What do you plan to do with your system?
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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Buildapc
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Sorry, forgot to state this. I am running it as a server, currently only as a minecraft server and a few small static sites, but I‘ll be running more services if I need to. Maybe a streaming service like Jellyfin, or a cloud of some kind in the future
Minecraft is very single core dependent so I'd expect maybe twice the performance going to the i7 at 3.6ghz (plus the extra cache) vs the 2.9ghz of the pentium but probably closer to 1.5x.
The i7 having more cores shouldn't have as bad of a performance penalty vs the Pentium. And in multi threaded loads the i7 will destroy it. Even when it's running at 35 watts it should be at least twice as fast.
the i5 will basically double the cpu performance--2t/2c vs 4c/4t. the i7 adds ht on top of that (4c/8t)--won't double performance again, but expect at least another 50% increase over the i5 for most multi-threaded workloads. if you can get the chip cheap, go for it. it's an easy upgrade. 15-20 & 40 (usd) seems to be the 'fair' used price for them. same tdp so the existing cooler would work, but clean the surfaces and put on new thermal paste.
otherwise, if you want an 'excuse' to start looking for something new and significantly faster, here's your chance. :) start pricing out an even newer and faster minipc to replace what you have. but do keep in mind that going 'too new' will also require different ram--but you could also gain an nvme slot, and better hardware decoding/encoding for your future streaming media server.
If you compare the L3 cache you'll find the i7 has more. Also the i7 has hyperthreading while the i5 does not, giving multi-core workloads a bit of a boost.