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Forums - PC Discussion - Why you really don't need to buy in i7 CPU for gaming (or even an i5).

SnesTea on 19 September 2012
famousringo said:
Similar conclusions were drawn in this article:

http://techreport.com/review/23246/inside-the-second-gaming-performance-with-today-cpus/1

They didn't actually test any i3s, but here are some useful takeaways:

- Don't bother putting an AMD CPU into your gaming machine.
- You don't really want the highest FPS, you want the most consistent FPS.
- Faster CPUs will actually still improve the number and consistency of FPS (i.e., it's not just about GPUs these days).
- i7s really aren't worth the extra money for gaming purposes. Even the higher-end i5s don't yield much improvement. Most important is getting the latest class of architecture.

My AMD CPU's rip nearly everything to shreds tyvm.



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famousringo on 19 September 2012
disolitude said:

I don't have the time or tools to measure the consistency of the frame delivery and their latency, so I have to take their results to be true.

Going over the article I can't help but feel they are making a big deal of something that really isn't that big of a deal. I personally don't see much difference on an AMD platform versus Intel in frame delivery when both are GPU bound and doing 55 fps in Crysis 2 per say.

If we take their Batman benchmark and look at AMD low and Intel mid... yes intels have less latency spikes when rendering the frames, however the difference isn't large at all.  Phenom 980 seems to deliver 10-70 ms of latency where the i5 2500k is doing 10-60ms. I don't see that being a large difference at all... It just sounds like something that only the hardcore of the hardcore would notice.



So yeah, I don't agree with their "don't bother putting AMD CPU in to gaming machine" conclusion at all.


Maybe I should have linked to their last page, which does a far better job of illustrating the point than any individual test:

Note how the 3470 outperforms every AMD processor by 25% or more and even the Sandy Bridge i7 at a very reasonable price.

Perhaps frame stuttering doesn't bother you, but personally, it drives me nuts.



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zarx on 19 September 2012
disolitude said:
zarx said:
You should try Sleeping Dogs driving around at high speed during the day. Murder on the CPU. Also Skyrim in whiterun is was pretty CPU bound with shadows on max, and Dragon Age: Origins was lol.

But yea a games designed for PC will usually GPU bound these days.

Damn it, I have none of these games nor do I want to play them lol...

Games I looked at were Mero 2033, Max Payne 3, Dirt Showdown, Mafia 2, Crysis 2, Battlefied 3, Sonic Generations and Alan Wake.

The most CPU bound game I saw was Sonic Generations lol. Was doing around 60-70 fps on 3 screens with GPUs at 60% load. Curiously CPU wasn't maxed out either so it made me wonder if it was a memory controller bottleneck or possibly bad SLI driver that was ausing it.


Straight console ports tend to be CPU bound, most likely as cyrrent consoles actually have pretty powerful CPUs compaired to their GPUs. They tend to do things like shadow rendering on the CPU where a PC focuesed game will put everything possible on the GPU. Sonic generations likely isn't scalling to all the cores properly you saw that in a lot of console ports early this gen where they would scale to 2 threads perfect but past that it will just alocate 2 threads of work over more cores so on a 4 core CPU you will get each core at arround 50-60% utilization on each core. It is pretty weired.

An example I found of the behaviour, and that game is CPU bound.

 

 I imagine the new SimCity game will be heavily CPU bound as well so there is reasons for a gamer to have a good CPU going forward. Also Sleeping Dogs is pretty good, it's set in Hong Kong.



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disolitude on 19 September 2012
famousringo said:
disolitude said:

I don't have the time or tools to measure the consistency of the frame delivery and their latency, so I have to take their results to be true.

Going over the article I can't help but feel they are making a big deal of something that really isn't that big of a deal. I personally don't see much difference on an AMD platform versus Intel in frame delivery when both are GPU bound and doing 55 fps in Crysis 2 per say.

If we take their Batman benchmark and look at AMD low and Intel mid... yes intels have less latency spikes when rendering the frames, however the difference isn't large at all.  Phenom 980 seems to deliver 10-70 ms of latency where the i5 2500k is doing 10-60ms. I don't see that being a large difference at all... It just sounds like something that only the hardcore of the hardcore would notice.



So yeah, I don't agree with their "don't bother putting AMD CPU in to gaming machine" conclusion at all.


Maybe I should have linked to their last page, which does a far better job of illustrating the point than any individual test:

Note how the 3470 outperforms every AMD processor by 25% or more and even the Sandy Bridge i7 at a very reasonable price.

