Single .vs. Multithread performance in processor choice

[TL]

Setting up a new box - Looking for decent power use to performance, not an especially difficult deployment (~200 Mb service, home use, one WAN, no failover...)

Have a couple of available options, both on boards with Intel NICs.

Intel Core i7-2600 3.4ghz  "95W"
CPU Benchmark ratings:
MultiThread 5379 - single thread 1752 Cross-Platform Rating  11,300

Intel Core i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz "77W"
CPU Benchmark ratings:
MultiThread 4660 single thread 1927 Cross-Platform Rating 10,737

They are not far apart, and the i5 actually has better single-thread rating as well as lower full-power rating (the two systems are fairly similar in power use (25-35W running) as I currently test, but I don't have the network up to connect them to yet so they are not working hard, and I have also not (yet) completely minimized differences between them (I won't be processor-swapping even though they share a socket type.)

I've used a similar i5 system in a much more difficult environment (100+ users) running pfSense in the past, which ran into limitations when trying to do traffic shaping after the pipe got upgraded (which was soluble by simply removing the downstream TS and leaving upstream TS in place - otherwise it was choking at 150 Mb downstream on a 400 Mb feed) but I doubt I'll have much need of traffic shaping for this job.

Not especially interested in buying any new hardware for the job at present - even if it used half the power, that's only going to save $25/year or so, so most new things will not pay off in a reasonable time at present, AFAICT.

If single-thread performance is more important, the i5 seems like a win - both lower maximum power use and better single-thread performance.

As time permits I'll be minimizing differences to see if I can get a better direct comparison, but if there's insight indicating that single-thread matters more most of the time, then I could save a bit of time by not running those comparisons and just concentrating on the getting the i5 system set up.

Thanks,

[Szeraax]

At home, I have a 250 u/d FTTH single WAN that is running on an old laptop with AMD A8-4500M. Passmark reports it at:

1710

Single Thread Rating: 902
Cross-Platform Rating: 4146

As you can tell, its a decent bit weaker then either of your options. I am using a single NIC with VLANs for the Lan/Wan going into the router. I'm making heavy use of Nginx to VM's on my NAS. When I upgraded my fiber to 1gbps temporarily, I was hitting around 450Mbps (expected due to the overloaded single NIC).

I don't use traffic shaping. I'd suspect that you'll be fine with either CPU and you should just do whichever one you have less use for.