Keep it a buck: is hyperthreading a scam?

[Dorian Breh]

Are i7s really the wave or do they show only mild gains over i5s for virtually all tasks? And not stock clock speed gains, gains from the 4 virtual cores?

Is there actually a scenario where an i5 will bottleneck a high end GPU but an i7 won't? Unlocked, same generation architectures.

Also, will ANY GPU be too much for an i5 Kaby Lake unlocked and overclocked? Is it worth future proofing with the i7?

 

[L Ray]

@itsyoung!! @Ciggavelli

 

[StatUS]

Depends on what you're using it for. For gaming i5 is fine but i7 will be better. For any type type of video, audio, or processing load yes an i7 will be a great benefit.

 

[Responsible Allen Iverson]

There are plenty of benchmarks out there showing i5s against i7s

 

[Dorian Breh]

There are plenty of benchmarks out there showing i5s against i7s

I know, but a lot of them show hardly any difference for games, but I still hear PC builders say go for the i7 to be future proof, i5s will bottleneck high end GPUs (1080 ti). Do games even need NEAR that much CPU usage that you should think about dropping an extra $110 for an i7 over an i5?

 

[daze23]

i7 is better in almost any situation. the stock 7700K even beats the overclocked 7600K

 

[itsyoung!!]

Try streaming on an i5 vs an i7 then ask this

 

[Ciggavelli]

i7, with their virtual cores, improves cpu heavy games. I got 12 logical cores, and some modern games even use them all. The consoles have like 8 core and shyt, so having more cores makes sense.

 

[Responsible Allen Iverson]

I know, but a lot of them show hardly any difference for games, but I still hear PC builders say go for the i7 to be future proof, i5s will bottleneck high end GPUs (1080 ti). Do games even need NEAR that much CPU usage that you should think about dropping an extra $110 for an i7 over an i5?

It doesn't matter what anyone says. Look at the benchmarks for games that you actually play.

 

[el_oh_el]

Try streaming on an i5 vs an i7 then ask this

Why would an i5 have problems streaming video ..even without multi threading

To answer the OP, no hyper threading is not a scam.

 

[Liquid]

i7, with their virtual cores, improves cpu heavy games. I got 12 logical cores, and some modern games even use them all. The consoles have like 8 core and shyt, so having more cores makes sense.

This, but as I have recently learned...anything more than 8 threads causes issues with older games.

I have had to go all the way down to 8 to run games from the 2009-2010 era.

 

[Fatboi1]

Intel Core i7 6700K Hyper-threading Benchmarks
Recently, Hardware Unboxed conducted benchmarking tests with a range of newly released 2016 titles. They used Skylake Core i7 6700K processor with hyper-threading both enabled and disabled. On GPU side of things, they used three cards: the Titan XP for extreme performance, GTX 1070 for realistic mid-range performance, and the GTX 1060 for low to mid-range performance.

The testing was done on the relatively low 1080p resolution which is a bit unrealistic for the GTX 1070 and the Titan XP in particular, but this was to make sure that the CPU didn’t act as the limiting factor, or commonly referred to as bottleneck.

Without further ado, let’s jump to the benchmark results.

F1 2016 (Heavy Rain) – 1080p [Ultra Quality]
Nvidia Titan XP
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 105, Avg. Frame Rate = 139
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 91, Avg. Frame Rate = 125

GeForce GTX 1070
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 78, Avg. Frame Rate = 100
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 78, Avg. Frame Rate = 100

GeForce GTX 1060
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 60, Avg. Frame Rate = 77
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 60, Avg. Frame Rate = 77

First up, we’ve F1 2016, a racing simulator not really known for heavy demand on CPU. With hyper-threading enabled, the Core i7 6700K constantly hovered between 50 and 80% using the Titan XP. The hyper-threading boosted the average frame rate by 11% and the minimum by 15%. Although not a huge jump in performance, it’s still a noteworthy increase.

What’s interesting is that as soon as we downgrade to the GTX 1070, there’s zero difference between hyper-threading enabled and disabled. This was also true when using the GTX 1060.

