4th-Gen Core i7 vs. 8th-Gen Core i7: Is It Worth the Upgrade for PC Gamers?

Julio Franco

Julio Franco

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Wish you had included 1440p/4k results.

I understand differences are more pronounced at lower resolutions, but who's upgrading today, while remaining at 1080p? This is not a real case scenario.
 
Worth me moving to a new setup from my o/c'd i5 2500k yet? I guess wating for the new motherboards next year is the trick
 
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Razorpakk said:
Wish you had included 1440p/4k results.

I understand differences are more pronounced at lower resolutions, but who's upgrading today, while remaining at 1080p? This is not a real case scenario.
Click to expand...

In your real case scenario the differences are smaller and the upgrade makes even less sense. Testing at 1440p/4K would not tell you anything you don't already know based on the benchmarks presented in the article.
 
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Really? You pick up 8700k and 1080ti and making comparison at 1080p? Even I, with my i5-4670 and 1080ti playing @4k most of the games. Sometimes QHD. But never 1080p
 
Razorpakk said:
Wish you had included 1440p/4k results.

I understand differences are more pronounced at lower resolutions, but who's upgrading today, while remaining at 1080p? This is not a real case scenario.
Click to expand...
justhateme said:
Really? You pick up 8700k and 1080ti and making comparison at 1080p? Even I, with my i5-4670 and 1080ti playing @4k most of the games. Sometimes QHD. But never 1080p
Click to expand...
The whole test is about exploring the CPU performance limits, and these CAN'T BE REACHED unless you go down with the resolution/details. You must allow the GPU to produce the frames so fast, that the CPU can no longer keep up with them. If you play in 4K60, you only need the CPU that's able to process physics/AI states/etc. 60 times per second, while if you go to 1080, it might allow the GPU to produce, for example, 200 frames per second. That means you now also need a CPU that's able to recompute the same physics/AI/etc. 200 times per second. If the CPU is slower, your GPU will have to wait for CPU, which means you won't get 200fps, but only as much as the CPU can process with its horsepower. Trying to find these cases - where CPU bounds come into place - is the simplest and most precise way to test CPU potential in games. And it also suggests how much performance reserve the CPU has for the future.
 
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Intel 8400 vs Ryzen 1600 review
Focus on 720p, go for the 8400

Intel 4770 vs Intel 8770K review
Focus on actual gaming resolutions and settings, no reason to upgrade

They are different cases, yes, but I still don't like this distinction.


But, there is one reason for 4770K owners to upgrade TODAY. If 300mm wafers do see a price hike of 20% next year and another one in 2019 as it is reported, then going for a 8700K today could probably be more logical from a financial perspective, than upgrading in 1-2 years from now.
 
Any chance of doing the same with Ivy Bridge for us 3770 hold outs? I'm guessing around a 5-6% difference - so looking at the above maybe a drop in 4-10 fps? Doesn't seem that there is much of a reason to upgrade yet (even after 5 years of having this chip) .
 
But lots of games have internal framecap because of engine/resource transportation/multi-threading/whatsoever. Also all games in review are gpu-dependent. If u want a fair review, pick CS:GO. 1600*900 resolution, all graphics to very low or off, enable only multicore rendering. You will be suprised as your 1080ti working at 8% load and everything is about your processor.

Ok let's see how this new 8700k is doing comparing to old ones. They are pretty equal in bunch of games. So should I upgrade from i5-4670? No, as I see in conclusion, there is a 'k' version, but no big difference. If there is no point to upgrade for 8700k, there is also no point for upgrading to 7700k, and especially for i3-8350k. Then I decided to make some tests on my own.

