If you are building a pc

If you are building a pc and only are going to play beamng, then i recommend getting a pretty powerful cpu and then a mildly strong gpu.
If in general go for the most balanced but powerful setup, oh and people will say "an i5 is just as good as an i7 for gaming" do not listen to them, if you can, get an i7

My Setup:
CPU I7 4790K
GPU GTX 770 superclocked w/ ACX cooling 2GB
HDD 2TB
SSD 256 ADATA
PSU 600M Watt
RAM 16GB 1600hmz
CASE Apevia X-3 Cruiser
COOLING Full 120mm case fans, Large side fan, And corsair Closed loop water cooling.

How well I can run Beamng:
60 fps locked with v-sync, 70-80 with out v-sync
max settings
with a bunch of mods and maps
Never get above 90 degrees fahrenheit.

 

There is no point in getting an i7 unless your budget is well over $1K. A better GPU is a much better investment of the extra $100. If your build already has a GTX 780 or better, then you might go with an i7, but it really makes no difference for gaming.
Obviously, a top-end i7 is a better, more powerful CPU, and if you have spare cash you should go for it. But on a budget, is it worth the difference? No.

And before you go saying "but muh i7 is better for bemng cus its better", let's have a little lesson on the differences between the Devil's Canyon top-end i5 and i7 - the 4690K and 4790K.

First of all, they are mostly the same chip. Same amount of cores on exactly the same architecture. The only difference here is an extra 2mb of cache in the 4790K.

Now for the i7's main feature: Hyperthreading. Hyperthreading is a technology used by Intel that makes two threads out of each CPU core. While very useful for multi-thread heavy tasks such as rendering and video editing, its impact in game performance is close to if not null. Essential for a video/rendering PC, useless for a gaming rig.

Now you may wonder, "if hyperthreading is useless, then why does the 4790K outperform the 4690K in gaming benchmarks?". Well, it's very simple: It's clocked higher with a stock/boost clock of 4.0/4.4 GHz versus the 4690K's 3.5/3.9. If you overclock a 4690K to 4.4 GHz, you will match a 4790K in gaming performance, the i7 only having a very slight edge due to the extra cache (which, once again, is mostly irrelevant for gaming).

But, with the i5 at 4.4 GHz, it's only fair to clock the i7 to 4.9, right? Wrong. Being based on the same chip and mostly identical (except for added cache), the 4790K has the same clock/voltage ratio and limits as the 4690K. So, the i7 being higher clocked out of the box, you lose overclocking headroom as well. Essentially, the 4790K is a hyperthreaded 4690K with a factory overclock.

So, there you go. On a fair, clock-to-clock comparison, the 4690K matches the 4790K in gaming performance. Even at stock clocks, in most games the difference will be <5FPS, much less than the FPS gain from a better GPU.

My advice, unless you're planning to do $100 worth of video rendering, plan your build with a 4690K. When it's finished, if you have no weakness and still have a spare $100 on your budget, go for the 4790K.

 

Here is my point, you have an i5, what you just said is what all i5 users say, I definetly love i5s but games these days still require a lot of cpu, I have friend with a i5 4288 and gtx 970 but I can outperform him in many ways, I7 overall is a better processor, faster and better in the long run, and for anyone reading this, I am yet to meet an i5 user who doesnt say "an i5 is just as good as an i7 for gaming" and yes my 4790k may not be the best but I dont have problems, so.

 

The i5 4288 is a dual core laptop processor, you can't compare a desktop i7 to a laptop i5.

 

The i5-4588 is as said a 2/4 core/thread laptop CPU. If you want to compare it to an i5, you have to compare it to a 4690K, which does in fact match a 4790K's performance when clocked at 4.4 GHz.

BTW, the 4790K is actually the best gaming CPU you can buy. At stock clocks, it outperforms Haswell-E CPUs.

 

You can also save a lot by having only 8GB, you don't need 16 unless you plan to edit. There is objective proof that ram amounts above 8 has no effect on gaming. I have 8 and I have never used more than about 5GB, that's with two games running, screen recorded, a few tabs open and a defragger running.

