Owners of a i3-3220 / 3225 and i5-3570K for gaming?

I've reviewed many benchmarks, and I know the GPU is the cornerstone for a better build and improved performance.

But has anyone had the i3-3220 or i3-3225 in a gaming rig and put it through its paces, then upgraded to the i5-3570K? Or had them both for gaming?

Are there more noticeable slowdowns and dips in FPS/smoothness for the dual-cores that match some of the new charts and data on review sites? I'd prefer 60 solid FPS over 70 with peaks and valleys.

I can't predict the future, but doesn't it seem like the i5-3570K will still be very capable in three years?

Three years ago the Intel® Core™ i7-920 was one of the better processors. Today it is still a good processor while it isnt as good as the Intel Core i5-3570K it will still allow you to game at a high level especially if you have it overclocked.

So will the Intel Core i5-3570K still be a high end processor in 3 years? That would depend on one thing if someone comes out with a way to make it easier to program for multi-threaded application past 4 threads. The reason why the Intel Core i5-3570K does such a good job is that so few application can use more than 4 threads.

I can't predict the future, but doesn't it seem like the i5-3570K will still be very capable in three years?

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Why do you come to that conclusion? Based on recent history CPU advances have slowed down so I do not expect i5-3570K to be in anyway considered slow in just 3 years.

My i7 920 shows no signs of age when it comes to the games I play. Then again I don't try to stay on the bleeding edge.

drescherjm said:

Why do you come to that conclusion? Based on recent history CPU advances have slowed down so I do not expect i5-3570K to be in anyway considered slow in just 3 years.

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And, consider software and game developers as of late. I'd reckon that an i5 or i7 from SB or IVB will run the majority of the software out there between now and five years from now unless developers wise-up and find some way for the software to need something better than the current gen we have now.

As for games, I'd say at least three years. With the PS4 and Xbox 720 on the horizon, I honestly don't think we'll need a new processor that's better than SB or IVB for a while.

The biggest benefit I can see going to Haswell this June or this year is if you're going to get a laptop. The power savings are going to be the most beneficial there and would warrant a reasonable upgrade to your current laptop. That and most will be using the new Intel GT2 and GT3 graphics.

I think for desktop users, we'll have to wait until Skylake because of DDR4. (My mistake thinking it was Broadwell.) So, that's sometime in 2016-ish or later.

And, consider software and game developers as of late. I'd reckon that an i5 or i7 from SB or IVB will run the majority of the software out there between now and five years from now unless developers wise-up and find some way for the software to need something better than the current gen we have now.

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As a programmer I believe part of this is a catch-22. I mean you can not develop your applications to require 6 or more cores when 80% of your target audience does not have such a machine.

drescherjm said:

As a programmer I believe part of this is a catch-22. I mean you can not develop your applications to require 6 or more cores when 80% of your target audience does not have such a machine.

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Yup, very true. I believe someone had a good explanation about that in another thread. So, what we have now from SB and IVB are more than adequate for the foreseeable future.

drescherjm said:

Why do you come to that conclusion? Based on recent history CPU advances have slowed down so I do not expect i5-3570K to be in anyway considered slow in just 3 years.

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Well I didn't mean it would be slow or some sort of new incredibly entertaining game will crush CPUs short of the i7-3930K.

I guess saying "just 3 years" puts things into perspective and I'll probably buy one since it isn't that much more expensive and doesn't really require any enthusiast premiums and I have RAM. DDR3 RAM for the i7-920 was expensive in 2009 compared to DDR2.

Sorry to revive a two-month-old thread, but I actually have the exact experience OP was looking for. I went from an i3 2120 (roughly equivalent to an i3 3220) to an i5 3570.

On some heavily threaded games (e.g. Blacklight Retribution, BF3) it was a night-and-day difference. It is SO much more playable.

On other threaded games (e.g. Saints Row the Third, Dirt Showdown), it made some small but noticeable improvement to smoothness, but the game is ultimately not optimized for Crossfire or not optimized in general so the framerates still dip.

On GPU-limited games (e.g. Metro 2033) the difference is not noticeable.

So in summary, whether or not it's worth it to you depends on the games you play.

Thanks for the reply.

I ended up not getting an Ivy Bridge but it's really close to the i5-3570K in gaming.

I've traded my 3770K in and out for my Pentium G860 quite a few times. There's a significant performance hit in most recent games since the Pentium doesn't have HT and it has very little cache. Going to my 3570K makes almost no difference, though.

drescherjm said:

As a programmer I believe part of this is a catch-22. I mean you can not develop your applications to require 6 or more cores when 80% of your target audience does not have such a machine.

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Right now both AMD and INTEL seem to be more concerned with lowering power usage rather than increasing CPU speeds and number of cores. This is because of the trend towards mobile computing platforms. We here on the [H] are in the minority among computer users. The great majority of users do not overclock nor do they assemble custom machines. They buy an OEM system, most often a mobile platform, and they expect to be able to run software on them. If you are a developer and you want to sell your software to the masses it makes no sense to make it so demanding that 80% of the market can't use it. I'll worry about my 3570k being obsolete when I see the Cpu's in mobile platforms coming close to its performance. Please note I am talking about gaming, not high end pro software like cad programs and video editing.

go with the 3570k, it will be enough to last you a few years. Also if you have a microcenter you can get it for around 169.99