Core i5 3570 or Core i7 3770 for software development

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Shred

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I am battling to decide between these two CPU's.

I mainly use Visual Studio, SQL, tons of browser tabs, all development based tools as well as some virtual machines. Will the i7 benefit me in any way having 8 threads opposed to the i5 4 threads?
 
Take a look at VT-X and VT-D for the VMs. Its listed on the intel spec sheets. You def need VT-X...not sure whether the VM solution you've got uses VT-D but it can't hurt.

For dev itself it shouldn't make much of a diff either way i5/i7. Both are decent - though naturally i7 wins.
 
are you compromising on something else though if going with the i7?
 
My dev environment is pretty similar to yours.
I have used i5 and i7 (Gen 1, 2 and 3) and can feel the difference.

I recently built a new Gen 3 i7 and it is quite a bit faster than my current office Gen 1 i7. Office with 8GB RAM and personal Gen3 with 16GB.
The difference is significant enough that coding at the office generates frustration.
Plug as much of your cash into the CPU, first. Much easier to upgrade the other components as cash comes available.
 
Spend that extra R900 on the i7 3770.

All my colleagues have i5's (up to i5 2500k) and they always have to resort to setting up their things on other servers when they want to perform tests.

I'm running an i7 860, 16GB DDR3 1600 & 128GB OCZ Agility at my office, which I use for software development (objective-C, PHP, Java, MySQL) and running virtual machines.
With the i7 I don't even notice that I'm running multiple virtual machines :)
 
HavocXphere said:
Take a look at VT-X and VT-D for the VMs. Its listed on the intel spec sheets. You def need VT-X...not sure whether the VM solution you've got uses VT-D but it can't hurt.
Click to expand...

I would say go for a CPU/MB that supports VT-X & VT-D.
 
ponder said:
I would say go for a CPU/MB that supports VT-X & VT-D.
Click to expand...
Most motherboards (and CPU's) will have VT-x support. I think the ones with VT-d support are pretty expensive.
The overclockable CPU's (model numbers ending with 'K') does not have VT-d support, but like the i5 3570 and i7 3770 does have VT-d support.

VT-d would require special virtualization software, because like VirtualBox does not support it. I'm not sure if VMWare supports it.
VT-d is for accessing the hardware directly, like when you want your VM to have direct access to your graphics card, hard drive controller or Ethernet. My i7 860 with an Asus P7H55D-M Evo does not have VT-d support, but my VM's are still pretty fast, but I'm not running VM's that require 3-D acceleration or fast HDD access.
 
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Pada said:
Most motherboards (and CPU's) will have VT-x support. I think the ones with VT-d support are pretty expensive.
Click to expand...

The ASRock boards are looking better & better every day. The Z77 Extreme 4 for R1.5k does vt-d, so does the cheaper M version and many of their other boards.

Some more useful info,
http://www.overclock.net/t/1254760/asrock-z77-extreme4-m-owners-needed-vt-d-supported/10
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/th...-motherboards-and-CPUs-for-Paravirtualization
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/VTd_HowTo

vt-d is definitely on my future to build list.
 
Shred said:
I am battling to decide between these two CPU's.

I mainly use Visual Studio, SQL, tons of browser tabs, all development based tools as well as some virtual machines. Will the i7 benefit me in any way having 8 threads opposed to the i5 4 threads?
Click to expand...

Definitely i7 especially for virtuals. Are you getting an ssd? that should be next up on the list. Cant believe I waited this long to get one myself :P
 
Nefertiti said:
Definitely i7 especially for virtuals. Are you getting an ssd? that should be next up on the list. Cant believe I waited this long to get one myself :P
Click to expand...

I was going to get a SSD but then I decided against for the following reasons, but not sure if I am wrong.
* I con't care for boot up time
* When my IDE is open, all that exists in memory so it's irrelevnat where the installation files sit.
* My development data probably won't sit on the SSD because there is too much data (Can only afford a 125GB).

So I was thinking maybe there will not be much of a different in performance.
 
Shred said:
I was going to get a SSD but then I decided against for the following reasons, but not sure if I am wrong.
* I con't care for boot up time
* When my IDE is open, all that exists in memory so it's irrelevnat where the installation files sit.
* My development data probably won't sit on the SSD because there is too much data (Can only afford a 125GB).

So I was thinking maybe there will not be much of a different in performance.
Click to expand...

I appreciate the speed difference. I got it mostly for sharepoint dev (having to deploy webparts and for restarting processes up was a pain), however I've subsequently changed jobs and not doing sharepoint dev. So I cant say for sure what I would have gained, but considering how quickly everything starts it will be a big improvement.

if your motherboard supports it, you can always add a msata ssd disk. All the most used files will be copied to the drive (its not used for installation). I might settle on that when I get my laptop
 
Shred said:
I was going to get a SSD but then I decided against for the following reasons, but not sure if I am wrong.
* I con't care for boot up time
* When my IDE is open, all that exists in memory so it's irrelevnat where the installation files sit.
* My development data probably won't sit on the SSD because there is too much data (Can only afford a 125GB).

So I was thinking maybe there will not be much of a different in performance.
Click to expand...

They exist in memory as far as text editing goes, but compilation will only be performed using the hard disk. If you have as much code as you say you do (that a 128GB drive will not be enough), then the faster compilation times will be a huge bonus.

Also remember that IntelliSense is also generated by scanning source files on your hard drive.

What could you possibly be developing that wont fit on a 128GB drive? Get a 256GB one then, they arent that expensive anymore.
 
Mike Smit said:
I recently built a new Gen 3 i7 and it is quite a bit faster than my current office Gen 1 i7. Office with 8GB RAM and personal Gen3 with 16GB.
Click to expand...

I am running the EXACT same setup :wtf:

Also: Try to get a SSD, I upgraded both my machines to a SSD recently (OCZ Vertex) and wow, it makes a huge difference to load times, compiling etc.
 
Ancalagon said:
They exist in memory as far as text editing goes, but compilation will only be performed using the hard disk. If you have as much code as you say you do (that a 128GB drive will not be enough), then the faster compilation times will be a huge bonus.

Also remember that IntelliSense is also generated by scanning source files on your hard drive.

What could you possibly be developing that wont fit on a 128GB drive? Get a 256GB one then, they arent that expensive anymore.
Click to expand...

Didn't think of IntelliSense . that would be a huge bonus actually. Look, my code is not 128GB, but my OS and installation files will obviously take up a fair amount. Subversion is pretty data hungry, just checked all my repositories and it totals almost 5GB :wtf:.

256GB is R2000, it's a lot of money. But now you made me think....
 
Shred:
Go for a setup where you have a 128GB SSD for your OS, applications and workspace data.
Then also install a HDD (eg 500GB - 2TB) for backups and all your installation files that you don't use on a regular basis.

This is how I roll and it works beautifully, because I also have way too much random data (setup files, logs, multimedia) to fit on a 128GB SSD.
 
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