Question / Help I5 or I7?

MrBupafy

MrBupafy

New Member
So I have been looking into getting a new processor (for streaming and recording) and have been wondering what to get. Now I currently have $200 so if need be I will borrow $20 or so dollars from a family member. But would it be more worth it to wait till christmas time to have enough money to be able to afford an i7 4770 or 4790?
 
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DryRoastedLemon

Member
Agreed. I'm running on the 5 year old i5 750. Streaming at 720p@30fps is easy for this processor, and any i5 (let alone an i7) you can get nowadays will completely blow my CPU out of the water. An i5 will be plenty. The i7 obviously performs better, but I personally find its price point far less attractive than the i5. For me the price difference combined with the relative performance difference just isn't worth it.

But it's your rig, and your money.
 
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alpinlol

Active Member
if you are on a short budget and you want to get the most out of an cpu without overclocking options go for an intel xeon e3 1230v3
 
Jack0r

Jack0r

The Helping Squad
Definitely go for the i7 or mentioned e3. While i5's can be enough to stream and play a game at the same time, there are enough cases of when they are simply too weak. It depends a lot on what you want to do. For example if you plan to stream fast paced shooter games that also use a lot of CPU power at a decent resolution, framerate and quality, the i5 can reach its limit very fast. Simply run a game like Battlefield 4 at medium quality settings and it can easily eat up all CPU power. Coming from an i5 2320 I went to an i7 4770 and have not looked back since.
I can now run 2 x264 encodings in 720p on veryfast at the same time while playing bf4 at decent quality and still have some free room for more. As mentioned, the e3 should have similar power as an i7 and lets you save some money. It might be lacking a integrated GPU and quicksync though. Depending on the model.
 
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DryRoastedLemon

Member
Can you give us some reviews comparing the Xeon E3-1230v3 against the i5 4570 or the i7? It's difficult to find CPU charts and/or review comparing them. They're often compared to other Xeons, instead.
 
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DryRoastedLemon

Member
Passmark scores give you a general idea of how good a processor is, but only relatively to other Passmark scores (the numbers don't mean much by themselves). This is a synthetic benchmark, which generally doesn't give you a good idea of how good a processor is in terms of real-world performance, such as encoding times.

Judging by the Passmark scores it seems like an interesting CPU, but I need to see real-world performance comparisons before I'm convinced. Just to give you an example: my current processor (i5 750) gets a score of 3747. This seems miniscule when you compare it to the AMD FX-8320 (for example - this is a CPU I wanted to buy some time ago), which gets a score of 8087. However, if you do [further research] you will find that, while overal it does better than my current processor, it actually performs worse at audio tasks, which is incredibly important to me. Not only that, but you also need to look at what you get for those +/- 5000 extra Passmark points.

If I only save 2 minutes of encoding time, I don't really see the point of upgrading at all. That's the time I take to make a cup of coffee. I win 17 seconds of time with WinRAR? Man, I don't even notice that. When I unpack an archive, I do other stuff in the meantime.

That said, it's different for everyone. The point I'm trying to make here is that you should look much further than just some score from a synthetic benchmark. 5000 Extra points? What does that mean? 2 Minutes shorter encoding time? Meh. For me that's not worth it. But it might be worth it for you. But the only way to know that, is to find real-world results.

It's the same reason why I'm not convinced of why I should get an i7 4770 instead of an i5 4570. When I look at [these tests], the conclusion is that the effective time I would win getting an i7 would be about an extra coffee break or two. Not very significant for what I do. 50 Seconds shorter encoding times in Adobe Premiere for +/- €100 extra is not worth it for me. Personally.

Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: Things that interest me far more than some Passmark score would be general CPU load while livestreaming at certain settings (such as 1080p@30FPS, or 720p@60FPS), at different CPU presets. Now that's practical stuff worth looking at. Or general encoding times, which are useful metrics for when you produce lots of videos for YouTube. Stuff like that.

EDIT 2: Actually, if you compare the two CPUs (the Xeon and the i5 4570) they're almost identical, except that the Xeon has a slightly higher clockspeed and hyperthreading support. They're also more expansive and lack an on-board graphical processor (depending on the model).
 
