I see many,if not most, AAA games recommend i7 cpu's for "optimal" performance and not i5/i7, however i have read numerous times that the performance difference during gaming seems to be either negligible or non existent between the two (i5/i7). I can appreciate a game supporting something like Hyper-threading where the i7 will obviously outperform an i5 but what about all the games that don't, wouldn't an i5 be just as good as an i7 ?

Yeah, they will always recommend the best of the best, 'cause if they fail at optimizing the game, at least people with monster rigs can still play it :P The i5 will do just fine, i mean they recommend a AMD FX 8000 also which is further away from i7 in performance than an i5. So, if an FX 8000 works than an i5 will work perfectly (unless they do some amazing multi-threading optimization, in which case the "8" core FX might have an edge, but I doubt that will be the case)

R9 or better, a 7970 isn't good enough for you is it :O

The R9-280x is an updated HD7970 GHz edition, not an updated HD7970 lol. In any case though, it's just a generalised recommendation.

I know, lol. 7970 XF should be more than enough. This is one game I am greatly looking forward to.

R9 or better, a 7970 isn't good enough for you is it :O

The 270X is also an R9 which is a 7870, so a 7970 should be more than enough.

I see many,if not most, AAA games recommend i7 cpu's for "optimal" performance and not i5/i7, however i have read numerous times that the performance difference during gaming seems to be either negligible or non existent between the two (i5/i7). I can appreciate a game supporting something like Hyper-threading where the i7 will obviously outperform an i5 but what about all the games that don't, wouldn't an i5 be just as good as an i7 ?

i'd say it's all marketing. even if games were fully optimized to use 6 core's and 12 theads only very few RTS would be able to hit it with enough to make it noticeable and the only game that springs to mind is supreme commander with raised unit caps, but that game cares little about your fancy threads and core's so no gain there. perhaps 2-3 fps in dayz? that's pretty cpu intensive. difference between my pc with a 4670k and a GTX 470 and a friend of mine with a i7 920 and a GTX 570, my cpu is faster and i in general have 10-15fps more then him though that might also be because his memory is 18-19GB/s and mine's around 33GB/s. what i take from realworld data is 2 possibility's. 1. games are so poorly optimized the 2 main core's carry the load so a i7 hexacore means nada. 2. games require so little from your cpu you've got it covered plenty with a i5.

i'd say it's all marketing. even if games were fully optimized to use 6 core's and 12 theads only very few RTS would be able to hit it with enough to make it noticeable and the only game that springs to mind is supreme commander with raised unit caps, but that game cares little about your fancy threads and core's so no gain there. perhaps 2-3 fps in dayz? that's pretty cpu intensive. difference between my pc with a 4670k and a GTX 470 and a friend of mine with a i7 920 and a GTX 570, my cpu is faster and i in general have 10-15fps more then him though that might also be because his memory is 18-19GB/s and mine's around 33GB/s. what i take from realworld data is 2 possibility's. 1. games are so poorly optimized the 2 main core's carry the load so a i7 hexacore means nada. 2. games require so little from your cpu you've got it covered plenty with a i5.

Ummmm, play BF4 at all? My I7 3770k @ 4.8Ghz runs between 65-90% on all threads. 120Hz and SLi are definitely helping to push the #'s up but still. If this runs like BF4 it will use the hell out of the CPU. Also this is mantle supported, and an AMD hardware partnered game, so I bet it will 8--- series or I7 processors very well.

indeed games these days are very cpu heavy, min OC of 4.5ghz I recommend for any quad hyperthreading or not. in my 3d settings I use max pre-rendered frames at '1' which has less input lag but is more cpu heavy too.

Lots of games use more then 2 cores, so anything less then a fast quad core is hardly gaming recommended these days.

BF4 scales up to 4.2Ghz on a modern i7 kinda says it all.. Anything extra helps only by old single/dual threaded games.

I see many,if not most, AAA games recommend i7 cpu's for "optimal" performance and not i5/i7, however i have read numerous times that the performance difference during gaming seems to be either negligible or non existent between the two (i5/i7). I can appreciate a game supporting something like Hyper-threading where the i7 will obviously outperform an i5 but what about all the games that don't, wouldn't an i5 be just as good as an i7 ?

This, Im pretty devs has some backdoor type thing going on that lets them derp a certain cpus simply due to model name, i mean its either dual core or quad core optimized, no point in recommending a quad core if its optimized to be able to run fine on a dual core, obviously the quads going to have no issue.