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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blzd - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
You may need to test with some newer games, some of which I read are having issues running with dual cores.Minimum FPS might be worth including as well.
Narg - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
I couldn't help remember the old Celerons from years past that could be overclocked to the point of more than double the performance of chips barely twice their price from Intel. This is nothing new. And glad to see Intel has really not lost their "geeky" mindset for the true hardware hardcore among us.albert89 - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
You can run the i7-2600K on Win8.1 and down. You can't do that with the i3-7350.TheJian - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 - link
They testing the i3-7350 w/Z270 here and used the on chip gpu with Win7 x64. It would appear Wintel lied about Z270+Kaby lake not working with Win7? What driver is Ian Cutress using here for the integrated gpu testing? Please clear this up Ian.Wish they had used a 1080 gtx.
Vatharian - Friday, March 3, 2017 - link
I'd be hardly pressed to change 2600K (which I had) to 2C/4T CPU. But then, I was blessed with a God's chip: my 2600K easily and comfortably reached 5.2 GHz at ~1.38 V. I really don't believe 7350K would catch up with THIS.BTW, anyone doing even just a little bit of coding on their PC would welcome compilation benchmark!
Artanis2 - Friday, June 9, 2017 - link
Still to comeCalculating Generational IPC Changes from Sandy Bridge to Kaby Lake
Intel Core i7-7700K, i5-7600K and i3-7350K Overclocking: Hitting 5.0 GHz on AIR
Intel Launches 200-Series Chipset Breakdown: Z270, H270, B250, Q250, C232
Intel Z270 Motherboard Preview: A Quick Look at 80+ Motherboards
WHEN ?!