If you had the choice...

[blueball]

...would you take 4 cores @ 4.2GHz with HT or 6 cores @ 4GHz with HT. Usage is mix of Photoshop and gaming.

4.2GHz is i7-7700K on Gigabyte Z270
4.0GHz is i7-8086K on an Asus Z370A

[D.king88]

Personally, I'd go with the 6 cores. I cannot see 200mhz having any meaningful impact on either gaming or photoshop.

However, an extra 2 cores/4 threads would make a big difference...provided the game makes use of all cores/threads available, of course

[Spreadie]

Depends on the price.

The 8086K is clearly the better choice but I wouldn't pay a premium for it. It may work out better to buy new AMD.

[jim]

I agree. In all honesty, I doubt you'll find yourself maxing all six cores, but given how long we've had quads for now I think plenty of games will be at least designed for quad core, and then having other software in the background able to use the remaining two is useful.

Overall you're getting more power with six as well, so it will give you far more in terms of futureproofing than an extra 200MHz.

I went AMD Ryzen so I'm running eight core. Have never seen my system use all of them but the price difference wasn't worth worrying about.

[DanceswithUnix]

I went AMD Ryzen so I'm running eight core. Have never seen my system use all of them but the price difference wasn't worth worrying about.

I max out all 8 on a regular basis, which is sooo nice

[Xlucine]

The frequency difference isn't that great - the 7700K should hit 4.4 GHz on all cores, and the 8086K should hit 4.3 GHz at stock settings
https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/1...i7-8086k-14nm/

The 8086K system also has the option of going to an 8 core chip in future (9900K is supported), the 7700K system is as good as it's ever going to get (i.e. an i3 with hyperthreading)

[blueball]

Thanks all. Looks like 8086.

[Saracen999]

What percentage of usage is Photoshop, and what gaming? And what about relative importance?

Will the games you want benefit from extra threafs?

Photoshop didn't used to be good at utilusing cores/threads, but due to the subscription model, I haven't updated since it went CC.

I remember a principal software architect at Adobe talking about it. His logic was that relatively few of PS's tasks were suitable for breaking into chunks, and that Photoshop usage strongly tended to working on one file at a time, with most tasks being essentially linear, because later bits relied on earlier bits, so couldn't start until those earlier bits had concluded.

The result was that sheer horsepower tended to be a better bet, but I've no idea how much 4.0 v 4.2 would make. And there were some effects that could be broken down into non-linear chunks.

But as I said, I'm outta touch on this stuff. So I just raise the question.

That said my gut tells me it won't make much difference in either PS or most games.

Which would I chose? Probably cores but not because of either PS or gaming.

[Spreadie]

...would you take 4 cores @ 4.2GHz with HT or 6 cores @ 4GHz with HT. Usage is mix of Photoshop and gaming.

4.2GHz is i7-7700K on Gigabyte Z270
4.0GHz is i7-8086K on an Asus Z370A

Also, those figures are the base clocks - the 7700K has a higher base and boosts to 4.5GHz, but the 8086K boosts to 5GHz.

[DanceswithUnix]

Also, those figures are the base clocks - the 7700K has a higher base and boosts to 4.5GHz, but the 8086K boosts to 5GHz.

Given the 8086K is basically an overclocked 8700K, that shows through in this review benchmark, though both of them get beaten by the Ryzen 3600.




(from https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreview...marks-vs-intel)

[Spreadie]

Given the 8086K is basically an overclocked 8700K, that shows through in this review benchmark, though both of them get beaten by the Ryzen 3600.

Which is why I said AMD could be a better option.

[Ttaskmaster]

Which one overclocks better?

[PC-LAD]

Which is why I said AMD could be a better option.

Strangely enough though in that table a OC'd 9600k beats the 3600, even the 9700k (think those results are a bit skewed) -\(+_+)/-

[DanceswithUnix]

Strangely enough though in that table a OC'd 9600k beats the 3600, even the 9700k (think those results are a bit skewed) -\(+_+)/-

Photoshop is an odd benchmark, hence it seemed worth digging some results out. As Saracen remarked, it is largely single core limited but it doesn't seem as simple as that. I expect cache and SSE throughput for that core are important too (something is making up the clock speed deficit of that 3600 rather nicely).

[freebooter]

I could be wrong but I thought modern versions of PS used multi threading very well?

[DanceswithUnix]

I could be wrong but I thought modern versions of PS used multi threading very well?

Look at the above graph towards the bottom, and there are figures for overclocked 1600 and 1700 processors at the same 3.9GHz frequency. The 1700 is very slightly faster, so that is either down to the extra 2 cores or the cache that those cores contain or a bit of both. Either way those extra cores are helping, just not very much.