Ideal CPU for gaming.

[Islam Ghunym]

I wanna know what are the CPU specifications that I should look at for good gaming performance.

 

I know that games usually needs 4 cores and a very few (nearly none) get the benefit of 6 cores.

 

I also look at the single core cinebench because I think it can describe how good the processor in gaming.

 

does hyperthreading affect gaming performance if there was nearly no application working in the background

 

does the boost speed also matters, the cpu cach depnding on lvl 1,2,3

 

I just want to know what are the important specofications for gaming.

 

I have core I3-8100 processor which got about 167 cinebinch of single core with the processor being 4 cores, but core i7-8700 has about 214 cinebech core of single core which is not really much higher than the I3-8100 but core i7 handles games much better and gives much higher frame rates so why?

 

I have even some very realised frame droping in metro 2033 games, droping is from 90 frames to a stutter 0 frames for less than 200 ms as my eyes catched and FPS counter does not count this stuttering.

 

this stuttering is very annoying for gaming experience and I feel that my core i3 8100 sometimes bottleneck my gtx 1060 while core i7-8700 can perfectly handle the RTX 2080 Ti but why? what makes it especial for gaming

 

if there is anything not correct please correct it for me, thx

 

[Jurrunio]

4 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

a very few (nearly none) get the benefit of 6 cores.

outdated, now it's more like 8 cores that face the problem.

 

4 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

does hyperthreading affect gaming performance if there was nearly no application working in the background

yes, about 30% more multicore performance

 

6 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

does the boost speed also matters

depends on whether the CPU is overclockable

 

6 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

the cpu cach depnding on lvl 1,2,3

the last thing to consider, after everything else

 

6 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

I have core I3-8100 processor which got about 167 cinebinch of single core with the processor being 4 cores, but core i7-8700 has about 214 cinebech core of single core which is not really much higher than the I3-8100

According to your wrong data that's a 28% gain, yet it's "Not much higher"...

Realistically the 8700 does 19% better single core

 

9 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

but core i7 handles games much better and gives much higher frame rates so why?

More cores and HT

 

9 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

I have even some very realised frame droping in metro 2033 games, droping is from 90 frames to a stutter 0 frames for less than 200 ms as my eyes catched and FPS counter does not count this stuttering.

Could be RAM, apart from the much lower core and thread count

 

10 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

while core i7-8700 can perfectly handle the RTX 2080 Ti but why?

I hope no one said that for 1080p

[.Apex.]

@Islam Ghunym

Games use more than 4 cores, for example comparing the 7700k (4 cores) and 8700K (6 cores) at the same frequency, and the 8700K wins everytime, and when comparing the 8700K (6 cores) with the 9900K (8 cores) at the same frequency, the 9900K wins most of the time, so that means games support between 6-8 cores these days.

 

also your i3-8100 is 4 core 4 threads, meaning it does not support hyperthreading, while all the other CPU's i mentioned have hyperthreading.

 

hyperthreading plays a big part in performance, but some games don't utilize it very well.

[Guest]

I would say an i5 … pref 8th gen 

[Islam Ghunym]

2 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

outdated, now it's more like 8 cores that face the problem.

 

yes, about 30% more multicore performance

 

depends on whether the CPU is overclockable

 

the last thing to consider, after everything else

 

According to your wrong data that's a 28% gain, yet it's "Not much higher"...

Realistically the 8700 does 19% better single core

 

More cores and HT

 

Could be RAM, apart from the much lower core and thread count

 

I hope no one said that for 1080p

this guy made this video 

and it shows that I need only 4 cores for games  and does multicore cinebench matters in games, according to my data it does not! and I meant by the (boost clock)

is this: does the higher clock give better performance so if I want to buy a processor, do I need to look on the single core cinebench or the clock speed first.

