is this CPU even worth getting at the price

angerbeaver · April 2017

So im going to try putting together a new PC for streaming and gaming primarily (although surfing and youtube is also whats going to be done). I figure I'll start the decision making with the CPU, then MB, then RAM etc...

I'm looking at http://www.ncix.com/detail/intel-core-i7-7700k-processor-8m-a8-137588.htm?promoid=1500

INTEL CORE I7-7700K Processor 8M Cache 4 Cores 4.2GHZ FC-LGA14C Retail Box Kaby Lake

I read up and this appears to be a higher end Kaby lake series. It is roughly $450 CAD (I cant find big sales for it).

Now I wikipedia CPU and a new series is set to release late 2017. I don't feel like my PC can wait that long, but is it worth getting this for 450$ with a new series sort of around the corner? I'm not an early adapter so I would most likely wait out the beginning anyways when the new series is released. My concern is if I would be overpaying at that price.

I'm currently using Intel Core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz, 3060 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

Any advice or opinions is very appreciated

Quizzical · April 2017

Whether it's worth buying depends on your budget, and how you feel about more cores versus faster cores. The Core i7-7700K has the highest single-threaded performance you can buy. Or for about the same price, you could get a Ryzen 7 1700, which has 8 cores rather than four, but the cores are each only about 70% as fast. The latter will win in programs that scale well to many threads while the former will win in single-threaded programs. Which is better for you depends on what you do.

Waiting for a future generation of CPUs is really only interesting if you're of the view that eight cores isn't enough. I don't see anything beyond minor, incremental improvements coming for top end single-threaded performance in the foreseeable future.

Cleffy · April 2017

For your particular needs, the Ryzen 7 1700 makes the most sense. With 8 cores you can software encode while playing a game. This produces the best quality video for your stream without having a 2nd computer encoding.

angerbeaver · April 2017

I have never gone with AMD, it has always been Intel. I'm not opposed to trying something new though.

@Quizzical I am not really knowledgeable in what the things I will do scale with. Single or multi-thread. It would be to play mmorpgs, AAA single player games, stream on Twitch, stream a movie,watch youtube videos, surf the web, and potentially all of those at the same time

I assume the multi-threading at 70% each would be best as @Cleffy mentioned in that case?

Thanks!

DeadSpock · April 2017

I have an i5-3570K since forever forget 6-7 years ago for 180$, in my opinion i5 is more than enough for gaming.

Calex · April 2017

I have the 7700k and its a beast paired with the 1080 ftw evga video card on the asus maximus hero board and couldn't be happier, also upgraded my monitor to acer predator 34 wide screen 2k. Just upgraded my rig this year from a 3770k and 680 gtx. Gaming is flawless and there seems like nothing this rig can't run at max settings.

It was pricey but for top of the line I always expect to get 4 or 5 years of future proof equipment.

Vrika · April 2017

angerbeaver said:

I am not really knowledgeable in what the things I will do scale with. Single or multi-thread. It would be to play mmorpgs, AAA single player games, stream on Twitch, stream a movie,watch youtube videos, surf the web, and potentially all of those at the same time

Ryzen is likely better alternative when you're streaming, or if you're playing more than one game at the same time.

For all other situations, I7 is likely better.

But much of this is guesswork. Both Ryzen and I7 have their strengths, and both would be good choices in their own way.

wanderica · April 2017

What does the rest of your system look like? If, for example, you're playing at 1440p on a GTX 1070, you're limited by your GPU most likely (depending on the game), and both of those processors would be equal in terms of performance benefits for gaming. However, the 1700 would have room to spare for streaming on Twitch. In other words, that 70% performance number, while accurate, isn't going to translate into 30% better performance from buying a 7700k for you. Either processor is going to be a huge upgrade for you and will perform just fine. I have a 6700k myself and love it. There is a case to be made for more threads while streaming, especially when the game you're playing taps into more than 4 cores.

Veexer_Nui · April 2017

Ryzen if you want to stream + game + photoshop + 3d render + autocad at the same time.
7700k if you only game.

Newer games will come out that fully support ryzen then it wont even be close.

Gdemami · April 2017

angerbeaver said:
@Quizzical I am not really knowledgeable in what the things I will do scale with. Single or multi-thread. It would be to play mmorpgs, AAA single player games, stream on Twitch, stream a movie,watch youtube videos, surf the web, and potentially all of those at the same time

I assume the multi-threading at 70% each would be best as @Cleffy mentioned in that case?

Thanks!

Apart from few specific tasks, nothing you do on desktop really scales well with core count. Those extra cores are mostly useless, what counts tho is performance per core.

Stick with i7 and Avoid "k" series CPUs since overclocking, and clock speed in general, does not translate well into performance / money ratio - you spent a lot for very litle performance gain.

