Will i5 bottleneck a GTX 1070

Hello everyone!

I'm currently deciding between two Acer Predator 17 laptops. Both are demo units from different stores.
One is a G5-793 with a 7700HQ, GTX 1060, 16gb ram and 256gb ssd/1tb - 1333€
The other is a G9-793 with a 7300HQ, GTX 1070, 16gb ram and 256 ssd/1tb - 1560€
*EDIT* the G9 only have 8gb ram

Originally I wanted a G9 for its bells and whistles over the G5, and of course for the 1070, but I'm not sure the i5 will keep up in the long run, as I plan on keeping it for atleast 4 years.
Although I don't the play the most GPU-demanding games at the moment, I sure will play current titles when I get something more powerful, and it will be hooked up to a external 2560x1600 monitor sometimes, and difinitely a curved ultrawide in the future.

Will a i5 bottleneck a GTX 1070?
Will a i7 help me in the future with its higher clock speeds and 4 more threads?

I wasn't planning on going for a i5 until I found that demo unit with the 1070... Decisions, decisions...

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

@Drazzio if you really want to keep it that long, i7 is the way to go.

 

Thanks for your advice!
It's a tough call though.. One got CPU power and the other got the GPU power.

I built my current desktop PC back in 2011. A 3770k with a GTX 670, and it has been great until now, where I feel I need more horsies for current games. However, I want to be able to move around the apartment, so I'm moving my desktop to the living room and getting a powerful desktop replacement instead.

It would be great if it could last me atleast 4 years. I'll admit I usually stick to one game.. Used to be World of Warcraft, now Guild Wars 2, and while they're not demanding at all, I'll play Battlefield and the like on occations where I don't feel like playing an MMORPG.

I guess I'm just worried the GTX 1060 won't cut it down the line, especially when playing at higher resolution, but then again, the i5 might not be the best thing either.

Thinking about my decisions back when I built my desktop, I chose the i7 over the i5 due to futureproofing, so perhaps the solution would be to just wait for a 7700HQ/GTX 1070 combo goes on sale, but I'll gladly hear what others have to say aswell

 

The i7 will help tremendously in MMOs, as loading more and more characters isn't a very big draw on the GPU but it can be taxing on the CPU.

The 1060 is still a pretty decent card, it will run Battlefield no problem. i5/1070 is a weird combo to be honest.

If you don't plan on maxing everything out, the 1060 will last for a few years. Definitely 2-3, more if you just plan on playing WoW and other less graphically intense MMOs ^^

 

This is a hard one since you're looking at a faster GPU/slower CPU pairing.

The most similar thing I can think of is the Magnus EN1070 which pairs a 2.2-2.8ghz 4 core/4 thread i5 6400T with a 1070 (actually in notebook MXM form!). While CPU benchmarks are unsurprisingly low, game benches seem to not be affected as much as I expected indicating that no, your slightly faster i5 actually won't bottleneck it across the board.
E.g. when this guy upgraded the i5 to a faster 2.8-3.5 4 core/8 thread i7 6700T:
the firestrike GPU scores are only slightly affected
the firestrike combined scores are about 20% higher with the faster CPU though

It obviously depends on the game, some games eat all the CPU they can in which case the combined test is a better representation, others not so much. That said if they're 1080p 60Hz, a 1060 will be more than enough for that, the 1070 is really meant for bigger than 1920x1080 res or more than 60Hz (e.g. a 120Hz panel)

Another review: http://www.funkykit.com/reviews/barebones-systems/zotac-zbox-magnus-en1070-gaming-mini-pc-review/

The choice you've given is a hard one, you can certainly OC the 1060 and it may provide extra performance but the 1070 overclocked may just exacerbate CPU bottlenecks. How long do you want to keep it? Do you flip and upgrade every 2-3 years or will you use this til it breaks and costs too much to fix? I'd say anything soldered you should sell off before warranty ends anyway, since a motherboard replacement will be uneconomically expensive due to all soldered components

Definitely look at a RAM upgrade at some point,, 8gb is not really enough now and will just add to CPU bottleneck

 

Really good information here.

I honestly didn't realize how close the i5 7300hq and the i7 7700hq were in power. You could probably disregard my previous post...