Cities: Skylines – 1080p [High Quality]
Nvidia Titan XP
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 70, Avg. Frame Rate = 87
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 68, Avg. Frame Rate = 84

GeForce GTX 1070
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 70, Avg. Frame Rate = 81
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 68, Avg. Frame Rate = 80

GeForce GTX 1060
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 62, Avg. Frame Rate = 77
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 61, Avg. Frame Rate = 77

For Cities: Skylines, the test used a large fully developed city with lots going on. The CPU utilization is only set around 30 to 40% on the Core i7 6700K. As a result, disabling hyper-threading had almost no impact on performance.

Overwatch (300 fps Cap) – 1080p [Ultra Quality]
Nvidia Titan XP
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 255, Avg. Frame Rate = 297
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 205, Avg. Frame Rate = 260

GeForce GTX 1070
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 126, Avg. Frame Rate = 147
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 121, Avg. Frame Rate = 145

GeForce GTX 1060
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 111, Avg. Frame Rate = 127
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 110, Avg. Frame Rate = 125

Next up, we have Overwatch which comes out to be very CPU demanding. As such, utilization never dipped below 50% and was often found hovering around 70%, and at times, even exceeded 90%. This enabled hyper-threading to deliver around 24% greater frame rate when using the Titan XP – a very significant gain indeed.

However, once we step down to the GTX 1070, those gains completely evaporate, and now the i7 6700K can be seen delivering much the same performance with hyper-threading disabled.

Total War: Warhammer (DX12) – 1080p [High Quality]
Nvidia Titan XP
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 90, Avg. Frame Rate = 123
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 87, Avg. Frame Rate = 121

GeForce GTX 1070
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 88, Avg. Frame Rate = 111
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 87, Avg. Frame Rate = 109

GeForce GTX 1060
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 72, Avg. Frame Rate = 83
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 70, Avg. Frame Rate = 82

CPU utilization wasn’t really high in Total War: Warhammer. With all eight threads available, the Core i7 6700K was never utilized by more than about 40%. This went down even further when using Titan XP so disabling hyper-threading had almost no negative impact on performance.

Civilization VI – 1080p [Ultra Quality]
Nvidia Titan XP
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 45, Avg. Frame Rate = 78
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 42, Avg. Frame Rate = 73

GeForce GTX 1070
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 44, Avg. Frame Rate = 76
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 42, Avg. Frame Rate = 73

GeForce GTX 1060
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 42, Avg. Frame Rate = 71
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 42, Avg. Frame Rate = 71

Civilization is another game that always shows up when testing CPU performance. This latest version, however, only pushed the Core 6700K to around 55 to 70% utilization. As a result, hyper-threading offered a very small performance advantage when using the Titan XP and GTX 1070 while performance remained almost the same with the GTX 1060.

Gears of War 4 – 1080p [Ultra Quality]
Nvidia Titan XP
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 126, Avg. Frame Rate = 172
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 91, Avg. Frame Rate = 155

GeForce GTX 1070
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 98, Avg. Frame Rate = 116
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 86, Avg. Frame Rate = 110

GeForce GTX 1060
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 82, Avg. Frame Rate = 101
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 82, Avg. Frame Rate = 101

Next up is Gears of War 4 which is a serious CPU hog. The 6700K with hyper-threading enabled was utilized by as much as 95% and for the most part, it’s settled around 70% in the test. As a result, the minimum frame rate was 38% higher with Hyper-threading enabled when using the Titan XP.

The minimum frame rate was also 14% greater with hyper-threading enabled when using the GTX 1070, however, the tech has very little to offer as we filter down to the GTX 1060.

Battlefield 1 (DX11) – 1080p [Ultra Quality]
Nvidia Titan XP
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 128, Avg. Frame Rate = 155
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 119, Avg. Frame Rate = 150

GeForce GTX 1070
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 85, Avg. Frame Rate = 97
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 84, Avg. Frame Rate = 96

GeForce GTX 1060
HT Enabled: Min. Frame Rate = 63, Avg. Frame Rate = 73
HT Disabled: Min. Frame Rate = 63, Avg. Frame Rate = 73

Finally, we have Battlefield 1, another heavy CPU user. The utilization hovered between 60 to 80% in the test, though occasionally it did exceed 90% but only for a very briefly period of time. Enabling Hyper-threading did boost the minimum frame rate when using the Titan XP by 8%, but no real gains were seen with the GTX 1070 or GTX 1060 graphics cards.

