“Does the hyperthreading help the i7 8700 beat the i5 8400 in Star Citizen? I’m looking to update my minimum cpu recommendation for Star Citizen and have tested the i7 8700 vs the i5 8400. Does the extra cache help the i7?”
Tenpoundfortytwo is comparing the performance of an i5 8400 and an i7 8700 CPU to determine which is better for running Star Citizen, a space simulation game. The i5 has been their minimum recommended specification for a while but they believe it’s getting too slow. They are interested in whether adding the hyper-threading feature of the i7 would improve performance. The motherboard and BIOS of the old office PC they are using to test the CPUs are designed for low-power situations and won’t allow the i7 to use enough power to boost past 3.8 or 3.9, so the results may not be the full potential of the i7.
Tenpoundfortytwo tests the CPUs on different scenes in the game, including Loreville, Arcorp, the Origin rooftop, quantum travel, and space. They find that the scenes that are mostly GPU-bound don’t show much difference in performance between the i5 and i7, but the scenes that are mostly CPU-bound show significant improvements in performance with the i7, especially in one percent lows. They also find that hyper-threading is making a difference, though it’s unclear whether it’s the only factor or if other parts of the chip are also contributing to the improved performance.
The author concludes that the i7 8700 is a good choice for running Star Citizen, particularly for CPU-bound scenes. They caution that their testing was done on an old office PC and the results may not be the full potential of the i7, but the testing does show that hyper-threading can significantly improve performance. They also note that their recommended GPU for achieving around 30 FPS is the 1660 base model.