Understanding single thread performance

[davidmcalllister]

Hello,

 

so i'm reading this : https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html page because i want to play game like csgo that take total profit of high single thread peformance.

howeover, i don't know how theses benchmark have to be taken in consideration.

 

here my understanding :

 

- at same clock, new CPU's tends to have better single thread performance than previous generations (general statement).

- -> and this is confirmed by this benchmark site

 

but what i don't know, it's if this benchmark benchmark overclocked CPU's without mentioning it.

 

For example, I would be tempted by the I5-9600K, it's high in the list and I think, it have 6-cores which is enough for theses games, and it's recent so even recent games will have enough cores to run (except some specialized games that really make profit of Multi-Cores, i mean from my world, 6 cores is still a lot of cores.. you can say yeah in the future developers will try to get advantage of a maximum of cores etc.. because we reached the single thread efficiency limit, but i mean, for me, in my world, correct me if i'm wrong, still most games even the last ones will not really get advantage of 8, 10 cores VS 6 cores that is enough).

 

I know silicon lottery tend to favorite I7, i9, because of intel. But i'm also thinking, because I want to make a stable full time overclock on my new CPU, it's better to overclock 6 cores than.. 8, 10 cores. For obvious thermal reasons.

 

So i'm a bit lost. I don't know if I should follow the number of cpubenchmark single thread performance, and I don't know if overclocking the CPU stable and full time will greatly increase that score (even to the point of an I5 overclocked stable will have same single thread performance than i9 not overclocked?). 

 

And yes, on a partial note, I don't know if I could regreat having bought an I5 instead of I7, i9 .. in some years. As I said to my understanding they increased the cores count on all their lineup because of AMD mainly so now an I5 is basically an I7 and etc.. And this is good for video rendering or other tasks but even new games don't need so much cores.. 

 

 

[DocSwag]

Honestly if you're playing just CS:GO it doesn't really matter. The difference would be like 400 fps vs 500 fps...

[Fasauceome]

Another thing to consider is that they ship i7s with higher clocks, so it's not just silicon lottery but also higher performance out of the box. However, it's certainly comparable to an overclocked, lesser core/thread count CPU of the same generation, or indeed one of the previous (like c'mon, the 8700k isn't really all that much better than the 7700k in gaming). So if you're looking for high framerates in a modern game, you can rest assured that a modern processor will do the job. Ryzen can all overclock, and they aren't too shabby with performance, and Intel are just good at gaming, just don't get a quad core. They're basically useless.

[APasz]

Passmark crowdsources the data and there isn't really any way to fudge the numbers. Userbenchmark also does this but also has overclocked benches.

An overclocked 96 will beat a 99 at stock and be comparable when both are overclocked.

Generally speaking games tend to only use 4 threads. Some use more and some use less.

If you're doing video rendering, more cores is better.

[aezakmi]

36 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Honestly if you're playing just CS:GO it doesn't really matter. The difference would be like 400 fps vs 500 fps...

 

500 fps on a 60Hz screen

[davidmcalllister]

50 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Honestly if you're playing just CS:GO it doesn't really matter. The difference would be like 400 fps vs 500 fps...

I aim at 240fps stable even in worst scenarios. this is really difficult to achieve even with recent CPU/GPU.

 

because sometimes you always have drop below 240fps. using 240hz monitor to pair with. 

 

Quote

22 minutes ago, APasz said:

Passmark crowdsources the data and there isn't really any way to fudge the numbers. Userbenchmark also does this but also has overclocked benches.

An overclocked 96 will beat a 99 at stock and be comparable when both are overclocked.

Generally speaking games tend to only use 4 threads. Some use more and some use less.

 

 Ok so I guess i'm perfectly safe buying an I5 9th generation K and overclock it with a good watercooling solution? i don't do video rendering. and if i do in the future, i think i can wait the couple minutes over an i7. I prefer put money on gpu etc. 

 

 

---

 

thanks for answering. even if a precise "single thread performance" understanding would still be nice. 

[APasz]

It's how many instructions a single core can process per cycle.

Haswell onward CPU's can theoretically do 32 instructions per cycle and these benchmarks test how many it can actually do.

[davidmcalllister]

2 hours ago, APasz said:

It's how many instructions a single core can process per cycle.

Haswell onward CPU's can theoretically do 32 instructions per cycle and these benchmarks test how many it can actually do.

ok thanks. what CPU have the highest "instruction per cycle" so? 

[DocSwag]

4 hours ago, davidmcalllister said:

I aim at 240fps stable even in worst scenarios. this is really difficult to achieve even with recent CPU/GPU.

 

because sometimes you always have drop below 240fps. using 240hz monitor to pair with.

Are you sure about that? A quick search tells me people have no problems running csgo at 400-500 fps with an 8600k or 9600k. I doubt it would drop below 240 tbh... CS:GO only uses 3 cores anyways so there's little reason to go above a 9600k

[APasz]

12 hours ago, davidmcalllister said:

ok thanks. what CPU have the highest "instruction per cycle" so? 

Currently the 9900K has the highest in the consumer market. The 9700K, 8086K, and 8700K follow close behind.

 

Just to further explain.

The scores given in benchmarks is a representation of the IPC of a chip. As to how exactly the number actually relates to IPC will depend on the programmer who wrote the test.

For example, the Passmark score of 2897 for the 9900K could mean, that the 9900K was able to run through the IPC test 2,897 times.

Or it could be the IPC count divided by 5m. Or something else entirely.