PUBG QHD very low.

i7-7700k @ 4.6 ghz + 1080ti(2000/6000) - 115 fps
i3-8350k @ 4.5 ghz + 1070(1800/4000) - 112 fps
i5-4670 @ 3.8 ghz + 1080ti(2000/6000) - 108 fps (cpu loaded for 92%)

PUBG FHD very low.

i7-7700k @ 4.6 ghz + 1080ti(2000/6000) - 116 fps
i3-8350k @ 4.5 ghz + 1070(1800/4000) - 128 fps
i5-4670 @ 3.8 ghz + 1080ti(2000/6000) - 95 fps (cpu loaded for 66%)

So... Should I rely on FHD tests? Or is QHD tests are fair enough, is there a little chance that my 1080ti pushed bench results for i5 by herself in QHD? It's a crap-talk picking FHD tests and making conclusions "worth buy or not". If we rely on "most of steam users" with their win7, quad-core 3.2, 8 Gbs of ram and 960 gtx, we can for 10-15 years do tests for FHD and be happy with our PCs. No evolution for CPU, GPU, because "look, they all can do 210 frames on crappy 4yo engine, what a good day". My friend still have i7-2700k, because "look, I have 119 fps in DotA2 on FHD! i5-8600k? Naaah, not worth it"
 
justhateme said:
...
Click to expand...

1. PUBG is notoriously poorly optimized, so not really a great benchmarking game.
2. You shouldn't base any decisions on benchmarking just one game, unless you _only_ play that one game.
3. You should take a critical look on your results and ask yourself "do these make sense". You're getting higher FPS with a higher CPU load and higher resolution, which means there's something wrong with your benchmark (could be related to point #1).
4. If the games have internal frame caps, then the choice of CPU matters even less.
5. In CS:GO you're basically CPU limited even with a GTX 1060 GB @1080p and everything maxed out. Your suggested benchmark would not reveal anything new, since all of these CPUs should be enough to push the average FPS to 300+.
 
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dj2017 said:
Intel 8400 vs Ryzen 1600 review
Focus on 720p, go for the 8400

Intel 4770 vs Intel 8770K review
Focus on actual gaming resolutions and settings, no reason to upgrade

They are different cases, yes, but I still don't like this distinction.


But, there is one reason for 4770K owners to upgrade TODAY. If 300mm wafers do see a price hike of 20% next year and another one in 2019 as it is reported, then going for a 8700K today could probably be more logical from a financial perspective, than upgrading in 1-2 years from now.
Click to expand...

One article was comparing two new CPUs with the aim of trying to work out which one will serve you best. This article is trying to decided it upgrading to a new CPU from an old one is worth the investment. Surely you can tell the difference.

PetrolHead said:
1. PUBG is notoriously poorly optimized, so not really a great benchmarking game.
2. You shouldn't base any decisions on benchmarking just one game, unless you _only_ play that one game.
3. You should take a critical look on your results and ask yourself "do these make sense". You're getting higher FPS with a higher CPU load and higher resolution, which means there's something wrong with your benchmark (could be related to point #1).
4. If the games have internal frame caps, then the choice of CPU matters even less.
5. In CS:GO you're basically CPU limited even with a GTX 1060 GB @1080p and everything maxed out. Your suggested benchmark would not reveal anything new, since all of these CPUs should be enough to push the average FPS to 300+.
Click to expand...

Who and what are you addressing here? Because most of this didn't make sense.
 
Thanks for the awesome article!! Glad to see my 4790k @ 4.6ghz will stay handy for a few more years especially since I game @ 1440p on GTX 1070. :) maybe in a few more years there will be mlre games like ashes of the singularity that can utilize 6cores/12 threads, but for next few years, just sitting doing GPU uogrades....which suits me just fine!
 
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Steve said:
Sorry makes sense now, the quote function didn't seem to work correctly. Anyway thanks for clearing it up for me :D
Click to expand...

No worries, it was my bad. I initially forgot to quote the original post and the ordering of the points just made it harder to link it to justhateme's post (a better ordering would have been 4,5,2,1,3).
 
I would say you get at least 5 good years out of a CPU if you buy a good one and are willing to overclock.

I kept an overclocked i7 920 working hard for 8 years in another machine before the motherboard failed. It was an expensive outlay at that time but I easily ended up getting my money's worth
 
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