Ozmodan · April 2017

DMKano said:

Cleffy said:

For your particular needs, the Ryzen 7 1700 makes the most sense. With 8 cores you can software encode while playing a game. This produces the best quality video for your stream without having a 2nd computer encoding.

The thing is i7 7700k would work just fine as well

Yeah for $200 more. Personally if you want to stick with Intel get the I5 6600k and save yourself over $200. The difference when gaming between the I5 and the I7 is minor.

Ozmodan · April 2017

Gdemami said:

angerbeaver said:
@Quizzical I am not really knowledgeable in what the things I will do scale with. Single or multi-thread. It would be to play mmorpgs, AAA single player games, stream on Twitch, stream a movie,watch youtube videos, surf the web, and potentially all of those at the same time

I assume the multi-threading at 70% each would be best as @Cleffy mentioned in that case?

Thanks!

Apart from few specific tasks, nothing you do on desktop really scales well with core count. Those extra cores are mostly useless, what counts tho is performance per core.

Stick with i7 and Avoid "k" series CPUs since overclocking, and clock speed in general, does not translate well into performance / money ratio - you spent a lot for very litle performance gain.

What terrible advice!

Gdemami · April 2017

Ozmodan said:
What terrible advice!

Maybe, still better than 6600k or Ryzen tho....

Vrika · April 2017

Ozmodan said:

DMKano said:

Cleffy said:

For your particular needs, the Ryzen 7 1700 makes the most sense. With 8 cores you can software encode while playing a game. This produces the best quality video for your stream without having a 2nd computer encoding.

The thing is i7 7700k would work just fine as well

Yeah for $200 more. Personally if you want to stick with Intel get the I5 6600k and save yourself over $200. The difference when gaming between the I5 and the I7 is minor.

When streaming I5 6600K won't be good enough.

But a cheaper Ryzen might be good enough if one wants to spend less than an I7 costs.

Gdemami · April 2017

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

The only reason I have a 7700k is because I get free upgrades through my work, otherwise I'd still be with my 4770k. But then, I went to the 4790k, then 6700k and now 7700k, and this said, the 7700k, specially at the clock speed I have it, is faster than the previous 4 core 8 thread "K" processors, and is most likely the best gaming CPU nowadays even at stock speed.

My advice though would be:
If you have to sacrifice the graphic card to get a better CPU for gaming, do NOT do it. Get the best graphic card possible, and drop to an I5 or a Rizen. Only get an I7 if money isn't a problem at all.

For gaming+streaming, i7 is well worthy...

Besides, when you count in the cost of expensive Z270 board + cooler, price difference between 7600k and 7700 evens out.

Zebbakei · April 2017

If I was building a PC atm i'd go with a amd 1600 6c/12t for 220ish, it comes with an adequate cpu cooler, even if you're OCing. It does just as well as a 1700 in single threaded tasks and nearly as well in multi threaded stuff. Saves you money for a better gpu.

Asm0deus · April 2017

Veexer_Nui said:

Ryzen if you want to stream + game + photoshop + 3d render + autocad at the same time.
7700k if you only game.

Newer games will come out that fully support ryzen then it wont even be close.

That's the thing that lots of people are hoping, that newer games will make use of more than 4 cores and that will make up for them being slower but dunno so seems like 4 faster cores is still better than 6 slower ones for now.

Vrika said:

...snip.....

When streaming I5 6600K won't be good enough.

But a cheaper Ryzen might be good enough if one wants to spend less than an I7 costs.

Hmm I have a 15-750 and I am able to stream just fine.

One thing though is if games become better optimized for ryzen and thus the single core performance goes up that would be awesome considering ryzen has much better prices than intel right now.

I really think it's time for intel to lose the king of the hill spot so we can finally see some decent prices from them.

Wizardry · April 2017

I would say go for that cpu,that is a good price in CDN dollars.Anything newer coming out would likely be using old chips o/c or jacked up prices that only the foolish jump in on.Get a matching GPU and your rocking.

Ozmodan · April 2017

Gdemami said:

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

The only reason I have a 7700k is because I get free upgrades through my work, otherwise I'd still be with my 4770k. But then, I went to the 4790k, then 6700k and now 7700k, and this said, the 7700k, specially at the clock speed I have it, is faster than the previous 4 core 8 thread "K" processors, and is most likely the best gaming CPU nowadays even at stock speed.

My advice though would be:
If you have to sacrifice the graphic card to get a better CPU for gaming, do NOT do it. Get the best graphic card possible, and drop to an I5 or a Rizen. Only get an I7 if money isn't a problem at all.

For gaming+streaming, i7 is well worthy...

