The Intel Core i3-7350K (60W) Review: Almost a Core i7-2600K
by Ian Cutress on February 3, 2017 8:00 AM ESTTotal War: Attila
The Total War franchise moves on to Attila, another The Creative Assembly development, and is a stand-alone strategy title set in 395AD where the main story line lets the gamer take control of the leader of the Huns in order to conquer parts of the world. Graphically the game can render hundreds/thousands of units on screen at once, all with their individual actions and can put some of the big cards to task.
For low end graphics, we test at 720p with performance settings, recording the average frame rate. With mid and high range graphics, we test at 1080p with the quality setting. In both circumstances, unlimited video memory is enabled and the in-game scripted benchmark is used.
Similar to Alien Isolation, the only discrete GPU there seems to be much of a difference between the i3 and i7 is on the R9 285, where the newer microarchitecture has the advantage. The integrated graphics in Sandy Bridge were laughable, and the Core i3 offers over double the performance here.
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Bullwinkle J Moose - Sunday, February 5, 2017 - link
Correction: Can I record what I hear on the desktop with the DRM crippling API's found in Windows Vista / 7 / 8 and 10 ?should be > Can I record what I hear on the desktop with the DRM "crippled" API's found in Windows Vista / 7 / 8 and 10 ?
The API's do not cripple the DRM
The DRM does all the crippling !
Bullwinkle J Moose - Sunday, February 5, 2017 - link
Finally got Optical SPDIF working in both Windows 8.1 AND Windows 10 after that rant above!Yes, I Really did think that was a DRM issue
My original USB Soundblaster had optical in and out disabled in software updates after all the hysterical copyright violation complaints
Meteor2 - Sunday, February 5, 2017 - link
RE: why are there no 150-200W consumer CPUs. Because there's no consumer software which could take advantage of 24C/48T CPUs, unlike GPUs.Of course, if you want a 150W CPU, you can buy a big Xeon. But there's not a lot of software out there which can make use of them.
The_Assimilator - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link
Should've rather used an i5-2500K in the comparison; 2c/4t vs 4c/4t is fairer than 4c/8t. Although, a real comparison at 4.6GHz on both chips (or whatever the i3 can hit) would see the KBL obliterated regardless.evilpaul666 - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
I think they said they're working on an overclocking article, but I agree the i5-2500K with both chips overclocked would have been a much more interesting test.Anato - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link
Intel should make all K-processors fully enabled, HT, ECC, Cache and sell them cheaply as 2.0-3GHz parts. Then give user tools to make changes to cache, ECC etc and after that its users task to find out what CPU can do. That would bring back good old days and Intel could get rid of cores that are otherwise unsellable.Still no need to upgrade from Sandy Bridge i5-2500k and just bought GTX 1080 for it.
evilpaul666 - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
So is Optane ever actually coming out? And is it going to actually work as a 16/32GB cache for mechanical storage the ~1500/500 read/write speeds I saw quoted for it a while back would be nice as a cache for HDDs, but are slower than NVMe drives at this point.evilspoons - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
Well, I guess I'm *still* sitting on my i7-2600k overclocked to 4.6 GHz. I pushed it from stock clocks in ~2013 assuming I'd replace it soon but four years later it's still ticking along just fine and I still don't have a compelling upgrade path!ANobody - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
Slow is the death of IPC progress. Painful to watch.Ubercake - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
I would hope an i3 marketed as 5 generations later could match an i7 from 5 generations before?Intel has had the market cornered for too long...