I7 3770k worth it?

Z

Zencyl

Weaksauce
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Oct 16, 2008
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Hey all, I am starting to look at building a new machine in a few weeks and I have been looking at the I7 3770k but I am wondering if it is worth the extra money compared to a fast I5? I run some VMs (maybe 3 at one time), I have alot of browser tabs and windows open, I do alot of coding and working with security and forensic toolkits across the VMs and host OS. Alot of multitasking and running a bunch of programs simultaneously, word docs, spreadsheets, pdfs, etc. Im just curious if I am wasting money getting the I7 if the I5 is plenty, but the 8 threads on the I7 sure look good. What are y'alls thoughts?
 
If you have a genuine need for 8 threads (I believe that you do) then the extra $100 is well worth the added performance.
 
You're wasting money unless you're actually using applications that utilize hyperthreading(the 4 extra virtual cores on the i7). I'd research the programs you use and find if any of them actually use it. And even then, unless you're working on time sensitive applications, a lot of the programs that use hyper threading don't really need it if you can just wait a little longer timewise ;)
 
Since you are going to be using VM's, I suggest that you look into the regular locked variants of Ivy Bridge as they'll support VT-d (3570 and 3770, non-K).

With your usage, you would see a benefit in getting the i7 over the i5 as it'll complete work (compiling) faster.
 
whats the advantage / disadavantage of a 3930k vs a 3770k?
 
usyed1 said:
whats the advantage / disadavantage of a 3930k vs a 3770k?
Click to expand...

Advantage, more cores/threads
Disadvantage, cost.

What do the Passmark CPU scores really mean?
If you go by the scores, the 3930K is faster at 13,xxx while the 3770K is 10,xxx.
But when you divide it by the number of cores, the 3770K comes out at 2500 per core vs the 2250 for the 3930K.
 
Last edited:
skizzled said:
Since you are going to be using VM's, I suggest that you look into the regular locked variants of Ivy Bridge as they'll support VT-d (3570 and 3770, non-K).

With your usage, you would see a benefit in getting the i7 over the i5 as it'll complete work (compiling) faster.
Click to expand...

I'd suggest against this unless you have absolutely zero plans to overlclock. VT-d (last I checked) wasn't very well supported by VirtualBox. So make sure that whatever you are using (solidly) supports this feature. Even if it does support, you may see better results with a higher clocked processor.

What you are doing sounds more ram intensive vs cpu intensive. I think you'd be better off saving that $100 and putting it towards more memory.
 
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