Besides, when you count in the cost of expensive Z270 board + cooler, price difference between 7600k and 7700 evens out.

More nonsense? Why in the world do you need a top end I7 to stream???? My media PC has an normally clocked I5 4790k and it streams anything I want it to.

Aragoni · April 2017

First of all CPUs nowadays are a bit of a gamble, as it depends on how well the upcoming games will handle multi-threading. ID Software very recently went out and said that they are developing their next engine with multi-threading in mind, as Ryzen has pushed CPUs with many cores down to a really reasonable price.
If you look at performance tests (my source here in a Swedish website called Sweclockers) the difference between say a 1600x and a 7700k isn't that much, and considering that the 7700k is more expensive and that you might not get a CPU that are as future-proof, I'd recommend a Ryzen. I actually bought a new computer last week with a 1600 (no X) and it's a beast. Even had a stock cooler which actually works perfectly, both on keeping the CPU cool and keeping the noise down.

Just keep these things in mind: 1. If you decide to go Intel, avoid the i5s (6600k, 7600k) as you will want the extra cores for video encoding when you're streaming.
2. Ryzen seems to be very affected by the speed on your RAM, so I'd recommend going over 3000Mhz on them.

ID Software:

Sweclockers: http://www.sweclockers.com/test/23613-amd-ryzen-5-1600x-och-5-1500x/12#content

My PC: https://www.inet.se/kundvagn/visa/10345926/namnlos
https://www.komplett.se/product/908905#

Gdemami · April 2017

Aragoni said:

First of all CPUs nowadays are a bit of a gamble, as it depends on how well the upcoming games will handle multi-threading.

Not really, it is easily predictible how it will go.

Here is the crux:
Even if the game is well threaded, the bottleneck will still be on GPU and additional cores, more MHz or higher IPC won't help because the amount of workload we put on GPUs increase at much faster rate than CPU load increase.

This core craze is the same core craze we had when FX was launched - 'everyone' was saying how games will be using more cores. Nothing happened since, and nothing will change in foreseeable future because the paradigm above still applies.

Ridelynn · April 2017

Gdemami said:

Aragoni said:

First of all CPUs nowadays are a bit of a gamble, as it depends on how well the upcoming games will handle multi-threading.

Not really, it is easily predictible how it will go.

Here is the crux:

Even if the game is well threaded, the bottleneck will still be on GPU and additional cores, more MHz or higher IPC won't help because the amount of workload we put on GPUs increase at much faster rate than CPU load increase.

This core craze is the same core craze we had when FX was launched - 'everyone' was saying how games will be using more cores. Nothing happened since, and nothing will change in foreseeable future because the paradigm above still applies.

Actually, I agree with that. Well written and entirely true, with respect to gaming.

wanderica · April 2017

Gdemami said:

Aragoni said:

First of all CPUs nowadays are a bit of a gamble, as it depends on how well the upcoming games will handle multi-threading.

Not really, it is easily predictible how it will go.

Here is the crux:

Even if the game is well threaded, the bottleneck will still be on GPU and additional cores, more MHz or higher IPC won't help because the amount of workload we put on GPUs increase at much faster rate than CPU load increase.

This core craze is the same core craze we had when FX was launched - 'everyone' was saying how games will be using more cores. Nothing happened since, and nothing will change in foreseeable future because the paradigm above still applies.

I'm not so sure. It feels more like Intel Extreme vs C2D or C2D vs Quad Cores to me. In both of those examples, more cores was the correct prediction. I will admit, however, that games today are being written to scale with available threads making 8 thread CPUs viable for much longer than single core or C2D chips were. At what point, however, do available threads overtake the GPU as the bottleneck source? BF1 is getting close to what we could expect to see. Even though it's still GPU limited, as you say, it still caps out the 4c / 8t chips at near 100% usage. Doom, on the other hand, using Vulkan, doesn't have that limitation, but it does scale very well with more available cores.

I think in the end you're correct. A 7700k will be a fantastic CPU for quite a while, but processors with less than 8 threads already bottleneck GPUs in BF1. I think those CPU requirements will creep up a bit faster than we realize due to thread scaling in modern games.

Gdemami · April 2017

wanderica said:
BF1 is getting close to what we could expect to see.

....and BF1 just as much as Doom show that there is no point in having more than 4 cores.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-1-directx-12-benchmark,5017-8.html

A jump from 1 to 2 cores was massive, much less was jump from 2 to 4 cores - we are only somewhat experiencing it today, +4 cores is redundant.

This is given by the nature of the load, games will never really utilize more cores. It isn't a load that you can easily parallelize where more cores you throw at it makes it go faster.