 

some guys also made some videos showing that how much their CPU's is being used while gaming.

the i7-8700 has been shown being used about 40% maximum while the i3-8100 has been seen being used always 100% on GTX 1080 Ti so that why I am asking, it seemed to me better 3 times more sonce linus also showed us that the i7-8700 did not made a bottleneck on the TITAN x while i feel that my CPU is bottlenecking my GPU.

 

in some games like for honor the game relay much on the gpu and it pulls about 7 GB from my memory while it does not need much of processing, but the game is very smooth at 70 FPS on my GTX 1060 so the ram seems fine while metro 2033 does not uses much of ram as for honor so I don't think that my ram is msking a bottleneck

 

please correct me if I am wrong I am just trying to understand things correctly.

 

thx.

 

[Mick Naughty]

Depends on the games and resolution. Then what you consider good gameplay and frames rates. 

 

An 8700 would not be perfect with a 2080ti with the games I play. Even at 1440. 

[Islam Ghunym]

On 12/15/2018 at 9:33 AM, syn2112 said:

@Islam Ghunym

Games use more than 4 cores, for example comparing the 7700k (4 cores) and 8700K (6 cores) at the same frequency, and the 8700K wins everytime, and when comparing the 8700K (6 cores) with the 9900K (8 cores) at the same frequency, the 9900K wins most of the time, so that means games support between 6-8 cores these days.

 

also your i3-8100 is 4 core 4 threads, meaning it does not support hyperthreading, while all the other CPU's i mentioned have hyperthreading.

 

hyperthreading plays a big part in performance, but some games don't utilize it very well.

games don't really use hyperthreading as far as I know even if so the differnce will be very minimal that is why many gaming rigs built on I5 rather than I7 and the video above shows the differnce between the processor being more than 4 cores which is very minimal, so what do you think?

 

On 12/15/2018 at 12:27 PM, Mick Naughty said:

Depends on the games and resolution. Then what you consider good gameplay and frames rates. 

 

An 8700 would not be perfect with a 2080ti with the games I play. Even at 1440. 

metro 2033 is not really that game which I play only on 1080p and it is the oldest version so it relays on the cpu more than the gpu, I thought about the drivers of audio and video, but non fixed, I tried nearly every solution, I am just not happy with the i3-8100.

they said it has a slightly better performance than the i5-7400, they said it is a great deal, they said the i7-8700 will cost 3 times more while it gives only 30% more performance and because I have the GTX 1060 only I bought the I3-8100 thinking it won't bottleneck my GPU and I did not get what I paid for.

 

I started not belive about the LGA1151 CPUs

[Mick Naughty]

3 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

that is the point... metro 2033 is not really that game which I play only on 1080p and it is the oldest version so it relays on the cpu more than the gpu, I thought about the drivers of audio and video, but non fixed, I tried nearly every solution, I am just not happy with the i3-8100.

they said it has a slightly better performance than the i5-7400, they said it is a great deal, they said the i7-8700 will cost 3 times more while it gives only 30% more performance and because I have the GTX 1060 only I bought the I3-8100 thinking it won't bottleneck my GPU and I did not get what I paid for.

Which is why I go with the best I can, so when I look back I can’t say I wish i got this or that. That premium is worth it to me and I don’t upgrade often so that makes it even more worth while. I build a new rig just to play one game on 1080p. 

[RogueLizard]

3 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

outdated, now it's more like 8 cores that face the problem.

actually, that is false. GamersNexus even tested this, quad cores still reign supreme for all around gaming performance.

 

3 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

yes, about 30% more multicore performance

Also wrong. It's more like 25% per thread on Intel, a dual core with hypethreading will have an "additional" half-core's worth of performance, a quad core gets a "whole extra core", and a 6-core will have "7.5 cores total". This does NOT scale with IPC and is an architectural limitation on Intel chips.

 

3 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

depends on whether the CPU is overclockable

Another bad answer.

Turbo boost has multiple levels per core. Most higher end CPUs have smaller boosts due to thermal ceilings, and i3s and i5s typically have a higher overall boost clock.