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alpinlol

Active Member
DryRoastedLemon said:
Passmark scores give you a general idea of how good a processor is, but only relatively to other Passmark scores (the numbers don't mean much by themselves). This is a synthetic benchmark, which generally doesn't give you a good idea of how good a processor is in terms of real-world performance, such as encoding times.

Judging by the Passmark scores it seems like an interesting CPU, but I need to see real-world performance comparisons before I'm convinced. Just to give you an example: my current processor (i5 750) gets a score of 3747. This seems miniscule when you compare it to the AMD FX-8320 (for example - this is a CPU I wanted to buy some time ago), which gets a score of 8087. However, if you do [further research] you will find that, while overal it does better than my current processor, it actually performs worse at audio tasks, which is incredibly important to me. Not only that, but you also need to look at what you get for those +/- 5000 extra Passmark points.

If I only save 2 minutes of encoding time, I don't really see the point of upgrading at all. That's the time I take to make a cup of coffee. I win 17 seconds of time with WinRAR? Man, I don't even notice that. When I unpack an archive, I do other stuff in the meantime.

That said, it's different for everyone. The point I'm trying to make here is that you should look much further than just some score from a synthetic benchmark. 5000 Extra points? What does that mean? 2 Minutes shorter encoding time? Meh. For me that's not worth it. But it might be worth it for you. But the only way to know that, is to find real-world results.

It's the same reason why I'm not convinced of why I should get an i7 4770 instead of an i5 4570. When I look at [these tests], the conclusion is that the effective time I would win getting an i7 would be about an extra coffee break or two. Not very significant for what I do. 50 Seconds shorter encoding times in Adobe Premiere for +/- €100 extra is not worth it for me. Personally.

Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: Things that interest me far more than some Passmark score would be general CPU load while livestreaming at certain settings (such as 1080p@30FPS, or 720p@60FPS), at different CPU presets. Now that's practical stuff worth looking at. Or general encoding times, which are useful metrics for when you produce lots of videos for YouTube. Stuff like that.

EDIT 2: Actually, if you compare the two CPUs (the Xeon and the i5 4570) they're almost identical, except that the Xeon has a slightly higher clockspeed and hyperthreading support. They're also more expansive and lack an on-board graphical processor (depending on the model).
Click to expand...

thats why i said its just one benchmark and also mentioned geussing it wont be enough....

and noone actually compares cpu's for streaming except for some personal enthusiasts but when it comes to encoding the xeon is a i7 with lower clockspeed if he would take an e3 1245v3 he had the same igpu as all haswell chips and its almost identical to an i7 4770

and yes i7 compared to i5 is just a beast when it comes to x264 encoding for myself i have an i5 2500k@4,5ghz and an i7 2700k@4,3 ghz
the i5 was maxed out playing and streaming 1080p30 world of warcraft (between 85-100%)
but my i7 can stream 1080p60 world of warcraft and sits around 60-75%

same for csgo is could barely stream csgo 720p30 with my i5 without getting into the 90% area but on my i7 i can do 720p60 on faster preset (cpu ~65-80%) and even 1080p45 was possible but its around 85-95% not maxing out after 2 hours of testing but its still to close to maxing out so its a no go for my i7 2700k

but since ivy and haswell hit the market the encoding is even better in my opinion going for an xeon e3 if on a budget and planning on streaming is the best choise if you had the money i7 4770k (haswell) or 4790k (haswell refresh)or even going with ivy e i7 4820k
 
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DryRoastedLemon

Member
I had one of these discussions before about CPUs, and I will stop myself from responding to the whole CPU debate again because that will absolutely derail the topic. I suppose I have my opinions and you have yours.

and noone actually compares cpu's for streaming except for some personal enthusiasts but when it comes to encoding the xeon is a i7 with lower clockspeed if he would take an e3 1245v3 he had the same igpu as all haswell chips and its almost identical to an i7 4770
Click to expand...

Inaccurate. As is known the video portion of a livestream is delivered through the x264 codec. It makes sense to then check for x264 encoding performance in CPU benchmarks and compare them to benchmarks of your current CPU to get a general idea how much of an improvement you're getting.

My personal opinion: both the i5 and the i7 will absolutely rock. The i7 may be interesting if you want to do a lot of professional quality livestreaming, but otherwise an i5 will do the job absolutely fine. Just buy according to your needs. There is absolutely no need to buy the best there is if that is not what you want to achieve (as in, professional level streaming or something).
 
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