Re:Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake review: Is the desktop CPU ...
by usrusr on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @07:15PM
(#13314546)
The expected "close enough to state of the art" lifetime of hardware is now so long that you can write off the premium paid for extra cores over many years.
Would i be willing to pay 35$ extra per additional core if I knew I would want to replace the hardware within two years anyway? Questionable. But when hardware lasts half a decade? The premium per core per year becomes irresistably low. The i7-2600k will soon have it's sixth birthday...
Re:Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake review: Is the desktop CPU ...
by neogodless on Wednesday January 04, 2017 @10:28AM
(#13319008)
I don't disagree. The difference between a $160 6320 and $330 6700 is only $170, and 8 years (how old my Phenom II is...) reduces that cost to barely over $20/year.
However, whether "the core is going to be fully utilized" is another question. If you only ever need 2 cores, it is wasted money, plus, if your focus is on gaming, and your budget requires you to make choices based on right now, the extra $170 can be the difference between getting a Radeon 480 or a Geforce 1070.
(Since I hope my next build lasts another 8 years, I'll probably "pad" my build with an i5... I've fallen into the trap!)
The Core i3-6320 is about $60-70 cheaper than the i5-6600k, but on applications that don't benefit (sufficiently) from multiple cores, it can perform nearly as well. Anecdotally, friends building PCs always compare i5 and i7 and never consider the i3, but for their real world uses (many games!) it would be just perfect (and the savings could be thrown at the video card where it'd make more of a difference.)