Core i7 Hyper-threading: Worth it for gamers?
So there you have it, folks! Based on the sample games tested, it doesn’t really look like much has changed. You can safely assume when matching clock to clock with the Core i7 processor, something like the Core i5 6600K will deliver pretty much what we saw with the hyper-threading disabled.

This is sort of reaching a point of diminishing returns with the Core i7 processors. For example, the i7 6700K costs a bit over 40 per cent more than the i5 6600K, and even with the Titan XP handling the rendering, we didn’t see those kinds of gains. This is why, myself and many others recommend the i5 6600K as the best value CPU for gamers.

So, unless you’re shooting for the absolute maximum performance with high refresh rate monitors and insane GPU configurations, I really don’t think the Core i7 processors are worth it, at least over Core i5. Of course, it will change eventually but I don’t think anything is changing anytime soon.

What’s your take on this? Is the Core i7 worth getting or you agree with me and think that Core i5 is more than sufficient for the most part? Let us know in the comments below.

Intel Hyper-Threading for Gamers: Here's the Core i7 6700K HT Benchmarks [2016 AAA Titles] - DigiWorthy

 

[itsyoung!!]

Why would an i5 have problems streaming video ..even without multi threading

To answer the OP, no hyper threading is not a scam.

are you fukking serious

one we are talking about video games and I mentioned streaming. How did you brain some how switch to streaming services (like netflix) its obvious im talking about streaming video games

two streaming, especially video games, is intensive on processor, cores and hyperthreading. If you are using a single computer set up for streaming video games and using an i5 not only will the quality be horrible due to the strain on the cores but itll slow down the game (fps/performance wise) of the game to an almost 1/2-1/4th of what you would be without streaming on the i5.

fukk outta here man the fact you thought I was talking about streaming videos should let you know you arent supposed to even hitting reply in this thread

shyt for serious gamers who stream for a living, they get a multi computer set up, with a 2nd computer bridged to their gaming computer and OBS (streaming software) is on the 2nd computer which is only loaded with a on board GPU but a high end processor like a Xeon with 6 cores and hyperthreading

Intel Xeon E5-1650 v4 Broadwell 3.6 GHz LGA 2011-3 140W BX80660E51650V4 Server Processor-Newegg.com

to off load the processor of the stress work of streaming so the actual video game and streaming quality doesnt take a hit

This is the WOAT "tech" forum of all time

 

[el_oh_el]

are you fukking serious

one we are talking about video games and I mentioned streaming. How did you brain some how switch to streaming services (like netflix) its obvious im talking about streaming video games

two streaming, especially video games, is intensive on processor, cores and hyperthreading. If you are using a single computer set up for streaming video games and using an i5 not only will the quality be horrible due to the strain on the cores but itll slow down the game (fps/performance wise) of the game to an almost 1/2-1/4th of what you would be without streaming on the i5.

fukk outta here man the fact you thought I was talking about streaming videos should let you know you arent supposed to even hitting reply in this thread

shyt for serious gamers who stream for a living, they get a multi computer set up, with a 2nd computer bridged to their gaming computer and OBS (streaming software) is on the 2nd computer which is only loaded with a on board GPU but a high end processor like a Xeon with 6 cores and hyperthreading

Intel Xeon E5-1650 v4 Broadwell 3.6 GHz LGA 2011-3 140W BX80660E51650V4 Server Processor-Newegg.com

to off load the processor of the stress work of streaming so the actual video game and streaming quality doesnt take a hit

This is the WOAT "tech" forum of all time

No fool, of course I didn't mean Netflix streaming.
Twitch streaming is not gonna reduce your performance by 1/2 to 1/4th of what you would normally get unless you are trying to capture high bitrate 1080p frames. Your claim is greatly exaggerated.

 

[itsyoung!!]

No fool, of course I didn't mean Netflix streaming.
Twitch streaming is not gonna reduce your performance by 1/2 to 1/4th of what you would normally get unless you are trying to capture high bitrate 1080p frames. Your claim is greatly exaggerated.

if you play normally 150 fps, streaming will knock you down to 70-80 FPS very easily if you are using any kind of quality in your stream

why you think pro FPS players play on low settings