 

3 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

the last thing to consider, after everything else

The CPU instruction cache is where instructions are stored until the CPU can execute them. The cache is only a bottleneck in applications that use the entire CPU as the cache does not fill as fast.

 

3 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Could be RAM, apart from the much lower core and thread count

Passmark, Cinebench, and CPU-Z benchmarks are EXTREMELY sensitive to memory speed. On 1600mhz DDR3 my Xeon scores under 16,000 points in passmark, however when OC'd to 2400Mhz and with the CAS latency dropped from CL11 to CL9 my score jumps to 17,000 and above. It's a similar story with Cinebench and CPUZ.

 

3 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

I hope no one said that for 1080p

For 1080p, an i5 8600 and GTX 1060 6gb. For 1440p, GTX 1070 (Ti) and an unlocked i7 of Ivy Bridge or newer. My 4790K destroyed 1440p with its 1070 when I had that combo.

 

23 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

games don't really use hyperthreading as far as I know

Wrong. Some games benefit from it, some Bethesda titles, GTA 5, etc. When games/CPU intensive tasks run, Windows allocates less important tasks to the lesser used threads.

 

 

[Islam Ghunym]

41 minutes ago, RogueLizard said:

actually, that is false. GamersNexus even tested this, quad cores still reign supreme for all around gaming performance.

 

Also wrong. It's more like 25% per thread on Intel, a dual core with hypethreading will have an "additional" half-core's worth of performance, a quad core gets a "whole extra core", and a 6-core will have "7.5 cores total". This does NOT scale with IPC and is an architectural limitation on Intel chips.

 

Another bad answer.

Turbo boost has multiple levels per core. Most higher end CPUs have smaller boosts due to thermal ceilings, and i3s and i5s typically have a higher overall boost clock.

 

The CPU instruction cache is where instructions are stored until the CPU can execute them. The cache is only a bottleneck in applications that use the entire CPU as the cache does not fill as fast.

 

Passmark, Cinebench, and CPU-Z benchmarks are EXTREMELY sensitive to memory speed. On 1600mhz DDR3 my Xeon scores under 16,000 points in passmark, however when OC'd to 2400Mhz and with the CAS latency dropped from CL11 to CL9 my score jumps to 17,000 and above. It's a similar story with Cinebench and CPUZ.

 

For 1080p, an i5 8600 and GTX 1060 6gb. For 1440p, GTX 1070 (Ti) and an unlocked i7 of Ivy Bridge or newer. My 4790K destroyed 1440p with its 1070 when I had that combo.

 

Wrong. Some games benefit from it, some Bethesda titles, GTA 5, etc. When games/CPU intensive tasks run, Windows allocates less important tasks to the lesser used threads.

 

 

so if I am willing to buy a cpu for cpu intensive games, what the specs that I should consider for best performance.

 

I usually look at if the cpu has 4 cores or more then I look at the avg single core cinebech and ignore the multicore cinebench so is that enough?

 

according to your information i7-8700 should have 156% higher performance in gaming since the single cinebench is 25% higher and hyperthreading will give an extra core for the 4 used cors in games resulting in 25% more higher speed so we have 156% higher performance in games with even more performance in games that uses 6 cores

Edited December 15, 2018 by Islam Ghunym

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

so if I am willing to buy a cpu for cpu intensive games, what the specs that I should consider for best performance.

That's an easy answer... Shooters/ open world games … just go with the i5 … strategy games you can even play on i3's for now.. unless your planning on jumping in on the VR hype you might want to consider something like the i9 9900k with a baseline speed of 3,5 ghz <---- this is important \\ and a top of 5 ghz 
cinebench and other benches give you zero information about how games actually work and react.... Its a bunch of theoretics that are ment to describe a game average experience while no company at all will sell you a card that will not fit into its tier... low tier .. medium tier .. high tier  and don't forget about custom settings.. there is so much more involved as saying look this card produces the highest fps so its best suited for gaming as is with the cpu.. ofcourse there are times you want that i9 for that super-duper simulation your involved in but for the most of the time... Its almost the same as with cars.... If you drive far and wide, spend many hours in your car seat its better for your health to not buy something like a Toyota Aygo if you catch my drift here ;) 
 

[RogueLizard]

9 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

so if I am willing to buy a cpu for cpu intensive games, what the specs that I should consider for best performance.