 

Geez I just had a look at some benchmarks, neither did I.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmark-List.2436.0.html

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-7700HQ-vs-Intel-Core-i5-7300HQ/m211019vsm223877 - note the quad-thread scores there mirror single-thread

Basically a couple hundred MHz which accounts for about 10%, and hyperthreading, which approx 0% of games benefit from

 

The i5 7300HQ is CERTAIN to bottleneck the 1070. Hell, last night a guy was having bottlenecking issues with an i7 6700HQ. The only CPUs that can really push a 1070/1080 without hindering them are the 6820HK and 7820HK - everything else will bottleneck to various degrees.

 

Battlefield 1, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Crysis 3, Watch Dogs 2, Far Cry, The Witcher 3, Ashes of the Singularity, Rise of the Tomb Raider, etc. would like to have a word with you.

Spoiler

Most AAA titles from 2014 onwards, i.e. since the new-gen consoles, utilize more than 4 threads. HT is important on mobile processors that don't have the capacity to overclock to very high frequencies like desktop i5 chips can.

When you assert something as an absolute, such as "0% of games benefit from Hyper-Threading", it is very easy to disprove.

 

To be relevant to OP, any of them running a single 1070?

And reading fail, I said "approx 0%". Onus actually on you to disprove with statistics not anecdotes...

 

The i7 7700hq seems to only be ~5-10% more powerful in actuality (in comparison to the i5 7300hq).

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-7700HQ-vs-Intel-Core-i5-7300HQ/m211019vsm223877

I'd only look at the i7 7700hq if you need multithreading, and thus better multicore speeds.

I do agree though, 1070 is a powerful card... unless you're playing graphically intense games the CPU could be potential bottleneck. Especially in games like WoW and whatnot. However, with that said... is the i7 7700hq really worth it over the i5 7300hq?

 

Hello everyone - Thank you so much for your time here.. It is greatly appreciated.
Instead of quoting each and everyone, I'll make a single post here.

I have come to understand, that i5 vs i7 depends on what usage I will have. From what I read, the G9(i5/1070) will be sufficient for the time being, but might struggle with more CPU-demanding games in the future. The bigger GPU will probably help in higher resolutions.
The G5(i7/1060) will be a bit more safe CPU-wise in the long run due to more threads, and the slightly higher clock speed, even though I might not feel the difference right away, but GPU will struggle with higher resolutions compared to a 1070.

I was actually under the impression that any of the current mobile CPU's would be a downgrade from my stock i7 3770k, but turns out the 7700hq is slightly faster in the benchmarks @bennyg linked, even though the clockspeeds are much lower. The 7300hq seems a little slower though.

Perhaps the "right" move for me is to just go all out and find a 7700hq/1070 and feel "safe". It's a tough call, really.. But only because I save a lot of money buying any of these demo units. A "proper" 7700/1070 machine with 16gb/256gb ssd/1tb is at least 700€ more than the i5/1070 combo(when not on sale) at the moment in my country. That is a lot of money for an i7 and 8gb more ram

At the time I built my deskop(3770k/670) I came from the Alienware in my sig., and the difference was just night and day across the board. I did not expect the system to be that much faster. Being so long since I built the desktop, I might again underestimate the current hardware available, so the 1060 might be enough for me.
I WILL keep this laptop for atleast 4 years. I have not a single time since I built my desktop thought about upgrading anything other than a bigger SSD, and I think it's nice not to worry about when it's time to upgrade.

Even though some of you don't share the same opinions, I'm glad I am not completely alone in deciding what's "right and wrong"

Thanks a lot guys!

 

@Drazzio the thing is, while difference in CPU performance is not as big, more noticeable GPU performance difference can be mitigated by lowering settings - while if a game demands more powerful CPU, there's no way around it, graphics settings usually don't affect CPU requirements much. On the other hand, who knows, maybe the difference between 1060 and 1070 will be what separates playable from unplayable in 4 year time... There is no right or wrong decision in your situation, just choices.

 

This notion that games don't use more than 2-4 cores has long been wrong and should not be spread. Games can easily utilize 6-8 cores/threads and do indeed benefit from the extra performance. Hence why the i7 7700HQ, even it's only 10% faster in terms of SC and QC tests, delivers 20-40% better gaming results than the i5 7300HQ

 

Name one, and show me the benchmarks. Everything I am finding shows the i5 on a similar level for gaming with the i7. Especially when it comes to games like Battlefield. I haven't been able to find any tests with MMORPGs unfortunately. (For the specific card of course, but other iterations i7 6700 vs i5 6600 and i7 7700 vs i5 7600 show similar findings). For example, in a game like Counter Strike, if everything is on low the i5 has about 10% frames than the i7.

