I have a I5 3570K running at 4.5 GHz, I had decided to hold out on upgrading until broadwell and the gtx 800 series comes, this I5 and my gtx 680 are holding out pretty well since 2012.

But looking into preordering FRACT today (after brad mentioned it on the UPF) I noticed that they put as recommended settings a "Core i7 2.4 GHz or better", of course they probably recommend that because of all the synthesizer craziness they have going, makes sense that this would be a game that would take advantage of better multithreading.

But that got me thinking, would upgrading to a I7 3770K be worthwhile? for holding out till the next gen intel processor at least, or would it be just a waste of money? do you think games nowadays take more advantage of HT?

Imo it's a waste of money, especially since you've only had them since 2012. But I don't need to play every game on max to be happy, so that's your call.

The only upcoming game I've heard that pushes the limits of processors right now is Witcher 3, and that will probably be optimized.

The majority of games out now or even coming out in the next year wont be bottled necked by a 3570k. I also agree that upgrading from a 680 to anything in the 7 series is pointless unless you want to game on more than one monitor, but then there's sli. If you are just looking for a place to sink cash into your rig you can always buy a water kit and make a loop or add ssd's, storage, max out ram, etc.

I as well agree absolutely no point in upgrading to any 7 series card if your still rocking a 680. As for CPUs I would just hold off no need to upgrade that really until the new line of CPUs come out with new motherboards and ddr4 ram.

Not yet. Give it a couple more years. CPU is the last thing you really need to upgrade.

They are probably just covering their asses because lolgaminglaptops. That's the only thing with that low of a clock speed this decade. Your 3570k will blow out a 2.4GHz laptop CPU. Heck this magical i7 2.4GHz they are mentioning might even be dual core; they don't go into enough detail.

Hyperthreading in games can cause problems too if games don't support it. For example the game may only use two threads. It see's your i7 with its eight threads (and only four physical cores) and picks out two it likes. Whoops it picked core one and the second thread on core one not knowing it was not a real cpu core. It is now trying to run tasks for two CPU cores on one CPU core killing performance. Hyperthreading also uses more power and generates more heat because why not which could potentially decrease performance, but realistically your CPU shouldn't be getting anywhere near that hot in the first place. Unless its laptoaster.

Anecdotal evidence: From Dust recommended an i7 as well and ran totally fine on an old Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 Ghz.

You have an i5? No need. Until new cpu architecture and specs hit the market, and games actually push those specs, you are plenty good enough. I have never seen a single game take full advantage of my i7, I only have it cause I do a lot of video editing. If anything upgrade the 680, which also isn't really needed.

Don't see the need to update. I would wait.

You should try the game instead.

system requirements suck ass at conveying the actual performance you will get.
Their only use, in my opinion, is for parents to look at when buying Christmas presents, in order to make sure they start at all.

And even if this game requires an i7 over a i5 to run properly, it has no business doing so, cause pretty much no other game in the known universe does, The bottleneck will always be your graphics card, unless you are running multiple GPU's, or the game is bad.

of course, there is always going to be a first, but i cant see it in this one.

My personal guess is that the person that wrote the System requirement for that game just wrote something down.

Also look at the recoommendation. 2.4 GHz i7. I don't think I have seen an i7 at that low a frequency unless it is a laptop version. And if it was it would have been the first gen versions of the Core i line. So your current i5 will be more than fine.

I concur with the rest of the thread: no game right now requires the extra performance or hyper-threading that an i7 gives you over your i5. I've been running an i5 2500k since 2011 paired with a GTX 680 and I still don't feel the need to upgrade that processor. Frankly, if you want more gaming performance, buying a second 680 for SLI is a much better use of that money (and even then, only if your running a resolution higher than 1080p).

The vast majority of games just aren't using the i7. i5s from the 2000, 3000, and 4000 series aren't really bottlenecking anything, especially the overclockable K variants. You'll find more performance from upgrading or adding a GPU than from any CPU changes. a GTX 680 can't bottleneck a 3570k, and i'm betting a 780 cant either.

Laptops however, are a different beast. In that case yes, an i7 is recommended. The i3/5/7 rankings are much more 'consumer friendly' on laptops compared to the desktop versions, in that they are related to the power of the chip, as opposed to features. A desktop i5 can generally outperform a lot of laptop i7's for example, because on desktop chips, i7 usually signifies multithreading, not processing power.

@thehbk Yeah, my old i7 800 series was a 2.4, but that was years ago.

My wife just bought me a new PC, Got the I7 4770k and nothing is taking full advantage of that card.As far as the 680 goes Your still fine for a while, my 770 is getting bored of the games Im playing. Like others have said, look into maxing out RAM and if you dont have a decent SSD invest in one...they are amazing.

@onarum: its a total waste of money if you only use it for gaming

i5 is fine. I noticed watch dogs reccomends an i7 but i can't believe a ubi game made primarily for consoles will take advantage of all the cores and threads.

Yeah I eventually gave up on the I7, bought 16GB of corsair dominator 2400 ram instead :)

Also I'm considering maybe putting liquid cooling in and upping my overclock a bit, it's very cheap.

I think I'll be able to hold out until next gen processors and gtx card comes just fine, thanks for all the opinions, saved me some money because I was really about to buy the damn thing ;P

Yep, unless you're doing productivity tasks or are considering streaming out your gameplay in the future then you don't need an i7 ATM.

You have a pretty rock solid CPU most applications don't take advantage of newer style CPUs anyways so yours is still completely fine.

@onarum: you should have mentioned the ram purchase, i don't think you'll benefit from that high speed ram.

a well... it scratched my upgrading itch and it wasn't that expensive at all so.. had 8GB before (2x 4GB corsair vengeance 1866), thought about getting another 8GB but my air cooler is so big it actually invades one of the memory bank's space.. then I saw this 16GB dominator kit (2x 8GB) on a good price and decided to go for it.