Request difference between i5 & i7

I have read many posts and it looks like the there is not much of a difference between the R3 i5 and the R3 i7 for most games...I also understand that the 2GB of vram in the i7 version is not taken advantage of. However I was hoping a few of you R3 owners could give me a real-world example of the performance difference- I would like to know the average frame rate for the Witcher 2 at native resolution and medium settings on the i5 model and the same settings for the i7 model. Also, could I get the average fps at 1280 x 720 with medium settings for both versions? This should give me a better understanding of the differences in deciding on which model to get. Also, does adding more ram (above 4 GB) make any difference on frame rates?

 

1) The big difference between a Core i5 vs Core i7 is going to be a small incremental bump in CPU clock speed. And there are benchmarks over the past 10 years showing that small incremental differences in CPU clock speeds do not significantly impact gaming framerates for most games.

The two areas where CPU clock speed DOES make a difference are going to be (a) CPU-dependent gaming; these are mostly strategy games with a lot of AI computation, like Starcraft 2 and Civilization 5. But the overwhelming majority of games are not affected very much by CPU speed; and (b) CPU-based computations, like video encoding.

Other than those two very narrow scenarios, small bumps in CPU clock speed doesn't affect real-world computer performance. It will not affect application performance, application load times, or gaming framerates for most games.

If you could get a free upgrade from Core i5 --> Core i7, then of course go for it. But if you have to pay for the upgrade, then save your money and spend it somewhere else.




(2) No, adding RAM above 4GB will not affect framerates in any way. 4GB of RAM is enough for gaming.

 

Here is a ram test.
I have seen other tests that show a decrease in performance when more than 4 gigs of ram is added. In conclusion RAM does not affect gaming, unless you are under 4.