Even games that say they are implementing multicore solutions haven't even begun setting the stage.

Tell my why Ryzen 1800x doesn't completely smash the i7 7700k then in gaming? Bahaha. Please.

I don't see multicore hitting mainstream/standard gaming for quite some time. We might see it emerging within 2-3 years... but it won't be the standard for quite some time imho. Perhaps in 5 years he will replace his system with an 8 core system... but now? Those 4 extra threads aren't necessary.

Keep in mind the i5 is still quad core.

Edit:

If you go with the i7, go with it because you need multithreading for video-editing and other intensive tasks. Not because you expect it to magically bump gaming by 40%.

Or go with it for other reasons of course, style, cooling, screen. Or if you're realistically setting expectations at 10% increase over the i5, then go for it. But don't expect a 40% increase in gaming... especially when most games are limited by the GPU these days.

 

Not really I5-7300HQ is like I7-6700HQ, so a top tier. A magnifier would be necessary to see difference...

 

To anyone who still believes i5s are enough - enjoy. i5s are dead in the water

 

Huh, really seems like a "he says she says" kind of thing.

This has been my go to for a few years:
https://ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1061

Will see if they did a test with the 6th or 7th generations... as that's the current dye we're dealing with.

Not by the same people unfortunately (haven't even completely read it yet, but it seems like it illustrates the issue well):
http://techbuyersguru.com/intels-core-i5-6600k-vs-i7-6700k-vs-i7-6900k-games?page=1

Further "videos" although, I trust reports over videos tbh:







Here's a good one for determining performance in low tier games (like WoW? not graphically intensive):


You're going to have to give me far more than just one sample set (please, more than just a video..) to change my mind.

NOTE:
All of these tests are desktop class CPUs, couldn't really find intensive BGA tests.

 

I would like to note that the 1060 machine seems to be a better deal than the 1070 imho. You're paying $250 more for a 1070, which is the normal price... but then you're losing 8gb RAM and the i7 7700hq. For a machine being $250 more expensive, I would expect it to come with the i7 as well as 16 gb RAM like the other machine.

@Carrot Top

Mind sourcing some reputable tests then? Not just some video if possible. Would love to be wrong, I always get i7s

All I have to go by are the tests I have literally done (my i7 4770k vs a friends i5 4690k).

The things I can find online, as posted above.

And what others have told me, so far I have one video that goes contrary to my findings. If you have an intensive report stating otherwise, contrary to my findings... please give it up. Would love to read through it.

Perhaps I should take it at more than face value, but my background has taught me to look into journaled reviews as well as mass testing. Not some flimsy video on Youtube unless they can be massively substantiated.

 

If you're honestly saying Digital Foundry are "not reputable" - you're a lost cause. DigitalFoundry, Tiny Tom Logan (OC3D), Wendell (L1C) and PCper are the ONLY tech outlets that have NEVER published false information and are widely regarded as being the best and brightest among the industry. All of them have done similar pieces. It's easy to make a random excel chart, it's hard to gain 20 years of experience and respect among the community.

 

I don't think I said that all? Just saying that's the only piece you came up with, would like to see more if possible.

I prefer well-documented reviews that walk me through it step by step. Call me old-fashioned.

 

Anyhow, here are a few more fun sources:





As a bonus - Ryzen 5 1600X performs the same or better than the i5 7600K in gaming but only loses to the 7700K. Why is that if the Hyper Threads aren't used?

 

How do OC3D, GN and Pauls' sound? Good enough? I have about 20 or so videos of the same stuff. That's the thing man, the stigma, the idea that 4 cores are all you will ever need is just wrong in 2017. Look at other forums, nobody in their right mind is buying i5s anymore. It's been like that for a few months now. Why? Cause I see even my lowly 970M push my 6700HQ to a total of 70-80% utilization across all 8 threads in games like GTA V, Witcher 3 and so on - games are increasingly more multi-threaded and that's the thing - we're moving away from quad-cores. Why else would Intel be releasing hex-core i7s at lower prices if not to combat Ryzen?