 

I usually look at if the cpu has 4 cores or more then I look at the avg single core cinebech and ignore the multicore cinebench so is that enough?

Personally, I'd recommend something a couple generations older. 

 

If you are seriously considering my opinion, here are my top picks (K series CPUs are unlocked for overclocking, look for the non-K versions if you don't plan on overclocking):

 

No hyperthreading:

 

i5 7600K

 

i3 8350K

 

i5 6600K

 

i5 4690K

 

i3 8300

 

hyperthreading:

 

i7 4790K

 

i7 6700K

 

i7 7700K

[Islam Ghunym]

1 minute ago, RogueLizard said:

Personally, I'd recommend something a couple generations older. 

 

If you are seriously considering my opinion, here are my top picks (K series CPUs are unlocked for overclocking, look for the non-K versions if you don't plan on overclocking):

 

No hyperthreading:

 

i5 7600K

 

i3 8350K

 

i5 6600K

 

i5 4690K

 

i3 8300

 

hyperthreading:

 

i7 4790K

 

i7 6700K

 

i7 7700K

I apperciate your help but I wanna know why you chose those processors which really answer my main question about what I should look at what in specs of the processor to determine if it will be good for games or not, I want to know if the processor that I am picking will bottleneck my GPU or not in these times and in the future so it doesn't matter the name of the CPUs or the GPUs

[Islam Ghunym]

8 minutes ago, Christiaan21-03 said:

That's an easy answer... Shooters/ open world games … just go with the i5 … strategy games you can even play on i3's for now.. unless your planning on jumping in on the VR hype you might want to consider something like the i9 9900k with a baseline speed of 3,5 ghz <---- this is important \\ and a top of 5 ghz 
cinebench and other benches give you zero information about how games actually work and react.... Its a bunch of theoretics that are ment to describe a game average experience while no company at all will sell you a card that will not fit into its tier... low tier .. medium tier .. high tier  and don't forget about custom settings.. there is so much more involved as saying look this card produces the highest fps so its best suited for gaming as is with the cpu.. ofcourse there are times you want that i9 for that super-duper simulation your involved in but for the most of the time... Its almost the same as with cars.... If you drive far and wide, spend many hours in your car seat its better for your health to not buy something like a Toyota Aygo if you catch my drift here
 

thx really but I want some information about how to pick the right processor, I mean what are the main specs in the processors that affect gaming experience, I know that all CPU specs are needed to be higher for better performance but there is always priorities for everything which what will answer my main question really.

thx.

[RogueLizard]

22 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

thx really but I want some information about how to pick the right processor, I mean what are the main specs in the processors that affect gaming experience, I know that all CPU specs are needed to be higher for better performance but there is always priorities for everything which what will answer my main question really.

thx.

cores and clock speed. Clock speed has a bigger effect on gaming. There are small increases in the amount of instructions a CPU can execute per clock with every generation.

 

Get an i5 8600K. Problem solved.

[Guest]

33 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

thx really but I want some information about how to pick the right processor, I mean what are the main specs in the processors that affect gaming experience, I know that all CPU specs are needed to be higher for better performance but there is always priorities for everything which what will answer my main question really.

thx.

That entirely depends on you as the user. How much income do you have? how many hours of usage do you expect on a daily basis.. is power of no concern.. do you value gaming in 4k? What do you expect more from your p.c next to gaming? How proficient do you want to be? e.g. looking up articles expanding your knowledge in online databases. 

