i3 i5 i7

[bortas1]

  i3 i5 i7 depending on which one you may get will out perform another. how can you tell just by the numbers by the I? im have alittle confusion going on on which is the best performer for the buck. I have read some on this(what I have read really wasn't clear which is the best)

number  2: amd vs intel

number  3: GeForce(evga?)vs  amd readon

truly im trying to understand this stuff. sometimes all I see is blah blah blah .
  thank you in advance

[Brooke]

I like Intel CPU's over AMD CPU's.  My preference used to be based on everyone testing everything more thoroughly on Intel CPU's that AMD, and thus fewer weird issues with drivers, software, etc. on Intel.  These days, Intel CPU's might perform better per $ cost as well, although I'm not positive about that.

I prefer nVidia GPU's to AMD GPU's.  My preference is based on, long ago not liking the quality of Radeon drivers vs. GeForce drivers and liking the antialiasing of nVidia cards better than Radeon cards.  These days, my preference is that nVidia seems to use less wattage than AMD GPU's for similar performance.  Also, I have been happy with nVidia cards in recent years.

I get i5 CPU's because they are faster (usually -- can depend on some specifics) than i3's but significantly (to my measure of significance) less costly than i7's.  So, for me, it is a happy medium.

I have found that even an i5-2400 (a Dell computer, which cost $500 when new) and a GeForce GTX 750 Ti card (which costs about $130 today) gives me approx. 60 fps in AH3 beta flying offline around a base with drones.

[Bizman]

 i3 i5 i7? No wonder you're confused, there's so many Intel processors on the market. Not only the i-line, there's also Celerons and Pentiums. Basically i7 is the king of the hill but then again its superiority depends on the task it has to do. For example AH2 leans heavily on the CPU, so a dual core i3-6320 @ 3.9 GHz would outperform an i7-920 @ 2.66 GHz by a margin. Even an i7-6700K @ 4 GHz wouldn't perform any better in AH2. Then again, there's multithreaded, memory intensive tasks where the high end quad core would be superior. But for AH only a high clocked dual core like the i3-6320 should be more than enough now and in the future.

AMD vs. Intel? There's been issues with AMD not so many years ago, so Intel might be a little safer choice at the moment. They also seem to use less energy which will show in your electricity bill.

GeForce vs. AMD? At the moment it seems that GeForce makes the fastest cards. And again, AMD plays the role of the energy hog. They both have their pros and cons, as always. If you want to know the hierarchy of a certain card in its series, Wikipedia seems to have quite a lot of information. Search for wiki articles for "GeForce 900 series", for example, for a chart telling all the models and their specs sorted by performance level. For comparing older cards with the current ones, you can find similar wiki articles but it also helps to search for card to card comparisons like "gtx 960 vs 770". Not to mention the Passmark benchmark of virtually all video cards there's ever been.

[Hungry]

i3 i5 i7? No wonder you're confused, there's so many Intel processors on the market. Not only the i-line, there's also Celerons and Pentiums. Basically i7 is the king of the hill but then again its superiority depends on the task it has to do. For example AH2 leans heavily on the CPU, so a dual core i3-6320 @ 3.9 GHz would outperform an i7-920 @ 2.66 GHz by a margin. Even an i7-6700K @ 4 GHz wouldn't perform any better in AH2. Then again, there's multithreaded, memory intensive tasks where the high end quad core would be superior. But for AH only a high clocked dual core like the i3-6320 should be more than enough now and in the future.

AMD vs. Intel? There's been issues with AMD not so many years ago, so Intel might be a little safer choice at the moment. They also seem to use less energy which will show in your electricity bill.

GeForce vs. AMD? At the moment it seems that GeForce makes the fastest cards. And again, AMD plays the role of the energy hog. They both have their pros and cons, as always. If you want to know the hierarchy of a certain card in its series, Wikipedia seems to have quite a lot of information. Search for wiki articles for "GeForce 900 series", for example, for a chart telling all the models and their specs sorted by performance level. For comparing older cards with the current ones, you can find similar wiki articles but it also helps to search for card to card comparisons like "gtx 960 vs 770". Not to mention the Passmark benchmark of virtually all video cards there's ever been.