 

Hell, even Eurogamer have a piece on this. Take a look at minimums - i5s are REALLY dropping frames hard.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-intel-skylake-core-i7-6700k-review

 

In quite a few games you see i5s losing by more than 30% at equal clockspeeds

 

I've only skimmed through the first two, but around the 55 minute mark, and the 6 minute mark on the second one... they seem to be reiterating what I've been saying. (I don't have sound, so perhaps the setup is different than I am assuming)...

It seems like the i5 and i7 are performing with similar performance in those tests. For the games in question at those screencaps. Will fish around through the videos more of course. Just an initial preview.

As for your eurogamer screencap, ashes of singularity is a given. It has always been very CPU intensive. However, the Tomb Raider directly contrasts what was given in the first video. Just shows how tests run differently I guess.

 

It all depends on the games - some, such as the Division, show small differences. Others, such as GTA V and Ashes, show massive jumps. Vulkan titles as well.

 

Easy. Both of you fire up Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and run around daytime Prague. Tell me there isn't a massive improvement on the i7.

What are you smoking? I was agreeing with you, and if you re-read this thread, I cited Digital Foundry before you did.

 

At the end of the day, however, you cannot deny the fact that as soon as you introduce some sort of multi-tasking, be it a YT video or a gamer recorder or a launcher or skype or discord or whatever. You see i5s start to really lose momentum as they are already pegged at or above 90% utilization in games.

Now - all of these extreme case scenarios are done with a 1080 Ti or higher end dGPU meaning that a 1060 will likely not see this kind of behaviour. HOWEVER, it's foolhardy to invest in i5s when you can afford i7s or Ryzen. Particularly, the R5 1600 is being universally praised as the best value CPU on the market today.

 

Bringing up the Holocaust and using extreme language is not really a way to win arguments though. Try to be more calm about it.

 

At this point I'd say the OP has enough to go off of in order to make a decision. I personally don't think the i5 is as dead as you think... but perhaps the OP will.

But perhaps you are right, future games may break through with a leap in multithreading. However, I have never been a fan of "guessing" towards tech and software advancements. I take them as they come.

I personally think the 1060 machine is the way to go, as you seem to be getting more for the buck. $250 increase usually means a 1070 with the stock equipment of the previous machine. However, in this case you LOSE 8gb RAM and the i7. Just doesn't seem worthwhile for the 1070.

 

Oh no doubt, if you're getting a 1080 Ti you might as well get the CPU that will last the longest possible. You will probably be able to upgrade the GPU before you upgrade the CPU for sure. Especially when the CPU upgrades usually involve a new motherboard, ram, and whatnot

 

Precisely - add to that the fact that LGA 1151 is now defunct as Intel are preparing their new approach to x86 for 2018 and you have a really weird situation for Kaby Lake where it's going to be made even more obsolete next year by Intel themselves whereas Zen+ is coming in 2018 with even more releases for AM4 (PGA 1331). At any rate, the i5 7300HQ is a massive bottleneck for the 1070. Like I pointed out, a person with a GL502VS had a i7 6700HQ bottleneck his 1070 to the point that he literally couldn't get the GPU to run above 50% utilization and 1300MHz regardless of the game. In benches it was fine, but in games it was severely limited.

 

Who said I wanted to get in or win an argument though? It was a general remark about people who deny facts, even if one of the analogies was a little extreme. Or in the case of i5 vs. i7, living years in the past.

 

Exactly - going extreme never ends well. Try to remain composed and neutral.

 

That's actually really strange. The i7 7700hq is supposed to be a little under par with the desktop i7 4xxx (desktop) series. (so I've heard, I don't have a laptop with an i7 7700hq) I personally have a i7 4770k and it runs my 1080 no problem.

Really is too hard to tell though, depends on what games they play I suppose.

 

The 7700HQ is +10% faster than the 6700HQ, and if your 4770K is overclocked it's no-contest.

 

Probably going to kick me, but the i7 4770k is at stock (?) ~1V @ 3.5 ghz at the moment. I stuck it in a compact machine for the living room, overclocked was just too warm. Used to have it at ~1.1 V @ 3.8 ghz... which wasn't all that taxing but it was still too warm.

Anywho. Doesn't the i7 7700hq turbo to 3.8? Not entirely sure what that looks like in gaming performance... but I feel like it should be similar to my setup.

Never really got too deep into overclocking, just played around with some numbers and whatnot.

