Core i5 or Core i7

[Peter Korsten]

 So, I've decided to upgrade my PC, once I win the lottery. :)

This will be done in three steps:

   1. Buy an additional 500 GB or 1 TB SSD, so that I can install a couple
   of games. They easily set you back 65 GB these days, and that's just very
   hard on a 256 GB SSD.
   2. Buy a new video card, probably something along the lines of a GeForce
   GTX 980. That's about twice as fast as my GTX 580.
   3. Buy a new motherboard and CPU, and some 16 GB of memory.


When I read about what CPU to get for gaming, most people say that a Core
i5 is sufficient, and that the graphics card is much more important. On the
other hand, my ageing Core i7-960 still has half of the performance of some
of the fastest 4-core Core i7 chips. In fact, the fastest Core i5 is only
30% faster. On the other hand, the memory may not be that fast.

However, I'm not sure about the Core i5. One thing that is mentioned is
that games may start to use those extra logical cores you get on an i7, and
that the extra performance may come in handy when you're streaming games -
something that I can see myself doing within the foreseeable future.

Also, what makes sense: an LGA1150 socket or an LGA2011 socket? The latter
you need if you want six cores (12 logical) on a Core i7. I foresee a great
expense, though.

Or would it make more sense to just stick with the Supermicro motherboard
that I have? I just found out, though, that it's impossible to overclock.
Buying a new Socket 1366 motherboard doesn't seem particularly useful.

- Peter
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