W7 PERFORMANCE INDEX, INTEL CORE I5 VS CORE I7?? 2

[MitelInMyBlood]

Since replacing the hard drive (bottleneck) with a 250-gb SSD drive, the overall system performance of my W7 Ultimate (64-bit) 8 gig system has gone from 5.9 up to 7.4 with a Core-I5/750 processor. Since the PI is already well into the 7's, how much more do I stand to gain by replacing the I5 processor with an I7? That seems to be a pretty expensive leap, almost as costly as the SSD upgrade was and I'm just curious if there's as much "payback" as with the SSD?

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[rclarke250]

Not a lot on the PI in windows but who cares? It's useless as a standard of measurement anyways. It has no real indication how fast a system is. Depends on what you use the computer for if you will see an noticeable advantage going to an I7 from an I5. Since you are using a cpu from the going to be extinct real fast socket 1156, I would save the money for when you want to replace the motherboard, and go to a socket that may be around a few years. My reasoning for the fact that you can't depend on the windows PI score as an indication of overall speed is if you read the help on PI, there is a note that says if you have a 64 bit processor, and 4 gb of less of ram, then the max score you will have for the memory subsystem is 5.9. No mention of the speed of the cpu, or the speed of the memory affecting this score. Now if this were anyway to indicate speed of a system, then shouldn't the speed of each component affect the score of the subsystem?

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

The importance of the performance index is a load of bollocks.

The real index is you.

what do you use it for? does it perform fast enough for you for opening documents, browsing, casual games or does it feel sluggish and bloated? Would some optimisation help? defrag, uninstall some old software, remove resident programs that dont need to be loaded. Is your AV old and could be replaced with something lighter and faster?

Lots and lots of variables to consider.




ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[linney]

As far as the Personal Index score is concerned there is not a lot of room left for improvement if you are scoring 7.4. "The scores currently range from 1.0 to 7.9".

I notice that the individual rating on my i7 CPU is 7.5., my overall score is 5.9, the Disk Transfer Rate drags the score down for me.

 

[goombawaho]

I wouldn't chase small improvements in a performance index by spending money that you could spend elsewhere or SAVE.

Having said that, if it's sort of your "hobby" and you have the money to burn, do it. I just don't think it would be a big incremental improvement.

 

[vacunita]

According to Microsoft, mechanical hard drives not matter how fast won't go past the 5.9 marker. While SSD drives will pump it up.

With that said, I don't think its worth it to go from an i5 to an i7 in this case. Its just spending money uselessly and you won't see much benefit if any in the index.



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[kjv1611]

If you have the money to spend, and will actually gain from it, such as high-definition video editing, possibly multi-track audio editing, 3d graphics editing, maybe 3d cad... any CPU-intensive tasks, then go for it.

I can say that on the few machines I've had my hands on (not my own ) with Core i...anything, they have performed well, though I cannot say I've seen a difference between the i3, i5, nor i7. You'd have to be running specific processes/applications to benefit from the difference.

I'm still running a Core 2 Duo in everything I own right now, and for 99.999% of the tasks, it's no different than using any Core i processor.

So if you want to move up, as rclarke250 suggested, you'd be best served moving up to whatever is the latest socket at the time with a mobo, and associated CPU, than to spend the price of CPU for just a tiny margin of difference that you're terribly unlikely to notice. I've actually seen some tests where some Core i5 CPUs out-performed some Core i7. Again, it depends upon all the variables, and majorly depends upon what you're doing with your computer.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Thanks all who replied.

Adding the 250-gig SSD really woke things up and since this isn't going to be used for CAD or Gaming, and based on replies I can see there's little reason to spend (or waste) money changing processors.

Clearly the 'spinning iron' was the bottleneck. Just bootup time alone has soared more than 400% and big MS apps, Outlook 2010 for example, now launches in a matter of 5~7 secs (wheee!)



Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[donb01]

The next bottlenecks after the HD are probably going to be video and memory before the processor. But I doubt you're probably going to get it much faster. If you're doing CAD you might want to spend the money on a really kick-butt video card with a fast processor and lots of memory on it, but that's just my $0.02... )

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Thanks. I think for the time being the video card that came bundled with this system (ATI Radeon HD 5770) will probably suffice for anything I will ever throw at it.

For system memory, the 8 Gigs of DDR3 also seems to be adequate. At least Photoshop seems to be happy. I was a little surprised to learn that many/most of the new motherboards do not (yet) support large amounts of memory even though W7 (64-bit) can address something like 192 gigs. That kind of makes me wonder if (for the present time) that 8 gigs might be the sweet spot since several system manufacturers provide (or limit capacity to) 8 gigs in their so-called "better" systems.


Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[BadBigBen]

We recently put together a monster system:

Supermicro Mainboard
192 GB RAM
2 x Xeon 6 cores
8 SSD's RAID
nVidia Quatro 6000

so you see there are mainboards out there that do support more than 8 gig RAM...

PS: but it did not have Win7 on it, but CAE-Linux (Ubuntu)... and that system flies...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

my P8P67 PRO supports up to 32GB... not bad for an enthusiast board....

ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[cdogg]

We love our HP Z800 workstations! We've been running them with a single six-core Xeon with only 12GB of RAM (for now), but I was surprised when I learned about their ability to support up to 192GB. Too bad HP's future is still up in the air.

-Carl
"The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be."

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[kjv1611]

Supermicro Mainboard
192 GB RAM
2 x Xeon 6 cores
8 SSD's RAID
nVidia Quatro 6000

Mind if I ask what in the world you do with that system????
[SHOCKED]

 

[BadBigBen]

sure, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you... lol... just kidding...

that machine is used in an engineering environment, where they use CAD, CAE, CFD, and FEM, where they need that power in a single workstation...

PS: that machine idles at around 41dB(a) and under full load around 60dB(a), it's a heck of a lot quieter than my home PC (which goes up to a whopping 90dB(a( at full load)...



Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[kjv1611]

Re: dB....

That IS incredible!

 

[BadBigBen]

it sure cost them engineers a pretty penny, I'll tell you that... it uses two 230mm fans and the loudest part is the GFX-Card... ;-)

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[goombawaho]

Sucks your pants off if you get too close, does it???

 

[kjv1611]

[ROFL2]

 

[BadBigBen]

Goom, if that would happen, then either you had lost too much weight, or you weren't wearing them in the first place... ;-)


Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"