Can 8 Cores HURT Gaming Performance?

[Slyskel]

I got some people telling me that 8 cores won't help with most games, and that I understand. However, I got other people telling me that 8 cores won't just not help, but it'll actually make running some games worse. What's the truth here?

[Zayzo]

I got some people telling me that 8 cores won't help with most games, and that I understand. However, I got other people telling me that 8 cores won't just not help, but it'll actually make running some games worse. What's the truth here?

Depends if its intel or amd. It really doesn't matter if its intel. Performance will be nearly the same.

[Glenwing]

No, it won't directly hurt performance. What most people are referring to is that processors with more cores generally don't overclock as high as they would without the extra cores.

[eman21790]

Depends some games are very core heavy and if you have 8 cores but they are weak then it will hurt it especially for games not optimized to use more than 2 cores, etc. You won't run into this problem on Intel but maybe with AMD.

[Glenwing]

Depends if its intel or amd. It really doesn't matter if its intel. Performance will be nearly the same.

No, it doesn't depend on Intel or AMD. Having additional cores will never hurt performance if everything else is the same. The only issue is that everything else usually isn't the same in the real world; as I said, processors with more cores tend to operate at lower frequencies.

[Nena Trinity]

No it will not unless the game is shitty!

 

Good games lets you use 4 to 8 cores bad ones uses 1 or 2 cores...

[Polyvalent]

More cores will never hurt performance.  However, many games do not take advantage of 4, 6, or 8 cores.  This is why i5's with 4 cores perform similarly in games to i7's with more than 4 cores.  The extra core count would increase performance, but the increase would be so marginal that it would not justify the extra money if you were only gaming.

[theereal]

I got some people telling me that 8 cores won't help with most games, and that I understand. However, I got other people telling me that 8 cores won't just not help, but it'll actually make running some games worse. What's the truth here?

As long as its not a low frequency its ok, games tend to prefer single core performance.

[Glenwing]

Depends some games are very core heavy and if you have 8 cores but they are weak then it will hurt it especially for games not optimized to use more than 2 cores, etc. You won't run into this problem on Intel but maybe with AMD.

That's not correct; even games that only use one or two cores won't run any worse on an 8-core processor than a 2 or 4-core processor if everything else is the same.

[Zayzo]

No, it doesn't depend on Intel or AMD. Having additional cores will never hurt performance if everything else is the same. The only issue is that everything else usually isn't the same in the real world; as I said, processors with more cores tend to operate at lower frequencies.

I worded it wrong. I meant that in some games the 8 core amd cpus will perform worse than their 6 core and 4 core cousins. While with intel performance is nearly identical all the way up to the extreme edition(excluding 3-4 way gpu setups).

[Captain_Slow]

Depends if its intel or amd. It really doesn't matter if its intel. Performance will be nearly the same.

 

false.

 

more cores = lower clock speed,

 

lower clock speed = lower single core performance,

 

lower sc performance will hurt in some games

[Glenwing]

I worded it wrong. I meant that in some games the 8 core amd cpus will perform worse than their 6 core and 4 core cousins. While with intel performance is nearly identical all the way up to the extreme edition(excluding 3-4 way gpu setups).

That may be true, likely only because the frequencies are higher on the lower CPUs. If Intel had a large difference in frequencies between i3 and i5 chips you would see the same thing.

[Agent181]

All you need is a good 4 core from Intel and with amd it would be the fx 6300/8320/8350/8370 but if you're building a new system go with an i5

[Slyskel]

false.

 

more cores = lower clock speed,

 

lower clock speed = lower single core performance,

 

lower sc performance will hurt in some games

 

 

 

So then it can make a game run worse?

[Zayzo]

That may be true, likely only because the frequencies are higher on the lower CPUs. If Intel had a large difference in frequencies between i3 and i5 chips you would see the same thing.

Probably. But that's the way they are sold. And most don't overclock so that's how their performance will be compared to another who doesn't overclock and buys a different sku(talking about amd).

[Zayzo]

So then it can make a game run worse?

If you don't overclock, yes. But why would you buy an 8 core cpu for gaming? I'm going to imply that amd doesn't exist since their offerings atm are pretty ancient and no longer budget kings.

[Glenwing]

So then it can make a game run worse?

It may run worse, but it's not the extra cores that are reducing performance. It's the lower core frequency.

[Slyskel]

It may run worse, but it's not the extra cores that are reducing performance. It's the lower core frequency.

 

And there's no way to get around that issue?

[Glenwing]

And there's no way to get around that issue?

You can increase the frequency manually (i.e. overclock).

[Zayzo]

And there's no way to get around that issue?

Depends. Are you familiar with overclocking? Are you currently using amd or intel? Etcccccc........

[Slyskel]

You can increase the frequency manually (i.e. overclock).

 

I thought an 8 core CPU doesn't overclock as well as other cores.

[Hieb]

I got some people telling me that 8 cores won't help with most games, and that I understand. However, I got other people telling me that 8 cores won't just not help, but it'll actually make running some games worse. What's the truth here?

 

It shouldn't. Assuming the architecture is the same, generally you see worse performance on something like an i7-5960X versus an i7-4790K (for example) because the 4790K runs at a higher clock speed, which is more beneficial to games since they're predominantly held back by one or two threads. That's the most common reason 4790K will perform better than a 5960X (although irrelevant if you overclock the 5960X)...

However there are some cases where a game can perform worse, this is generally caused by the game not using hyper-threading correctly and scheduling inefficiently, and may in some cases put multiple threads on the same core (since one core can run two threads with HT) rather than using two separate cores.

 

This can be fixed by disabling hyper-threading. In some games you can do this with launch commands, config files, etc... and in some you have to use task manager to manually set which threads of your CPU it uses. Could also disable HT if you wanted since Intel's 6 and 8 core CPUs are plenty fast without it.

 

On the AMD side of things, an FX-8350 should always perform the same or better than an FX-4300.

[Hieb]

I thought an 8 core CPU doesn't overclock as well as other cores.

Generally not... but given enough voltage, anything is possible. You just need a lot of cooling to manage an octacore overclocked.

[Kamina]

If the game supports multi-threading up to 8 threads or more then you're ok.

 

Some games like skyrim will rely on 2 threads therefore you need a cpu with better single core performance.

[Captain_Slow]

So then it can make a game run worse?

 

possible, but on modern intel cpus with turbo boost it's usually nothing noticeable.