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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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...