyper-Threading sometimes helps a lot, sometimes doesn’t help much, but almost never hurts. Gaming, however, is a different animal. In gaming, Hyper-Threading never offers a single performance boost, while it impacted BioShock Infinite’s minimum FPS by 11% (meaning the Core i5 outscored the i7). The net effect is a 2% performance decrease for Hyper-Threading. In SLI gaming, we see a similar pattern, though this time it’s different games that take performance hits. The minimum frame rate for Sleeping Dogs was 10% faster on the Core i5 (56 vs. 61.8) and 5% faster in BF4 (86.4 vs. 82.9). What this means, in aggregate, is that while Hyper-Threading probably doesn’t hurt gaming in most titles, you can’t depend on it to offer a significant performance boost, either. While the above comparison uses older data from Haswell, there’s nothing about Skylake or Broadwell that changed the Core i5 / i7 comparison point. You can assume that the same metrics hold true for these chips as well — namely, that the Core i5 offers an equivalent level of performance. What about AMD? AMD isn’t a formal part of this article, but since I know people will ask, I took a look at how the FX-9590 compares against the Core i5-4690K. The news is not particularly good. There are a few well-threaded benchmarks where AMD can shine, including WinRAR, x265 encoding, multi-threaded Cinebench (both 11.5 and R15) and 7zip. The FX-9590 is utterly incapable of matching the 4690K’s single-threaded performance, which means AMD loses every test that can’t scale to eight cores or is single-threaded to start with. The gap between AMD and Intel in game benchmarks is much smaller than in general CPU performance. AMD’s FX-8350 and FX-9590 are capable of pushing perfectly acceptable frame rates. But the FX-9590 never outclasses the Core i5-4690K in any test. If you’re building a gaming box and you
Share this
EmoticonEmoticon