The Intel Core i3-7350K (60W) Review: Almost a Core i7-2600K
by Ian Cutress on February 3, 2017 8:00 AM ESTGrand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise finally hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark, relying only on the final part which combines a flight scene along with an in-city drive-by followed by a tanker explosion. For low end systems we test at 720p on the lowest settings, whereas mid and high end graphics play at 1080p with very high settings across the board. We record both the average frame rate and the percentage of frames under 60 FPS (16.6ms).
The older Core i7-2600K eeks out a small ~5 FPS advantage over the Core i3 when running a GTX 980 at 1080p maximum settings, but with all other GPUs the differences are minimal. With integrated graphics, the Core i3 shows it can pummel the older IGP into the ground.
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JordanV - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
I think the sales argument for the big Intel chips as video encoders has been for x264 where the faster NVENC, VCE, and QuickSync technologies offer lower quality at a given bitrate for higher quality x264 settings. For most people, the hardware encoders are enough but for many others, the quality is not sufficient.The quality difference between hardware and software HEVC is smaller with higher quality software h265 encodes beating the quality of your Pascal x265 encodes but with a big performance penalty. It's not worth it for most people, but if you have limited bitrate/storage and want the best quality, it might be.
HerrKaLeun - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Thanks for the great review, Ian.Considering one needs an expensive Z-board to OC, for most people buying an i5 makes more sense.
I don't understand why so many people complain about Intel allegedly not making enough progress. Now you get a dual-core that comes close (or even exceeds in single threaded benches) to the former flagship quadcore. If you want to have a CPU that vastly exceeds the "old" quadcore, Intel also has newer quadcores. It is not like the i3 is the end of the lineup.... For the $317 that the 2600k used to cost you can get a KabyLake non-K i7, which sure vastly exceeds in performance (and much lower TDP). I assume someone who could afford an over $300 CPU 6 years ago can afford $300 now and upgrading to an i3 may not be what that person would do anyway. the trend goes to more cores.... most people here complain about Intel not offering mainstream hexa and octa cores... not sure why the same people allegedly are so eager to get dual-cores.
zodiacfml - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Dual core is too weak for me. Web browsing can use more cores.Hulk - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Sorry to be dense.What does 2+2, 4+2, 4+3/e mean?
babysam - Saturday, February 4, 2017 - link
The first number refers to the number of CPU cores. Te second number refers to the IGP configuration (the number of shaders, which may be a little bit different across generations, e.g. Haswell GT3 has 40 shaders, while Broadwell/Skylake GT3 have 48 shaders).The extra e means there is an extra eDRAM cache (Crystalwell) on the CPU package.
Hulk - Saturday, February 4, 2017 - link
Thanks.AndrewJacksonZA - Saturday, February 4, 2017 - link
Thank you babysam.babysam - Saturday, February 4, 2017 - link
Thank you for you article (especially when many of us are waiting on the information of new CPU of both AMD and Intel). It is always good to have something to play (overclocked) with, but this is a little bit expensive.When I read the analysis of the first page, I see the lack of information on the CPU die size and transistor count disclosed by Intel recently. Also, I feel strange that the effect of the change of the 32nm to 22nm (from Haswell to Broadwell) have such a large difference on the 2C+GT2(which Intel claims there is a 37% reduction of the die, which can be seen in the table) and the 4C+GT3(which the difference are much smaller) CPU die. I feel even stranger when I see the Skylake 4C+GT3e die is a bit smaller than the Broadwell 4c+GT3e die. So I am quite curious on the sources of the die estimate.
P.S. I found the origin of the 234mm^2 of the Skylake die size estimate.
https://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1177...
which based on the images of the following
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10281/intel-adds-cry...
It seems that the die described is the Skylake-H(which is a 4C+GT4e configuration). This makes the 241.5mm^2 estimate of the Broadwell 4C+GT3e a little bit unrealistic (Skylake GT4e have 72 shaders, while Broadwell GT3e have 48 only)
babysam - Saturday, February 4, 2017 - link
Just find the die size of the Broadwell-H (4C+3e) in this documenthttp://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/embedded/pr...
According to the document, the die size of Broadwell-H (4C+GT3e) should be 13.7mmx12.3mm = 168.51mm^2
(Many thanks for the hints: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/broadwell-cor... , which the got the answer two years ago.)
WoodyBL - Saturday, February 4, 2017 - link
Am I the only one noticing that the i5-4690 was beating the i5-7600k in a lot of benchmarks? I'm having a hard time processing how that was even possible...