is I3-3750K to i7-7700K a useful upgrade ?

honegod

honegod

[H]F Junkie
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Aug 31, 2000
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when I built my current computer in 2017 I was on a limited budget and did not want to spend money on excessive overkill, overkill was fine but not overboard.
so I chose a I3 7350K since it was way cheaper than a 7700K with equal clock speeds.
the the only tradeoff I saw was 2 vs 4 cores.
I see all four threads ramp up to 4197mhz, for a brief time, only occasionally.

although I do not see a need for those extra 2 cores I wonder if there is something obvious I am missing that would make getting a used 7700K worthwhile.
anything obvious ?

EDIT AFTER POST #30

I am NOT sane/neurotypical.
I am NOT asking how I can bring THIS computer UP TO DATE.

the question
IS
'how might my estimation of the MAGNITUDE of improvement of a 7350K to 7700K swap be inaccurate ?'
NOT
'what is the VALUE of the swap ?' which is clearly what a sane person would ask.

I apologise for wasting the time of folk, who only want to be helpful, by poorly composing this post.
 
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2 core/4 thread vs 4 core/8 thread and 4.2 vs 4.5.
yes it will be an improvement.
you may need a better cooler, dont see what you have...
 
sorry, I posted incomplete data, I am running a strix H270i motherboard,
the H chipset not allowing overclocking led me to believe that the boost clock of 4.5 for the i7 did not apply so the base 4.2 applied to both.
is that the obvious thing I missed ?
I believe the overkill I did on the cooling would suffice.
 
honegod said:
sorry, I posted incomplete data, I am running a strix H270i motherboard,
the H chipset not allowing overclocking led me to believe that the boost clock of 4.5 for the i7 did not apply so the base 4.2 applied to both.
is that the obvious thing I missed ?
I believe the overkill I did on the cooling would suffice.
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the normal "internal" chip boost should work. you just wont have any other normal overclocking options in bios. not that i like quoting it but userbenchmark shows others with that combo and the chip boosting normally.
whats your idea of "overkill cooling"?
 
5x6mm heatpipe direct contact with copper fin nt01-e silverstone ducted to a noctua nf-a12x25 sucking.
ducted so the airflow is even across the entire face of the fin stack.
not excessive but my temp maxes at 55c @ 4.2
 
honegod said:
5x6mm heatpipe direct contact with copper fin nt01-e silverstone ducted to a noctua nf-a12x25 sucking.
ducted so the airflow is even across the entire face of the fin stack.
not excessive but my temp maxes at 55c @ 4.2
Click to expand...
not overkill, just adequate and might be ok but there is a ~30w jump...
 
so, 300mhz bump and +2 cores, need to monitor temps.
aye.
thank you, that is what I was looking for.
 
honegod said:
so, 300mhz bump and +2 cores, need to monitor temps.
aye.
thank you, that is what I was looking for.
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basically. if you can get a decent price on a used one, id do it. the extra cores alone, imo, will make everyday use better.
no prob.
 
I am actually pretty flush atm and would prefer a new one, any notion on where I could find such a critter ?
my duckduckgo skills are really really aweful
 
You would probably get more responses if you bothered to proof-read your title before posting.

Dual-core is really not viable at this point for anything beyond basic office/web usage. Even an older quad would have a better feel to it during regular usage.
 
GotNoRice said:
You would probably get more responses if you bothered to proof-read your title before posting.
Click to expand...
was it the non capitalization of the i in I7-77K or a more fundamental screwup ?
I believed the title to express the essential question I had with the body of the post having the duty to expand upon it.
like with the 300mhz boost clock, is there an obvious mistake I made but cannot see ?
other than my clearly inferior keyboard skills.

I understand I have a problem with thread titles,
so this time I left it for after I had completed the post and tried to boil down what I had written to the briefest and most explicit question that covered the essentials.

GotNoRice said:
Dual-core is really not viable at this point for anything beyond basic office/web usage. Even an older quad would have a better feel to it during regular usage.
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that is how this computer is primarily used, basic office/web usage, I am currently building a 1920X machine for more demanding tasks I hope to explore.

hg20220617.jpg
 
If that is all you intend to use it for, and you insist on spending foolish money on a new not used CPU, stay with what you got and use the $$ elsewhere.
 
funkydmunky said:
stay with what you got and use the $$ elsewhere.
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so, no.
the $$ is not the point, and is actually a minor consideration
$250 for 64GB of ddr 4 just to stop my Paint Shop Pro 7 from crashing from too many open images would be totally worth it to me,
but the H270 chipset only allows the 32 GB I am running now.
the I7700K is the only step up supported by the chipset and if it offered a significant boost in my use case the only real consideration would be balancing the boost with the time spent executing the upgrade.
new versus used is mainly a consideration of likely reliability.
 