Ozmodan · April 2017

Gdemami said:
Aragoni said:

First of all CPUs nowadays are a bit of a gamble, as it depends on how well the upcoming games will handle multi-threading.
Not really, it is easily predictible how it will go.

Here is the crux:

Even if the game is well threaded, the bottleneck will still be on GPU and additional cores, more MHz or higher IPC won't help because the amount of workload we put on GPUs increase at much faster rate than CPU load increase.

This core craze is the same core craze we had when FX was launched - 'everyone' was saying how games will be using more cores. Nothing happened since, and nothing will change in foreseeable future because the paradigm above still applies.

Completely depends what you are playing. I like strategy games at times, I received a nice email from Stardock saying that all their strategy games are going to be using a new engine that will benefit greatly from more cores. They are very excited by the 8 core AMD's and are recommending them for their games.

They were getting much better performance from the AMD cores than the Intel I7 cores. So my next build will probably be AMD for just that reason.

hatefulpeace · April 2017

angerbeaver said:

So im going to try putting together a new PC for streaming and gaming primarily (although surfing and youtube is also whats going to be done). I figure I'll start the decision making with the CPU, then MB, then RAM etc...

I'm looking at http://www.ncix.com/detail/intel-core-i7-7700k-processor-8m-a8-137588.htm?promoid=1500

INTEL CORE I7-7700K Processor 8M Cache 4 Cores 4.2GHZ FC-LGA14C Retail Box Kaby Lake

I read up and this appears to be a higher end Kaby lake series. It is roughly $450 CAD (I cant find big sales for it).

Now I wikipedia CPU and a new series is set to release late 2017. I don't feel like my PC can wait that long, but is it worth getting this for 450$ with a new series sort of around the corner? I'm not an early adapter so I would most likely wait out the beginning anyways when the new series is released. My concern is if I would be overpaying at that price.

I'm currently using Intel Core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz, 3060 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

Any advice or opinions is very appreciated

I spend alot of time deciding that question. If you have a 144 monitor I would go with the i7. If you have lots of money to waste the 7700k as stated is the fastest, but the 6700 isn't that far behind. If you over clocked a 6700 to 4.5, which wouldn't be to hard to do, my friend and I got his to 4.5 in like 10 mins.

I dono if I could find my post on here, but I wrote it all down. Basically the ryzen 1700 overclocked to 3.8, gets between like 20-90 fps less than a i7 with a 1080ti. Those are max fps though, the average is more like 15-20, and the min is like 10.

Here is is.
http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/comment/7142251#Comment_7142251

Overclocked 1080ti 127.1 3201 27.1 258.7
stock ryzen stock 1080ti
128.4
3235
29.7
248.6
Max oc ryzen Max oc 1080ti
140.1
3530
38.4
267.9
K my friend with 6700k.
Stock everything.
146.7
3696
33.7
316.30

Stock 6700 oc 1080ti
155.5
3917
34.4
322.9

So basically these numbers are utterly meaningless if you are doing 1080 60hz. If you are doing 1080, there is no reason to buy a i7 I can think of, the ryzen will give you 8 cores 16 threads, is cheaper some times depending on where you live and stuff like that. The ryzen 1700 oced to 4ghz gets really close to the stock i7 6900x, the ryzen gets like 1700 on the ciniebench, the 6900 gets 1730 or something like that. The i7 6700 oced to 4.5 gets 900.

If you are doing 4k, the CPU doesn't really matter in the slightest. A 8350 will get the basically the same FPS as a 7700k with a 1080ti, because the GPU bottle necks.

So there is really only one reason to get a 7700k, and that is if you use a 1080 144hz monitor. If not they are a waste of money. Because a Ryzen 1700 will get over 60 fps at 1080, which you can't see any difference if you dont have a 144hz monitor. The 7700k in and of it self is really a waste of money to be honest even if your doing 144hz, because a i5 7600k will get you the same results in gaming as the i7, but cost almost half the price. It use to be that the i7 use to be better at multi thread tasks, so people would get it, cause they wanted to do more than game, but if you are doing more than gaming the ryzen 1700 would blow a i7 away at like 2x the speed.

I owned a i5 6600k, and I hit a bottle neck with it, at the time. I was playing 2 eve onlines and stellaris, which not to many people attempt to do. At the time there was no ryzen, so I bought a 6800k, which got rid of the bottle neck, but I blew it up. The 6600k was so close in gaming to my friend 6700k that it wasn't worth talking about.

If all you are doing is streaming, playing games and youtubing have a 144hz monitor than i5 is the ticket. If you have 1080 60 hz, or 4k 60hz ryzen is the better deal. If all your doing is going to be 1080 or 4k 60hz gaming, the best deal is the ryzen 4 core because it is like 100 bucks.

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is this CPU even worth getting at the price

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