Also the above are right, an i5 4690K performs identically to an i7 4790k in single-threaded, dual threaded, triple threaded, and quad threaded applications. The only difference is hyperthreading, cache and about $100 more, depending on region.

 

Thanks, yes the 4288 is a laptop, but If I was to oc my 4790k to around 4.9 then yes, I could beat an i5 4690k, i enjoy all pcs so game on

 

of course an i7 at 4.9ghz beats an i5 at 4.4ghz, they're the same cores!

Clock both at the same speed and they perform (almost, because cache) identically.

 

As for the hyperthreading: Same chip, same clocks, same voltages, same build, same software, only tangible difference is HT on/off in BIOS. Both tests were run as soon as possible after boot. I've used this image to reply to someone else in the past over the same issue.

As for the bit about RAM, yeah, 8GB is really all that's needed for games. VRAM on the other hand is becoming a much larger issue. ignore GTX970 pls

 

Beamng is not most games. Most games use only 2 or 3 threadsin which case even an i3 has the required multitasking prowess

 

Won't disagree, most games out now won't use more than 2 cores. That's changing fairly quickly; however, as a result of the new consoles. Wolfenstein TNO uses all 8 threads, and it's not a game you'd ever consider to do so. Setting its affinity to two cores brought an average framerate reduced by 20 (from 60-70 down to 30-40) and fairly frequent microstutter. 4 cores was more normal but allowing it access to all 8 threads brought ~7 more FPS. Affecting G3528 users were Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age Inquisition, both of which had problems launching and then not crashing after successfully launching. Patches were released to fix those problems but performance on dual cores is still sub-par.

It's up to you whether or not those 7 FPS are worth it in Wolfenstein, but this is a BeamNG forum, BlueScreen mentioned its relevance in relation to BeamNG, and IMO 1-2 more cars is a pretty big difference.

 

I do loads of video editing in my spare time so this setup is dual purpose, but for beamng it is great.

 

Those 7 extra FPS aren't worth $100.

BeamNG is one exception, really, and not a very popular game either. For any normal game, hyperthreading barely makes a difference.
In fact, in some older games where you have to disable threads (Fallout 3 for example is very unstable when run on more than 2 cores), a 4690K will outperform a 4790K due to using two actual hardware cores instead of one.
Again, a rare case, but no more than extremely CPU-intensive games such as BeamNG.

Besides all, any FPS gain from a 4790K, even at stock clocks, is vastly offset by spending the $100 extra on the GPU. You should only buy a 4790K if you already have a great GPU.

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But that would be unfair. As I said, being the same chip, both the 4690K and 4790K have the same clock/voltage ratio and limits, so the i7 just has a factory overclock.

 

I have a i5 4690K at stock clocks and runs that well at much less cost. I get 60FPS until I add 3-4 cars when it starts to dip, and it stays above 30FPS with 5-6 cars. It runs the stock Intel cooler and CPU never goes above 75 degrees Celsius even for hours at a time. The GPU never goes hotter than 75 degrees Celsius thanks to Maxwell. I can only use 3.5GB of it but it is still better than 2GB of the 770.

 

The i5 is great and I am looking for no fight but honestly a 2gb 770 superclocked is not bad, might upgrade to a 970 or preferably a 980 soon so

 

Eh. It goes like this
770<280x<290<290x<970

If you don't want AMD just go for the 970. If you don't mind AMD go for the 290 IMO. 2GB is way to little, and the 980 is hopelessly overpriced.

 

Although you can only use 3.5GB of the 4GB in the 970, still better than 2GB though

 

There's nothing wrong with the 970. I'd go nvidia because AMD's drivers are crap.

 

Not true. You can use 4/4 GB, just the last 0.5GB is slower and has much worse latency.

 

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the 970, just sort of teasing it a bit. And BTW I had an AMD card for ages and it still worked just fine. It could play most games at high @ 720p 30 FPS, and for less the £50, I can't complain...

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True but performance still dips considerably when using the last 0.5GB, only about 50% faster than doing it through system memory. To think I was going to get 2x720p monitors to hook up along with my 1080 one, well I guess that dream is gone now ;(