Just buy an Inspiron or something, if you don't want hassle and are just doing office work. You can get an Inspiron which takes DDR4 and has a 12th-gen i5 for $600 - it's not a super good deal, but its under warranty, you can swap in your current memory, and the i5-12400 craps all over the 7700K performance-wise.
 
honegod said:
was it the non capitalization of the i in I7-77K or a more fundamental screwup ?
I believed the title to express the essential question I had with the body of the post having the duty to expand upon it.
like with the 300mhz boost clock, is there an obvious mistake I made but cannot see ?
other than my clearly inferior keyboard skills.
Click to expand...

I was just talking about how it says 3750K in the title instead of 7350K
 
GotNoRice said:
I was just talking about how it says 3750K in the title instead of 7350K
Click to expand...
well DUH ! slaps head
I STILL did not see it even while looking at this post, for some reason 3750 just looks RIGHT to me.

thank you !
 
bwang said:
Just buy an Inspiron or something, if you don't want hassle and are just doing office work. You can get an Inspiron which takes DDR4 and has a 12th-gen i5 for $600 - it's not a super good deal, but its under warranty, you can swap in your current memory, and the i5-12400 craps all over the 7700K performance-wise.
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totally logical and valid.
but I had a lot of fun building this computer and just looking at it brings me happiness, which a beige box would not.
the 'office work' business was just shorthand for 'it is not a gaming rig'
 
honegod said:
totally logical and valid.
but I had a lot of fun building this computer and just looking at it brings me happiness, which a beige box would not.
the 'office work' business was just shorthand for 'it is not a gaming rig'
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If your board's not a high end board (I don't think there were any high end H270's) and the rig isn't impossible to service (I have SFF machines where I'd rather throw out the rig than take them apart!) I could also recommend an i3-12100 and a cheap B660 board. For a little more than the price of used 7700K you can modernize your rig with PCI-e 4.0 SSD support, Alder Lake IPC, upcoming Raptor Lake support, and an upgrade path to 6+ cores. If you spend a little more, you can buy a B660 with sufficient VRMs to support a 12700 in the future.
 
bwang said:
For a little more than the price of used 7700K you can modernize your rig
Click to expand...
not really my goal here, the setup with a 960evo m.2 boot drive, 32gb memory, 50tb worth of WD rust and a 1050ti works fine,
slicing and video editing could be quicker, but I got no real beefs, and a 7700K would help with that and be an easy swap.
I LIKE your suggestions, but I choose to drive a Yaris, with good tyres and coilovers, and have fun.
(full throttle drag races with cop cars, without them noticing, is FUN !)
 
honegod said:
not really my goal here, the setup with a 960evo m.2 boot drive, 32gb memory, 50tb worth of WD rust and a 1050ti works fine,
slicing and video editing could be quicker, but I got no real beefs, and a 7700K would help with that and be an easy swap.
I LIKE your suggestions, but I choose to drive a Yaris, with good tyres and coilovers, and have fun.
(full throttle drag races with cop cars, without them noticing, is FUN !)
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Why bother asking on the forum then? Seems up you've made up your mind. If you're actually going to buy the new 7700K off Amazon though, you're literally throwing money down the toilet, because a 12100F and a $200 board would be cheaper and faster. It's only a few cables to unplug to swap the board, and more likely than not your boot drive would still boot on the new board.
 
bwang said:
Why bother asking on the forum then?
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because it was a question that was haunting me and I KNOW I consistantly fail to see the obvious.
moving from an I3 to an I7 SHOULD be an obvious serious upgrade and I could NOT see it.
like I could not see that 3750 business in the title.

I do not want to upgrade the whole computer and a motherboard and cpu swap would entail a new cooler and designing a new duct (I like ducts)
or would my cooler mounting even still work. I assume not since the topic of mount upgrades comes up.
I like my design and want to keep it as long as it makes me happy.

I have acquired an aversion to buying used stuff but an easy cpu swap, and being able to swap the original back in, looked potentially worthwhile
IF I was wrong about the small delta between processor performance.

bwang said:
buy the new 7700K off Amazon though, you're literally throwing money down the toilet,
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not if it makes me happy in whatever twisted version of reality I am peering out from.
why put coilovers on a Yaris ? it makes me happy.
different strokes.
 