Perhaps frame stuttering doesn't bother you, but personally, it drives me nuts.

Yeah, like I said...I believe them but I am not sure I see the big deal. I had FEAR 3 and Crysis 2 running side by side on 2500k and phenom 940, both with GTX 670s and capturing their frame rate. I really don't see any stuttering on the AMD platform which is unnaceptable.

But yeah, if that bothers someone, I see how they would spend the money on the best CPU. Kind of like ranbow effects on DLP projectors...

One thing I'll say about that chart is that AMD pricing is a little wonky. A lot of those AMD chips can be bought for a lot less money. Like a phenom x4 965 should perform very close to 980 and is 99 bucks usually (79 this week at Tiger Direct). Also, these are all CPU bound scenarios. You could have your i7 processor with least amount of latency but you will run in to a GPU latency and bottlenecks, or SLI/crossfire stuttering in very high end rigs and you're back at square 1.



Solid-Stark on 19 September 2012

Makes me feel good about my i3.



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vlad321 on 19 September 2012

This is of GREAT interest for everyone then. This is just the last page witht heir fancy graphs, there'2 7 before this one, in case you were wondering.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/inside-the-second-gaming-performance-with-todays-cpus/8/



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Slimebeast on 20 September 2012
pezus said:
Slimebeast said:
This is old knowledge but I am thankful you became an advocat for it. The myth of the importance of fast CPU's for gaming is still strong.

Even though the GPU is the most important, the CPU is still important as well. There are some popular games out there that are extremely CPU intensive.

Really? I would say "relatively" but not "extremely". Skyrim and Shogun 2 are relatively CPU intensive, but still much more dependant on a strong GPU.

Let's say you have a certain amount of money to spend on a CPU and GPU (it could be $200 as well as $800, it doesn't matter). There doesn't exist any popular game where you would benefit from putting half of that money in the CPU. All popular games benefit from putting most of that money into the GPU.



Slimebeast on 20 September 2012
pezus said:
Slimebeast said:
pezus said:
Slimebeast said:
This is old knowledge but I am thankful you became an advocat for it. The myth of the importance of fast CPU's for gaming is still strong.

Even though the GPU is the most important, the CPU is still important as well. There are some popular games out there that are extremely CPU intensive.

Really? I would say "relatively" but not "extremely". Skyrim and Shogun 2 are relatively CPU intensive, but still much more dependant on a strong GPU.

Let's say you have a certain amount of money to spend on a CPU and GPU (it could be $200 as well as $800, it doesn't matter). There doesn't exist any popular game where you would benefit from putting half of that money in the CPU. All popular games benefit from putting most of that money into the GPU.


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html

This is what I call extremely. That GPU cost about the same as the i5 I think at the time. I say they are extremely dependent on CPU because if you have a mid to high range GPU, your FPS is always above 60 FPS in most cases (source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-670-review,3200-7.html). So, if you don't want to go under 60 FPS, having a good CPU as well as a good GPU is your best bet. I don't see how this makes it a myth that CPUs are important for gaming...

All right, I would call that extremely too. Skyrim at 1920x1080 actually does seem to benefit from putting more money into the CPU than GPU.

But we don't know if it would be worth it to go above a Core i5-2500K and spend another $100 for a Core i7. It might give us a bigger performance increase to use those $100 and go from say a Radeon 7850 to a Radeon 7950 (or a Geforce GTX 660 to a GTX 670), especially if you want to play a graphics modded Skyrim or in higher resolutions.



Lusche on 20 September 2012

yes i7 to i5 is no difference for gaming, but i3 to i5 is a huge difference ...
I have a 1st gen i7 and the latest i3 gen and the i7 blows the i3 away, its not even funny.

and yes, spending money for gpu instead of cpu is better most of the time, as long as your cpu is not the bottleneck.

and pc gaming is not 1920x1080 anymore ... many are switching to 2560x1440 27"+ displays



disolitude on 20 September 2012
Lusche said:

yes i7 to i5 is no difference for gaming, but i3 to i5 is a huge difference ...
I have a 1st gen i7 and the latest i3 gen and the i7 blows the i3 away, its not even funny.

and yes, spending money for gpu instead of cpu is better most of the time, as long as your cpu is not the bottleneck.

and pc gaming is not 1920x1080 anymore ... many are switching to 2560x1440 27"+ displays


At 2560x1440 and a 200-300 dollar GPU and modern game on high settings, your i3 isn't going to get blown away by i7. Your GPU will struggle to keep up with the i7 or the i3 rendering so many pixels...