i7 or i5 for simracing titels

Koellefornia

Hi Guys,

does it make sense to buy a i7 for simracing games?

I'm looking for a new system and the question is i5-6600k or i7-6700k?
I'm not sure if there will be a big difference for simracing.

Is the i7 worth the money if you only run racing games?
 
I have an i7 6700 and it runs rFactor 2 full resolution with everything turn up to max.
 
Right now, and probably for a while yet (years) 4 threads is all you need. Hyperthreading won't help.

Of course that's not true for certain other programs.
 
DurgeDriven posted a good link.

The most important thing, by far, and even more-so with triple screens, is the graphics card.

Out of those two you listed, I definitely recommend the i5.

You definitely want a motherboard/CPU that has PCI-E 3.0. RFactor 2 is an extremely rare case in that it's framerates decrease quite substantially when being played with anything lower than 16x PCI-E 3.0. I therefore recommend any of the following Intel platforms:

- Ivy Bridge (eg. i5-3570K)
- Haswell (eg. i5-4670K)
- Devil's Canyon (eg. i5-4690K) - DC is pretty-much a slightly updated and superior Haswell
- Skylake (eg. i5-6600K)

If going with Ivy Bridge, make sure an older Sandy Bridge motherboard isn't used as most of them use the P67 chipset which won't support PCI-E 3.0 so make sure it's a "true" Ivy Bridge motherboard/chipset.

If you want to run SLI with RF2 then I highly recommend the "high-end"/workstation platforms in order to allow both GPUs to perform at full 16x PCI-E 3.0 speeds each since they mostly come with 40x PCI-E 3.0 lanes. These would be the following Intel platforms:

- Sandy Bridge-E (eg. i7-3820K) but it might be a little risky because a quick, 2 second registry hack needs to be done to enable PCI-E 3.0. I can't remember if the registry change works for every system or not.
- Ivy Bridge-E (eg. i7-4820K)
- Haswell-E (eg. i7-5930K). Avoid the i7-5820K as it only uses 24 PCI-E 3.0 lanes.
- Broadwell-E (coming soon)


In-case you're wondering why there's no Broadwell in the first list of Intel platforms, it's because Intel skipped releasing really fast, higher-end CPUs for the Broadwell line, waited longer, then went straight to Skylake. However, with their "high-end"/workstation line, they are still releasing Broadwell.
 
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Guess we should wait and see what GPU he is thinking of.

I mean even myself building "overclocked and water cooled " I would go for more efficient PSU, good phase power, fast memory so really the extra cost of the i7 is small potatoes.

Building for single GPU on a budget as always I would spend the most on the GPU and build the rest around it.

Stock tower you can get away with a lot of "extras" and not lose a great deal of performance with a top end card.


I think the bigger issue is the monitors.

I do not mean to sound condescending but to run 1280 even in 3 screens is just not doing rF2 or high end hardware any justice or favours. :)
 
If running triple screens @ 100, 120, or 144 Hz and no SLI/Crossfire then I recommend a 980 Ti or a Fury X. A single 970 can still do a decent job with triples @ 120 fps but you need to set most options to medium, both reflections to off, etc.

If the monitors are only 60 Hz then you may be able to max everything out with a 970.

A lot of people tend to forget that most, if not all 120/144Hz monitors are capable of 100 Hz. So if you can't get your fps to 120 enough of the times then set your refresh rate to 100 Hz and aim for 100 fps.
 
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