Bizman

Where does the bus/ram  speed fit in there though, for example I have an older 4 core AMD Phenom 2 Black Edition oc'd to 3.6.  It works well still in many cases although in some it does not and I really don't feel it pushes the GTX970 vid card I have, by my guess because of the slower bus/ram speed (8gb)

[Bizman]

Hungry, truth to be said I haven't studied processor technology deep enough to give you an exact answer. That's also the reason why the Intel processors in my previous post are of same era.

In my layman way of thinking buses are like water hoses. To get more water running you'd either have to add pressure (oc) which may cause the hose to burst or get a wider hose. I know that's not a perfect explanation, it doesn't explain how it's possible to make anything run at a higher bus speed etc.

As for your overclocked AMD you may be right about the bus speeds, after all there's quite many years between the Phenom II and the GTX 970. Or, the lack of oomph may be due to the issues I referred to regarding AMD processors. AH could only use one core of certain AMD multi core CPUs. There used to be some program for unleashing the power of AMD processors but since I've never used that myself I can't remember what it was called and which processors it was for. Your processor may be from that date. The hardcore AMD users in this forum might be able to help.

[Hungry]

Thanks Bizman, I know early on I had to get the program to unlock the fourth core, Its been awhile since I built this one, getting ready for the next and maybe the last, the older I get the longer in between it is (Its not that I'm getting older mind you I think I'm getting cheaper) lol

[BaldEagl]

AH only uses 2 cores so anything more is overkill for AH but may be useful in other applications.  As Bizman said there was a time AH could only use a single core in certain AMD CPU's.  Not sure if that's still the case or not.

I3's are dual core processors so are enough for AH as long as you have a high enough clock speed.  I5's and I7's are both quad cores with the I7 having a larger cache, thus the ability to process larger amounts of data faster than the I5 of similar speed.  This is useful for graphics applications, video editing, etc.

Intel no longer uses a front end bus.  In the Core2Duos you overclocked by increasing the BUS speed.  The I series Intels use something called a ring BUS to move data in and out of cache.  The ring BUS can be overclocked independently of the processor cores and vice versa.  Only the K series Intels allow overclocking of the processor cores.  This can be done in one of two ways; increasing the core clock or increasing the multiplier or a combination of both.

Because there's no longer a front end BUS RAM speed is independent of the processor.  In the old days running RAM at a higher clock speed than the front end BUS was wasted money as the RAM would have to wait on the CPU.  As RAM moved from DDR2 to DDR3 to DDR4 it's clock speeds had to increase but at the same time CAS latency also increased. I forget the exact numbers but it's something like DDR2 800, DDR3 1600 and DDR4 3200 are almost equivalent.  There's a good article about this on Anandtech IIRC.  In building my new computer DDR4 2400 was almost as fast as DDR4 3200 at a lower price due to the increase in CAS latency but I opted for the DDR4 3200 nonetheless.  Moving to DDR4 3600 or higher showed no appreciable gains.

Back to the old days we knew an Intel CPU was double pumped.  Thus, running on a 1600 Mhz front end BUS to DDR2 RAM each core was running at 400 Mhz (400*2 cores*double pumped=1600) and because the RAM was DDR2 transferring data at the tops and bottoms of the cycle 1600/2=800 Mhz  RAM kept both in sync.  I'm sure there's still some relationship between CPU core clock speeds and RAM speeds but try as I might I haven't been able to find it but even if I could it may be of little consequence given that you can change both the CPU's core clock and the multiplier now.

Hope that helps.

[guncrasher]

on amd ah didnt have a choice.  amd cpu would only use 1 core as opposite to intel that used 2 cores.


semp

[Hungry]

AH only uses 2 cores so anything more is overkill for AH but may be useful in other applications.  As Bizman said there was a time AH could only use a single core in certain AMD CPU's.  Not sure if that's still the case or not.

I3's are dual core processors so are enough for AH as long as you have a high enough clock speed.  I5's and I7's are both quad cores with the I7 having a larger cache, thus the ability to process larger amounts of data faster than the I5 of similar speed.  This is useful for graphics applications, video editing, etc.