The simple answer is again. There is no shit on the market atm.... Only a bunch of spoiled whining kids who are afraid, as always, to not be part of the herd  
So again... if your planning on using the cpu a lot you want to take notion of the core amount. If you look at gaming look at Intel if you look at graphic design look at AMD.
Everything over 6 cores on the intel side can already be as designated for the pro market ( amd works different ) 

 

[RogueLizard]

30 minutes ago, Christiaan21-03 said:

Everything over 6 cores on the intel side can already be as designated for the pro market ( amd works different ) 

 

can confirm, am running 6-core Xeon and ECC memory. Although I have my Xeon overclocked up the anus and same with my RAM

[Jurrunio]

3 hours ago, Islam Ghunym said:

this guy made this video 

and it shows that I need only 4 cores for games  and does multicore cinebench matters in games, according to my data it does not! and I meant by the (boost clock)

is this: does the higher clock give better performance so if I want to buy a processor, do I need to look on the single core cinebench or the clock speed first.

Clock speed definitely matter for gaming, but too few cores for high frequency is equally stupid (look at 7350k reviews). Also no one should buy a CPU just for today, but also for the future (at least 3 years down the road). My rule is to get 6 cores (you already have 4 so makes 0 sense to get another quad core even if you can overclock that). My rule is to get 6 cores first, then move on.

 

3 hours ago, Islam Ghunym said:

some guys also made some videos showing that how much their CPU's is being used while gaming.

the i7-8700 has been shown being used about 40% maximum while the i3-8100 has been seen being used always 100% on GTX 1080 Ti so that why I am asking, it seemed to me better 3 times more sonce linus also showed us that the i7-8700 did not made a bottleneck on the TITAN x while i feel that my CPU is bottlenecking my GPU.

So an 8100 with 100% usage is better than 8700 at 40% usage? That's what you mean? I hope not.

 

3 hours ago, Islam Ghunym said:

in some games like for honor the game relay much on the gpu and it pulls about 7 GB from my memory while it does not need much of processing, but the game is very smooth at 70 FPS on my GTX 1060 so the ram seems fine while metro 2033 does not uses much of ram as for honor so I don't think that my ram is msking a bottleneck

It could also be something to do with memory latency, that's how Ryzen gets affected by memory so much.  On Intel the effect is usually less noticeable, but games like Assassin's Creed Origins / Odyssey still care a lot.

 

3 hours ago, Islam Ghunym said:

games don't really use hyperthreading as far as I know even if so the differnce will be very minimal that is why many gaming rigs built on I5 rather than I7 and the video above shows the differnce between the processor being more than 4 cores which is very minimal, so what do you think?

My 2600k can clock another 200MHz higher if I turn HT off, but I still get worse performance. I can say that HT definitely helps, just to "how much".

[Jurrunio]

3 hours ago, RogueLizard said:

actually, that is false. GamersNexus even tested this, quad cores still reign supreme for all around gaming performance.

Now, calling quad cores the minimum for gaming or best value of gaming are fine, but quad core reigns supreme is wrong as long as 8700k beats 7700k (which it does, by 10% or so in CPU heavy games)

 

3 hours ago, RogueLizard said:

Also wrong. It's more like 25% per thread on Intel, a dual core with hypethreading will have an "additional" half-core's worth of performance, a quad core gets a "whole extra core", and a 6-core will have "7.5 cores total". This does NOT scale with IPC and is an architectural limitation on Intel chips.

Go check R15 scores for 5GHz 8600k and 8700k, from what I find the i5 score just below 1200cb while 8700k does more than 1600cb. That's already a 33% increase

 

3 hours ago, RogueLizard said:

Another bad answer.

Turbo boost has multiple levels per core. Most higher end CPUs have smaller boosts due to thermal ceilings, and i3s and i5s typically have a higher overall boost clock.

my answer of "depends on whether it's overclockable" means turbo boost doesnt matter when the CPU can be overclocked through the multiplier manually, but matters when it cannot. i3s don't even have turbo boost.

 

3 hours ago, RogueLizard said:

For 1080p, an i5 8600 and GTX 1060 6gb.