I also strongly recommend reconsidering your decision because you will end up becoming very disappointed in that decision, in light of today’s cheaper new systems slaughtering your after-upgrade current system in overall performance, and that the applications that you are running on that PC do not take much if any advantage whatsoever of more cores and threads of the exact same architecture.

Just stick with your current i3-7350K until it either breaks down or becomes “obsolete” in the eyes of Intel.
 
E4g1e said:
I also strongly recommend reconsidering your decision because you will end up becoming very disappointed in that decision, in light of today’s cheaper new systems slaughtering your after-upgrade current system in overall performance, and that the applications that you are running on that PC do not take much if any advantage whatsoever of more cores and threads of the exact same architecture.

Just stick with your current i3-7350K until it either breaks down or becomes “obsolete” in the eyes of Intel.
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I feel like there is some missing context here - it sounds like the OP has a fairly customized system (he mentioned 50TB of HDDs and custom fan ducts?!) which changes the question. My recommendation would be a used 6700K, you get i3 performance for...i3 prices but you'll get a lot more life out of the system. The 7350K was an oddball to begin with (it was really a joke CPU for overclocking enthusiasts) and in 2022 everything but the most archaic programs will be able to take advantage of a few cores, plus you'll enjoy improved responsiveness if one core is loaded, etc.
 
bwang said:
I feel like there is some missing context here
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yes.
I am bad with including adequate context to fully communicate the viewpoint from my nonstandard vantage.

example: how to aesthetically integrate a 25x20x5 merv16 intake filter into the LianLi ITX case this system uses.

E4g1e said:
the applications that you are running on that PC do not take much if any advantage whatsoever of more cores and threads of the exact same architecture.
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precisely the reasoning upon which I based my original decision to run I3 instead of I7
the computer I was replacing used a 950mhz Thunderbird 1 core 1 thread oclocked to a stable 1050mhz,
Matrox G400, a 7500rpm boot drive and went from win98se to XP
the I3/1050ti setup with dual 4.2mhz cores was for win10
it still runs everything I use fine but win10 DOES use all 4 threads at max upon occasion,
leading me to wonder about how adding 4 more threads might be beneficial in ways I do not yet see.

bwang said:
you'll get a lot more life out of the system
Click to expand...
the exact reasoning for preferring new over used, price entirely aside, it seems a clear choice.
price is a ENTIRELY separate matter, with distinctly different contributing factors.

bwang said:
The 7350K was an oddball to begin with (it was really a joke CPU for overclocking enthusiasts)
Click to expand...
and fit perfectly into my vision, with 4.2 at hand I saw no need for overclocking.

E4g1e said:
I also strongly recommend reconsidering your decision
Click to expand...
it becomes a decision only when I click 'buy' and I am not to that point.
so far what I am doing IS reconsidering and rereconsidering the decision in the shifting light shed by the varied viewpoints expressed here
and research inspired by those new, to me, ways of looking at the problem I face.


funkydmunky said:
you insist on spending foolish money
Click to expand...
this actually feels very much like a religious 'debate' where there are two 'sides' both unable to grasp the essential truth of the 'opposed' view,
and one view is OFFENDED by the obviously illogical stand of the other view.

I saw that in the thread where I invited thoughts on my choice between a $500 used 1080ti and a new $2500 Titan for my Threadripper build (still in, sloow, progress)

when I bought the 7350K price WAS a significant concern to me, I decided to spend less on a used 7350K and sent it away to those highly esteemed folk
whose name I forget and who are gone now, to be delidded and binned, mine rated 4.9mhz stable oc.
for about the same price as a new one.
that made me happy.

I would cheerfully do that for a used 7700K but the option no longer exists. :(
finding out that a NEW 7700K (5 year old) is available brought much joy to my heart
as it resolved issues I have on plugging used stuff into a working system.

E4g1e said:
in light of today’s cheaper new systems slaughtering your after-upgrade current system in overall performance
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which was the entire point of building a Threadripper system, although I seem to be running into a chicken/egg
problem with it since I do not know how the system needs to be best engineered to run programs I cannot use on the 7350 to feel what they need.
the 7700 could, possibly, help with that. (more context of my thought process).
 
Everything depends on the price and how much you can get it for.

In my experience the i7 K CPUs are still expensive many years later, and it's not worth it.

A i3 10100 has similar performance to a i7 7700k. New mobo + 10100 might be cheaper. If you can spend a little more 10400 or 12100
 
bwang said:
My recommendation would be a used 6700K,
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why a 6700 ?
it doesn't have the 300mhz boost of the 7700 which, considering the limited value of the 2 extra cores, is a significant addition to the upgrade.
 