Games I play on the machine.
Player Unknown Battlegrounds, Elite Dangerous, and sometimes Star Citizen. I know Elite Dangerous and Player Unknown utilize the GPU pretty well, haven't tested Star Citizen GPU usage at all. Not sure what something like WoW would look like on there, but can try it out sometime ^^

Should be noted, I use a 1440p screen... perhaps there would be bottlenecking on 1080p?

 

4770K has a 3.7GHz 4-core Turbo vs the 3.4GHz 4-core turbo on the 7700HQ - that effectively negates any and all architectural differences. Add to that the better RAM timings and clockspeed and yeah, the 4770K will perform better by a bit. BUT THEN. Compare it to the 3GHz 7300HQ that lacks HT - you're losing 30-50% performance right there.

 

Fair enough, but you also have to account for the fact it's a 1080 vs a 1070. Granted, the 1080 is at stock speeds. Not sure if the other guy was doing something funky with his card.

It's also not really fair to consider turbo speeds. Turbo is a "gimmick" by Intel to be honest. Doesn't it just activate when the CPU is not under stress? When the CPU reaches high strain it turns off turbo IIRC.

Anywho, just think there was something funky going on if the 1070 was only utilized at 50%.

 

Wow.. The amount of posts written since I checked last time! And lovely debate going on
I'm sure future games will be more CPU demanding now that Ryzen is likely going to set the standard of how many cores we should have, and I'm sure the future games will utilize the i7(and beyond) much more efficiently than now.

But.. the G9 sold before I could really think twice about it, and I called up the other store with the G5 to get a description of their demo unit, and it appeared it had scratches on the lid, and smaller ones where you rest your left wrist. I treat my equipment well, so buying something like that is not my spirit at all.

Reading through all the comments and watching the vids, I think that it was clear it wouldn't be wise investing this kind of money in a brand new rig with a i5, especially coupled with a 1070. It wasn't all the tests where the i7 was the clear winner, but when utilized properly it really shined, so that really made me think twice and convinced myself in the end to go all out, and go for a i7, so I wasn't bummed at all the G9 demo sold. I would've bought the G5 demo though, if it had been in a better condition.

So instead.. I ended up ordering a brand new Predator G9-793 with a 7700hq/1070 with 32gb ram and 256ssd/1tb. I paid a bit more than what I planned, but I'm sure this will last, and I get the all bells and whistles I so desired, haha

I found a couple other threads on here about the same subject, if others would happen to be looking for the same as I.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/minimum-cpu-that-wont-bottleneck-pascal-mxms.802848/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/does-the-i5-6300hq-bottleneck-the-1060-3gb.802784/

Really nice reading your opinions and advices, so thank you so much for all the help - it help tremendously making up my mind, even though, in the end, I was too slow to pull the trigger

 

Hey, that's fantastic! I'm sure you will love it.

Putting a little more upfront means it's just a little more future proof

 

That's not how Turbo 3.0 works. Intel Turbo Boost, similarly to AMD XFR, works as follows. If thermals allow it (under 95*C for Intel and under 75*C for AMD) and there is enough power headroom for the chip, it manually ramps up clockspeed to the maximum all-core turbo boost (7700HQ - 3.4GHz, 4770K, I believe, is at 3.7GHz). Single-core Turbo (3.8 for the 7700HQ and 3.9 for the 4770K) is more of a gimmick as you never really have load on only 1 core nowadays.

If you were to only consider base clock ,the 7700HQ gets absolutely annihilated cause it runs at 2.8GHz vs the 3.5GHz on the 4770K. That's a near 30% delta in clockspeed alone.

 

The ONLY mobile CPUs that should be compared to any of these desktop processors you guys keep talking about are the 7820HK and 6820HK. The 7700HQ is fine for gamers but there are TWO problems with the 7700HQ: 1) you HAVE to undervolt it in any demanding game/application or it will TDP throttle hard to 45W, 2) turbo boost is 3.4 ghz on all cores---IF you can avoid exceeding 45W.

7820HK is a pretty decent CPU for being BGA.

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-3770K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-7820HK/1317vsm224965

Plus overclock it to 4.4 ghz (which most can do at stock voltage) and it beats a 5 ghz 2600k (tested it in a chess engine in kN calculations), although the 2600k does win in superPI, but no one cares about 1 core superpi anymore.

 

Short answer is no, unless you play in low resolution and details, measuring high fps numbers.