Core i5 7500 or core i3 8100?

[shredder]

Hi folks,

Thinking of upgrading my desktop computer. Considering only Intel at the moment. Do you think it is better to go for a 7th Gen Core i5 7500 coupled with a cheap H110 motherboard or to get an 8th Gen Core i3 8100 and use it with an expensive Z370 motherboard? Total cost for both options is roughly the same.

I want a system which will be more power efficient. Which of the two options will draw less power?

Or do you recommend waiting till the cheaper 8th Gen compatible motherboards come out in 2018? Will the more expensive Z370 motherboards provide any advantage with regard to gaming?

Is it the case that a more expensive motherboard (like the Z370 series) will be more durable than a cheaper one? (I find from personal experience that the motherboard is the most likely component to fail first).

Thanks in advance.

 

[reignofchaos]

z370 + i5 8400 is the sweet spot. If you can't afford that, get ryzen 1600 + B350 board. Its far better than the 4 core i5 CPUs.

 

[shredder]

i5 8400 has a base frequency of "only" 2.80 Ghz. Isn't that a little less, relatively speaking, for gaming? Even the budget G4560 is clocked at 3.5 Ghz.

 

[sam9s]

get ryzen 1600 + B350 board. Its far better than the 4 core i5 CPUs.

I second that and I was about to say the same ...

 

[reignofchaos]

i5 8400 has a base frequency of "only" 2.80 Ghz. Isn't that a little less, relatively speaking, for gaming? Even the budget G4560 is clocked at 3.5 Ghz.

That's only for AVX2 workloads which the G4560 doesn't even possess. In reality, the cores will never go below 3.8GHz provided you give it decent cooling and it doesn't throttle.

Check this link on real game performance if you don't believe me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsnoN5dIPiE

 

[shredder]

Thanks for the answers. I did a little bit of reading on the i5 8400 and it seems that it is a highly capable gaming CPU. However, I am worried about one thing - cooling. None of the reviews explicitly state whether the stock cooler is used or an after market cooler.
Also, some have pointed out that the turbo boost figure (4 ghz) is the maximum boost on only ONE core. There have been suggestions that all six cores might not go much above the 2.8 Ghz figure put out by Intel. (Of course, this could just be AMD fanboys or frustrated Kabylake owners who now find what is essentially a 7th Gen Core i7 selling for the price of a 7th Gen Core i5). But it still makes one wonder why Intel would under spec a product when it is competing against Ryzen CPUs which boast high clock speeds. Let's just say that we cannot put this down to modesty on Intel's part.

Another thing to consider is the graphics card that I will be using this with: the GTX 1050 TI 4GB. I am assuming here that gaming performance will be the same even when paired with the i3 8100, since the graphics card will be the bottleneck with either processor. In this case, the only reason to go for an i5 8400 over an i3 8100 would be future-proofing which, as Kabylake owners have found out, does not really work out so well with Intel's processors. So the question is whether the core i5 8400 is still a good investment keeping in mind the graphics card that it is to be used with.

 

[reignofchaos]

Thanks for the answers. I did a little bit of reading on the i5 8400 and it seems that it is a highly capable gaming CPU. However, I am worried about one thing - cooling. None of the reviews explicitly state whether the stock cooler is used or an after market cooler.
Also, some have pointed out that the turbo boost figure (4 ghz) is the maximum boost on only ONE core. There have been suggestions that all six cores might not go much above the 2.8 Ghz figure put out by Intel. (Of course, this could just be AMD fanboys or frustrated Kabylake owners who now find what is essentially a 7th Gen Core i7 selling for the price of a 7th Gen Core i5). But it still makes one wonder why Intel would under spec a product when it is competing against Ryzen CPUs which boast high clock speeds. Let's just say that we cannot put this down to modesty on Intel's part.

Another thing to consider is the graphics card that I will be using this with: the GTX 1050 TI 4GB. I am assuming here that gaming performance will be the same even when paired with the i3 8100, since the graphics card will be the bottleneck with either processor. In this case, the only reason to go for an i5 8400 over an i3 8100 would be future-proofing which, as Kabylake owners have found out, does not really work out so well with Intel's processors. So the question is whether the core i5 8400 is still a good investment keeping in mind the graphics card that it is to be used with.

In gaming workloads, clocks will be near max on all cores. It is only in encoding/rendering workloads that heavily use AVX2 that it will drop down close to base clock. Gaming normally uses a lot of SSE style instructions which do not load the cpu much.

As for cooling, you'd want to get a cheap third party cooler like the coolermaster hyper 212x. That should take care of any heat this locked cpu produces. Cooling becomes an issue only in case of overclocking unlocked 95W processors.

Long term the 1050 ti will get replaced I'm sure. GPU life cycles are far shorter than CPU life cycles these days. You buy a CPU and use it for 5+ years while you end up replacing the GPU every 2-3 years. Taking that into account, the i8400 is a far better bet.

The quad core/quad thread parts will take a beating soon when games become more multithreaded. Just look at Crysis 3 benches from digitalfoundry on youtube. This is a 3 year old game that still brings quad thread cpus to its knees.

 

[shibashis]

Time to go with Ryzen 1600 almost eyes closed, you will get their wraith cooler in the box and no other cooling solution is required, I know because I am using it.

Is this desktop primarily for gaming? If so then Intel still wins because of higher clock frequency on single core performances, most games even in 2017 are not optimized to take advantage of 8/16/32 threads yet but that will change.
For productivity and overall performance Ryzen is almost a no-brainer at the moment.
The price to performance ratio is fantastic, unlocked multiplier means you can dab your hands at overclocking as well if you fancy. If you do this right you stand to get another 10% performance increase with the overclock.

1050Ti is great budget card, I get an average of 80 FPS or higher on Ultra on most games, on a 60Hz monitor there is no point in aiming higher.

 

[sound_cycle]

Thinking of upgrading my desktop computer. Considering only Intel at the moment. Do you think it is better to go for a 7th Gen Core i5 7500 coupled with a cheap H110 motherboard or to get an 8th Gen Core i3 8100 and use it with an expensive Z370 motherboard? Total cost for both options is roughly the same.

Hi

Are you ever going the roon/ tidal route ? If you are thinking computer audio you should, or at any rate try it. It IS worth it. (exceptions for instance if you want to listen exclusively to Bollywood 60s stuff or hate flac ;P)

Roon wrings the graphics with OpenGL pretty hard. You get lovely eye candy for it.

You can run your PC elsewhere so it does not really matter if it sounds like a diesel generator. A faster processor and extra RAM for sufficient headroom over what Roon 64 can use as well as an SSD to run your OS and roon core would work very well. Don't bother with a soundcard, you are going to be running an external DAC.

You can control it with a phone based remote if you wish so you need not have a 55"slab of 4K glass between your speakers.

My current belief is that the schiit USB5 tops S/PDIF optical, so I would not bother with speccing a optical out.

These are the things I did not know when I was speccing a music pc a couple of years back, and these are the things I will be doing. Insh'the audio gods!

ciao
gr

 

[lalit09]

Hi , i am currently using core i5 3570k gigabyte z77 ud3h mobo with 16gb gskill ram gpu asus gtx 1070 oc and believe me almost all the game reaches 70 to 80 fps in fhd resolution with ultra graphic mode. So i believe 4 core 7500 will be much better than a 2 core next generation.

Also when i upgraded from oem cooling to cooler master hyper 212x it makes around 10 degree diff, although 10 degree is big diff but intel say max temp 100 degree C for 7500 so if could keep it around 70 to 80 degree C while gaming or heavy load it will work fine.