i5-750 vs. i7-860: Does Hyperthreading Matter?

[zaiusphd]

Deciding between the i5-750 and i7-860--currently leaning towards i5--and haven't found a convincing argument that the i7's Hyperthreading (HT) is going to justify the extra cost over the i5. The system is primarily for gaming. Infrequently, I will do some basic Photoshop work or video encoding.

From TR's Win7 System Guide:

Thanks to Windows 7 and its SMT parking in particular, HT can help quite considerably in certain tasks without compromising performance in others. We've found that Core i7 CPUs are considerably faster than the i5-750 with 7-Zip compression, two-pass video encoding, and 3D rendering, all of which take advantage of the i7's support for additional threads.

Can anyone shed some light on other situations where HT is worth the i7 premium in a gaming machine? Any other arguments for the i7-860 over the i5-750 in general? (As far as core clock speed is concerned, I will be more than satisfied with the OC I can get out of the i5.) Thanks!

[MaxTheLimit]

Well unless you use the specific applications that you quoted, I don't see a lot of reasons to pay the extra few bucks for he i7 CPUs. Especially since you mentioned you were overclocking. If you weren't I would mention the higher turbo boost speeds, but since you are overclocking beyond that benefit, which is only small anyhow, I would ( and did ) go i5.

[flip-mode]

In a gaming machine, there is no use for hyperthreading. i5 750 is the pick.

[zaiusphd]

Fantastic. Thanks for the reassurance!

[ChronoReverse]

An 8 "true" core processor wouldn't really help gaming. Neither would the "semi" cores of an HT capable CPU. The benefits are there and quite significant for the appropriate applications but for gaming, you'll be hard pressed to saturate two cores. Therefore, a higher clock is better.

[Fighterpilot]

No upgrade to the 6 core chips coming so it means a new motherboard if you go i5-750.
I'm buying the 860 for my rig.

[flip-mode]

No upgrade to the 6 core chips coming so it means a new motherboard if you go i5-750. I'm buying the 860 for my rig.

I do not understand this post. The 860 uses the same motherboards as a 750, so it still means a new motherboard if you go 860. Going beyond that, 6 cores is of no more use than four cores (with four being barely more useful than two) for gaming, so I don't see the relevance here.

[Chun¢]

I was leaning toward the 750 myself, and then I found out that micro center had an 860 for the price of newegg's 750, so i went with that...

[UberGerbil]

No upgrade to the 6 core chips coming so it means a new motherboard if you go i5-750.
I'm buying the 860 for my rig.

The 6-core Gulftown chips will use the LGA1366 socket. As flip-mode says, both the i5-7xx and the i7-8xx chips use the LGA1156 socket and the P55 chipset. If you were want to be able to drop in a 6-core later, you need to go i7-9xx and use a motherboard with the x58 chipset. But I don't think that's under consideration here. And I agree with the consensus: while HT has benefits, they don't show up in gaming (and likely won't any time soon). And you can say the same about six cores, also (though Gulftown may bring other benefits in the form of increased cache, more memory bandwidth, and the handful of new instructions common to the Westmere generation... most of which won't have much impact on gaming either).

[wibeasley]

And it's expected that there's not going to be a Gulftown cheaper than $1,000, correct?

[Vaughn]

That's an incorrect assumption, I fully believe intel will release lower end gulftowns on the x58 chipset. However at first release it might only be an extreme edition cpu.

[wibeasley]

I think there's a difference between an 'expectation' and an 'assumption', but either way, I hope you're right.

[sironomus]

And it's expected that there's not going to be a Gulftown cheaper than $1,000, correct?

I have heard this as well but I can't believe Intel would be able to make any money only selling extreme edition cpus. I hope to see consumer level Gulftowns as well.

[[SDG]Mantis]

I was leaning toward the 750 myself, and then I found out that micro center had an 860 for the price of newegg's 750, so i went with that...

Of course, Microcenter has the 750 for $150...so the $200 for an i7 920 (with its more expensive motherboards) or the i7 860 for $230 aren't all that attractive unless you need HT.

[UberGerbil]

I have heard this as well but I can't believe Intel would be able to make any money only selling extreme edition cpus. I hope to see consumer level Gulftowns as well.

That would be true if that was the only version they were selling. But it's really a server CPU (like all the i7-9xxs), and that's where they pick up all the volume. Packaged and sold to the few desktop users who can actually properly employ it, and the many more who want it purely for the e-peen, it's almost pure profit.

There will be cheaper versions eventually, though you may have to wait until Sandy Bridge pushes it off its pedestal (and/or AMD is offering something competitive).

[LaChupacabra]

I've been considering this too but for school (as well as gaming). Starting next semester (maybe next school year) I will have to run up to 4 virtual machines (a combination of Vista and XP) in VMware concurrently. Does anyone have any experience with a situation like this, and if so what kind of differences you would get between the 750 and the 860?

[UberGerbil]

I've been considering this too but for school (as well as gaming). Starting next semester (maybe next school year) I will have to run up to 4 virtual machines (a combination of Vista and XP) in VMware concurrently. Does anyone have any experience with a situation like this, and if so what kind of differences you would get between the 750 and the 860?

RAM. Lots of RAM. You definitely need that; what you need in terms of CPU is going to depend on what you're actually doing inside those VMs, because (with modern processors with VT extensions) running the VMs themselves doesn't introduce a lot of CPU overhead (not enough to matter on a quad, anyway).

[LaChupacabra]

what you need in terms of CPU is going to depend on what you're actually doing inside those VMs, because (with modern processors with VT extensions) running the VMs themselves doesn't introduce a lot of CPU overhead

That's good, save some coinage on the CPU then. 8 gigs is what I was going to go with for the RAM. I think the ultimate goal of the class is going to be to have a Windows server 2008 somehow networked and feeding things like mail etc. etc. to the other 3 VM's within VMware. But that's a guess. Any recomendations as far as the storage system? I'm running a VM of Vista Biz and XP Pro off of a USB 2.0 hard drive (that seems faster than having them on the host systems HD) and think that running 4 VM's off the same external drive might create a bottleneck.

[Airmantharp]

what you need in terms of CPU is going to depend on what you're actually doing inside those VMs, because (with modern processors with VT extensions) running the VMs themselves doesn't introduce a lot of CPU overhead

That's good, save some coinage on the CPU then. 8 gigs is what I was going to go with for the RAM. I think the ultimate goal of the class is going to be to have a Windows server 2008 somehow networked and feeding things like mail etc. etc. to the other 3 VM's within VMware. But that's a guess. Any recomendations as far as the storage system? I'm running a VM of Vista Biz and XP Pro off of a USB 2.0 hard drive (that seems faster than having them on the host systems HD) and think that running 4 VM's off the same external drive might create a bottleneck.

We used VMWare to create a pair of 2003 Servers, one with the full domain controller suite as well as the exchange server (DHCP as well...). The second would log onto the domain of the first, and we could send emails in between users on the second, and it would get it's IP from the first. Good fun really. Thing is, we had 2003 Enterprise? installed on the machines, and they had Phenom X3's with 2GB of RAM. It wasn't fast, but it did work for the purpose intended.

While I'd say RAM too, VMWare, unlike VirtualBox, dynamically allocates memory, so you're VM's allocation is really just their max. So more memory is good, but it's certainly not a necessity with VMWare.

For storage, well, USB 2.0 brings it's own limitations and overhead. While I wouldn't say you need a different drive for each VM on SATA, that would be the fastest way to do it- try and be logical about it, and if you can put more than one drive inside the machine that's running these, that would help. If you do have more than one drive, try to distribute the VM's across them efficiently.