Just get a quad core, as you recommended

[RogueLizard]

12 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

long as 8700k beats 7700k (which it does, by 10% or so in CPU heavy games)

In CPU heavy games, yes, due to the 8700Ks extra cores. But games like Skyrim SE? those cores sit and do nothing and your money is wasted

 

12 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Just get a quad core, as you recommended

Oh yeah but what about how you just said a hex core would be better? You're posting conflicting information.

 

High end quad cores like the 3770K, 4770/90K, 6700K, and so on are all great for gaming because they can hit those high 4GHz+ clocks. Lowwer end that are stuck in the mid to low 3Ghz range are not. The i5 8400 has a baseclock of 2.8GHz.

12 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Go check R15 scores for 5GHz 8600k and 8700k, from what I find the i5 score just below 1200cb while 8700k does more than 1600cb. That's already a 33% increase

i5 doesn't have hyperthreading and  the i7 has 6 cores. The multithread ratio says everything. For hexcores it's usually around 7.5x

[jones177]

The answer is simple to me.

I run 2 gaming computers.

Usually they are a generation apart since one usually uses parts that were replaced by upgrades on the other computer.

Not now.

At the beginning of the year I upgraded my i7 2600k(4 core) computer with a i7 8700k(6 core). My games ran so much smoother on it that I didn't want to even play on my main i7 6700k(4 core) computer. A few months later I upgraded the i7 6700k to a i7 8086k.

 

I was happy with the performance of the i7 6700k before i got the i7 8700k. Just like I was happy with a 1080 monitor before I got a 4k monitor or when one of my computers had a SSD and the other one didn't.  As far as I am concerned high IPC 6 core + CPUs are a game changer. 

 

 

[Guest]

yep.. its starts with the cpu and ends with upgrading everything on your system to atleast the same price range... cpu 400 euro's .. do yourself a favour and buy an appropiate motherboard.. don't forget about the cooling and hey.. lets not be shabby on the cables department either still with the way things are progressing it won't be long if integrated cpu/gpu's will be real deal for normal day consumers

[Jurrunio]

7 hours ago, RogueLizard said:

In CPU heavy games, yes, due to the 8700Ks extra cores. But games like Skyrim SE? those cores sit and do nothing and your money is wasted

If you only play games with low CPU core count requirements like Skyrim and CSGO then you could get away with much weaker CPUs, but don't whine if new games overwhelm your quad core

 

7 hours ago, RogueLizard said:

Oh yeah but what about how you just said a hex core would be better? You're posting conflicting information.

I'm mocking you, so strongly tied to quad cores, yet recommending a hex core (8600) with a merely mid range GPU (1060 6gb) for 1080p. CPU heavy games are almost always heavy on the GPU as well, so that's still a crappy combo

 

7 hours ago, RogueLizard said:

High end quad cores like the 3770K, 4770/90K, 6700K, and so on are all great for gaming because they can hit those high 4GHz+ clocks. Lowwer end that are stuck in the mid to low 3Ghz range are not. The i5 8400 has a baseclock of 2.8GHz.

Those CPUs hit 4GHz+ because they are unlocked, comparing them to a locked i5-8400 is not fair. Also the 8400's max all core turbo frequency is 3.8GHz, so not far from 4GHz either.

 

7 hours ago, RogueLizard said:

i5 doesn't have hyperthreading and  the i7 has 6 cores. The multithread ratio says everything. For hexcores it's usually around 7.5x

So how can you explain the score not matching up with whatever multithread ratio you put up in the air? 8600k and 8700k only differ by having HT or not, when frequency is matched they should represent not having HT and having HT's difference.

[RogueLizard]

2 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

So how can you explain the score not matching up with whatever multithread ratio you put up in the air?

memory frequency. I already told you that Cinebench is memory frequency and bandwidth sensitive

[Jurrunio]

2 minutes ago, RogueLizard said:

memory frequency. I already told you that Cinebench is memory frequency and bandwidth sensitive

Nope, video I've seen run them at the same memory settings