Quad-Core Gaming Roundup: How Much CPU Do You Really Need?

I like that this was brought into the conclusion,

Going forward the budget CPU/GPU landscape might look much different once games are commonly running on DirectX 12, as the Mantle results here provided plenty of evidence that game performance can be dramatically better with lower system overhead. There will soon be a new version of Windows, a new standard graphics API, and hopefully a lot of great things for us PC gamers in the year ahead. I'm excited to revisit this subject matter again to find out what's changed. Untimately it's all about having fun playing games on the one platform that offers total control over the hardware experience, but half the fun of PC gaming is building up the system (for me, anyway). I hope this article helped answer at least some questions, even if it may have left so many more unanswered.
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It is going to be interesting indeed. Personally I would like to see where the current APU series will be sitting with DX12 (and Vulkan), especially the AMD A10 chips. I only hope to see positives as Multiadapter may turn out to be a serious gimmick.
 
Fulcrum29 said:
Which illustrates zero conclusiveness.
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Of course it does, I don't want to know why I need 1 or 12 cores. All I want to know is yes I need a multi core cpu or no I don't.

Easy plain and simple and Chevrons response was exactly what I wanted.
 
The i7 would of shown drastic improvement on the high end SLI rigs.
But for a 3rd or 4th gen i5 including the i5 2500k is the most you'll ever need to go for a card like a GTX980 as example.

That's how far you need to push it to see the i7 making a difference.
 
Chevron said:
Just states what we've known for a while.

1. You don't need a monster CPU to game.
2. GFX card makes a bigger difference than CPU.
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You know that & I know that, it's still a good article though as it contains a lot of data. Others might find it interesting, I did not have you in mind when I posted this.

I would have liked it if he compared a 4670 to the i7 as the clock speeds would have been the same and we've seen in the past that the i5 has a slight advantage over the i7 in some gaming due to the hyper threading.
 
Chevron said:
Why the wink?

Just states what we've known for a while.

1. You don't need a monster CPU to game.
2. GFX card makes a bigger difference than CPU.
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My friend has a I5 4970k CPU, I have a I5 2500k both at stock, we both have a 970 mine is evga his is msi. why does he get more FPS than me on the same game with same settings at the same place?

He thinks its a CPU bottleneck.
 
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Rickster said:
He thinks its a CPU bottleneck.
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That's easy to check but probably not the issue, run msi afterburner and configure your onscreen stats for cpu & gpu. While gaming your gpu should be running at 99-100% utilisation while your cpu would not be maxing out at all. If your gpu is running at below 99% utilisation and your cpu is running at very high utilisation then that would indicate a bottleneck.

EDIT: It also depends on the game, a game like arma would run much better on your mates system than yours as it's more cpu bound. When comparing games makes sure all the drivers, ingame settings, gpu clocks are identicle else your comparison is worth jack.
 
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ponder said:
That's easy to check but probably not the issue, run msi afterburner and configure your onscreen stats for cpu & gpu. While gaming your gpu should be running at 99-100% utilisation while your cpu would not be maxing out at all. If your gpu is running at below 99% utilisation and your cpu is running at very high utilisation then that would indicate a bottleneck.

EDIT: It also depends on the game, a game like arma would run much better on your mates system than yours as it's more cpu bound. When comparing games makes sure all the drivers, ingame settings, gpu clocks are identicle else your comparison is worth jack.
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Furmark

f473a28fde.png
 
That gpu seems to be running hot, sure it's not being downclocked while you game?
 
Rickster said:
My friend has a I5 4970k CPU, I have a I5 2500k both at stock, we both have a 970 mine is evga his is msi. why does he get more FPS than me on the same game with same settings at the same place?

He thinks its a CPU bottleneck.
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It doesn't mean that CPU makes 0 difference, just smaller difference than GFX card.
 
ponder said:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Systems/Quad-Core-Gaming-Roundup-How-Much-CPU-Do-You-Really-Need

Very good article ;)
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"3 games" tested == very good. really. lol.

Lets be kapitan obvious:
Unless game is written to abuse multi core you can stick lord satan in there with 666 cores and you will get core 1x results.
Unless the game is written to actually use your cpu, you can stick whatever cpu in there and same result.
and same for any other aspect of the game

But I'll throw in a spoon:
quake4-smp
 
Relevant video:

[video=youtube;PVl8Eupbr_E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVl8Eupbr_E[/video]
 
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