Intel no longer uses a front end bus.  In the Core2Duos you overclocked by increasing the BUS speed.  The I series Intels use something called a ring BUS to move data in and out of cache.  The ring BUS can be overclocked independently of the processor cores and vice versa.  Only the K series Intels allow overclocking of the processor cores.  This can be done in one of two ways; increasing the core clock or increasing the multiplier or a combination of both.

Because there's no longer a front end BUS RAM speed is independent of the processor.  In the old days running RAM at a higher clock speed than the front end BUS was wasted money as the RAM would have to wait on the CPU.  As RAM moved from DDR2 to DDR3 to DDR4 it's clock speeds had to increase but at the same time CAS latency also increased. I forget the exact numbers but it's something like DDR2 800, DDR3 1600 and DDR4 3200 are almost equivalent.  There's a good article about this on Anandtech IIRC.  In building my new computer DDR4 2400 was almost as fast as DDR4 3200 at a lower price due to the increase in CAS latency but I opted for the DDR4 3200 nonetheless.  Moving to DDR4 3600 or higher showed no appreciable gains.

Back to the old days we knew an Intel CPU was double pumped.  Thus, running on a 1600 Mhz front end BUS to DDR2 RAM each core was running at 400 Mhz (400*2 cores*double pumped=1600) and because the RAM was DDR2 transferring data at the tops and bottoms of the cycle 1600/2=800 Mhz  RAM kept both in sync.  I'm sure there's still some relationship between CPU core clock speeds and RAM speeds but try as I might I haven't been able to find it but even if I could it may be of little consequence given that you can change both the CPU's core clock and the multiplier now.

Hope that helps.

wow Thanks Guys

[Bizman]

IIRC HiTech said somewhere in the Alpha/Beta discussions that AH3 would make use of all cores at some point. However, knowing that he codes it using a Core2Duo E8400 dual core I believe it's safe to assume that the clock rate is more important than the number of cores. That said a dual core doing 3.5 GHz or more should be enough for quite a long time in AH3. If the situation changes in the future you can get a fitting quad core much cheaper than now.

[Skuzzy]

AH only uses 2 cores so anything more is overkill for AH but may be useful in other applications.  As Bizman said there was a time AH could only use a single core in certain AMD CPU's.  Not sure if that's still the case or not.<snip>

While the game only directly uses two cores, the OS will make us of the other cores, if available.  For instance, any game sound play back can take multiple cores all by itself.

There is a benefit to having more than tow cores, even for Aces High.

[bortas1]

While the game only directly uses two cores, the OS will make us of the other cores, if available.  For instance, any game sound play back can take multiple cores all by itself.

There is a benefit to having more than tow cores, even for Aces High.

so I should see about a quad or more cores?

[bortas1]

  thanks all for the replays and comments. all info will help.

[Brooke]

thanks all for the replays and comments. all info will help.

Get a quad. Todays quad vs duo is like double core vs single 5 years ago. More and more benefit will come from quad as time goes by.

[bortas1]

i3 i5 i7? No wonder you're confused, there's so many Intel processors on the market. Not only the i-line, there's also Celerons and Pentiums. Basically i7 is the king of the hill but then again its superiority depends on the task it has to do. For example AH2 leans heavily on the CPU, so a dual core i3-6320 @ 3.9 GHz would outperform an i7-920 @ 2.66 GHz by a margin. Even an i7-6700K @ 4 GHz wouldn't perform any better in AH2. Then again, there's multithreaded, memory intensive tasks where the high end quad core would be superior. But for AH only a high clocked dual core like the i3-6320 should be more than enough now and in the future.

AMD vs. Intel? There's been issues with AMD not so many years ago, so Intel might be a little safer choice at the moment. They also seem to use less energy which will show in your electricity bill.

GeForce vs. AMD? At the moment it seems that GeForce makes the fastest cards. And again, AMD plays the role of the energy hog. They both have their pros and cons, as always. If you want to know the hierarchy of a certain card in its series, Wikipedia seems to have quite a lot of information. Search for wiki articles for "GeForce 900 series", for example, for a chart telling all the models and their specs sorted by performance level. For comparing older cards with the current ones, you can find similar wiki articles but it also helps to search for card to card comparisons like "gtx 960 vs 770". Not to mention the Passmark benchmark of virtually all video cards there's ever been.

ok thanks will check out wiki GeForce 900 seies