3dprophet said:
A i3 10100 has similar performance to a i7 7700k. New mobo + 10100 might be cheaper. If you can spend a little more 10400 or 12100
Click to expand...
yes, thank you.

that would absolutely be what I was looking at but I do not want to change motherboards at all.
I really like this system and a 7700K is the only real upgrade I want to do to it,
although I was tempted to swap out the 14tb rust for 20tb units
hgge11.jpg

only E drive looks like it would be useful.
 
One idea you could consider is just using new low-priced components that still work well. I mean for example a
Cooler MasterBox Q300L case
Corsair CX 450 power supply
ASRock B560M-HDV motherboard
Intel i5-10400 CPU
16GB Kingston Fury RAM
500GB Western Digital Solid State Drive
That would be like $70 + $65 + $70 + $147 + $74 + $52 = $478
This might be better than buying a new CPU for an old machine.
EDIT: I wrote this a bit fast not understanding what the original poster wanted.
 
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wandplus said:
This might be better than buying a new CPU for an old machine.
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absolutely, this would result in a far faster computer and be a MUCH better value for the money.
I thank you.

your post inspired me to edit my OP.
 
According to articles/messages I've read, Intel Alder Lake CPUs and Windows 11 are still a bit glitchy.
Comet Lake temps are superior to Rocket Lake (although Rocket Lake will allow you to use PCIe4 with the B560 or higher chipset, if you're into gaming).
The WD SN550 SSD is slightly superior to the SN570 SSD.
The Corsair CX 450 non-modular power supply is slightly superior to the modular model.
The last ASRock B560M-HDV I bought very recently had the P2.30 version BIOS which worked right out of the box, although I successfully flashed it to P2.60.
You can look at the motherboard manufacturer's RAM compatibility list for to see the actual speed of the RAM. The last time I checked, there was 2666MHz Kingston RAM that did work at 2666MHz with the Comet Lake CPUs. There's no need to choose 3200 mhz (or higher) RAM (unless you want to).
I've been satisfied with cheap Cooler Master cases, although if you can find Corsair cases on sale, they look pretty sweet in person.
 
I see no value in upgrading your CPU if it is working fine for you in its current role. The only value would be that you simply want to do it. If so, then do it. No need to debate it here any longer.
 
You can get i7 7700s on ebay for ~140. I would consider it at that price as it will be a notable jump in usability.
 
sabrewolf732 said:
You can get i7 7700s on ebay for ~140. I would consider it at that price as it will be a notable jump in usability.
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thank you.

a huge problem I have in buying used things is in being able to tell if it is actually functional, or at least rebuildable to original specs.
I have no way to test a cpu other than to install it on my current main system, and if the defect I am testing for fries my motherboard, I would want to cry.
only the availability of a trustworthy place that would stress test the cpu allowed me to buy the current 7350K, used, happily.
"Silicon Lottery is closed." quoted from their home page.
the unexpected availability of a new 7700K entirely resolved that problem.
but the severe butthurt the value question (that I did not ask) ignited somewhat soured that notion.

the initial inspiration for this post was the nagging question "did I screw up in my choice of the I3 over the I7 ? "

the consensus being "yes", although not majorly. '

leads me to wonder how I might resolve my difficulty with trusting used parts,
buying from a [H] member largely does that,
I trust the folk here to not be essentially dishonest.
not so much rando ebay sellers.

so, I will post in the FS forum a wtb and see what happens.

example of my thought process, my Prusa failed a filament swap, the ptfe tube in the stock hot end is completely plugged.
since to replace it with a new tube involves removing the hotend I am working on ordering a new Revo hotend as a replacement
instead of just carving out a chunk of ptfe tube to fix it.
 
Your doubling your multithread passmark and a 9.5% boost on single thread, considering the comments:
although I do not see a need for those extra 2 cores

Seem like a very small upgrade depending on the boost clock and what not, specially with how well those type of CPU kept their values.

One possible scenario, something you do, indeed use those core, you could look if from time to time on your taskmanager if your 4 threads goes up in usage during your workload (lot of application/os thread management if you have multiple things running got able to take advantage of more core over time), in that case doubling your thread count could be worth it for someone wanting to do something for the fun of doing something.
 
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I am apparently suffering actual brain damage, I have spent a few minutes looking at asus website and cannot find the cpu cvl ,
them hiding it does not seem likely so it looks like it's a personal problem.
the base specs look like it is slower, 3.7mhz, with the 2 extra cores being the only upside.
I do not understand the point of the xeon line, my ignorance in action.

what benny would a xeon offer, other than the two cores, over an I3 ?
assuming the 270H chipset can use it ?
 
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