Best CPU for Cities Skyline

[L2theb]

Hi Guys,

 

I want to upgrade my PC in the near future and I like to know what properties of a new CPU I should look for.

Cities Skyline is a high CPU and RAM demanding game. I would love to build cities bigger than 100k residents. This is about the mark my current PC reaches its limit and the game becomes unplayable.
Can you guys estimate, what is more imprtant for this task? Clock speed, quantity of cores or something else?

 

Thanks!

[Crunchy Dragon]

I'd put my money on core count for CPU-intensive games.

 

Probably shoot for a Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 depending on your budget.

[NelizMastr]

IPC seems to matter greatly in Cities. I've tested this in the past on 2x Xeon E5462, i7-4960X and 5GHz i5-2500K. It ran the best by far on the i5. That was a few years back though. Based on my experience, I'd jump for a 9600K probably, although for longevity's sake, the 8700K or 9700K would be better bets. 

 

I'll have to try on my R7 2700X. Haven't played cities in like forever.

 

 

[ThatBlockishWay]

2 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I'd put my money on core count for CPU-intensive games.

 

Probably shoot for a Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 depending on your budget.

Lemme check but I wanna say city skylines is more freq dependent, I vaguely remember it using only like 2 cores...

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, ThatBlockishWay said:

Lemme check but I wanna say city skylines is more freq dependent, I vaguely remember it using only like 2 cores...

Usually the more cores you have, the better CPU intensive games will run.

 

They Are Billions is CPU-intensive, my laptop has a 2.4Ghz hyperthreaded dual core and struggles a bit in the bigger waves, but my Ryzen 5 1600 in my desktop does just fine, chugs straight through everything without a problem.

[LukeNukem9]

I would go with a Ryzen 5. Good mix of core, clock speed and price.

[ThatBlockishWay]

 

 

level 1

co_damsku

 

Programmer at Colossal Order - Cities Skylines215 points·3 years ago·edited 3 years ago

 

The game is best optimized for a 4 cores CPU (being the most mainstream and quite fitted to our simulation needs), we have the main thread, audio, pathfinding, simulation & water flow. Unity does under the hood also use threads quite heavily (main and rendering) and we do use some extra worker thread during the loading/saving process, so 8 cores should yield a noticeable performance improvement but it will not be in the 2x faster figures.

It looks like City skylines is a quad core game, so freq would prob help more

Edit: think my link sucked, dunno why it went somewhere else

[Ithanul]

Cities likes high IPC, high freq, and more cores.

It one of the few games I'm aware that really benefits from all three.

 

Though, it mostly optimized for four cores, but it will use past four if avaiable.

Biggiest deal, no matter how good the CPU, once the city gets really big, the FPS will tank.

[Jurrunio]

I remember this game using 3-4 cores, at current prices the 9600k is the best deal

[NelizMastr]

4 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Usually the more cores you have, the better CPU intensive games will run.

 

They Are Billions is CPU-intensive, my laptop has a 2.4Ghz hyperthreaded dual core and struggles a bit in the bigger waves, but my Ryzen 5 1600 in my desktop does just fine, chugs straight through everything without a problem.

Yeah, but your 2.4Ghz dual core is slower than your 1600 at baseclock or turbo so that doesn't really seem a valid comparison. 

 

Also, like I mentioned I tested a dual Xeon, single i7 hex core 4960X and quad core i5 2500K at 5GHz and the i5 was by far the fastest.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, NelizMastr said:

Also, like I mentioned I tested a dual Xeon, single i7 hex core 4960X and quad core i5 2500K at 5GHz and the i5 was by far the fastest.

Well that kind of stands to reason, the i5 was at 5Ghz.

If they were all at stock speeds, then I'd imagine it would be a bit of a draw between the two Xeons and the 4960X.

 

I'd still shoot for Ryzen 5 though, as they are basically the best value chips on the market currently. Excellent balance of price and performance.

 

I do realize it's not a direct comparison, but I will probably send you a message when I get around to testing my 1600 at 2.4Ghz.

[LukeNukem9]

Beam.NG Drive is a very CPU intensive game since its real simulation. Core count benefits most here.

[ThatBlockishWay]

15 minutes ago, L2theb said:

Hi Guys,

 

I want to upgrade my PC in the near future and I like to know what properties of a new CPU I should look for.

Cities Skyline is a high CPU and RAM demanding game. I would love to build cities bigger than 100k residents. This is about the mark my current PC reaches its limit and the game becomes unplayable.
Can you guys estimate, what is more imprtant for this task? Clock speed, quantity of cores or something else?

 

Thanks!

What motherboard socket/chipset are you on and what's your budget? if youre already on AM4/LGA 1151 theres not much point for switching sockets just for a little bit more preformance (they're both solid sockets), otherwise it may be different

[L2theb]

Thank you so much so far!

 

Currently I have a i5 4690K.

If necessary, I am willing to get a new motherboard.

[ThatBlockishWay]

2 minutes ago, L2theb said:

Thank you so much so far!

 

Currently I have a i5 4690K.

If necessary, I am willing to get a new motherboard.

Are you just trying to get better performance or generally trying to upgrade? You can prob oc abit and be fine for a bit

[NelizMastr]

5 minutes ago, L2theb said:

Thank you so much so far!

 

Currently I have a i5 4690K.

If necessary, I am willing to get a new motherboard.

If you have a Z87 or Z97 board, just apply an overclock. 4.3-4.5GHz should be doable if you have at least a tiny bit of luck.

[NunoLava1998]

Cities Skylines? As someone who plays that, I'd recommend getting four 2000$ server CPUs, 1.5TB of RAM and 12 2080 Ti's and you might be able to run 2 mods at once.

[NelizMastr]

8 minutes ago, NunoLava1998 said:

Cities Skylines? As someone who plays that, I'd recommend getting four 2000$ server CPUs, 1.5TB of RAM and 12 2080 Ti's and you might be able to run 2 mods at once.

Scrub. 4 Xeon platinum 8180s will smoke that. Only 40 grand for those alone. Peanuts.

[NunoLava1998]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

Scrub. 4 Xeon platinum 8180s will smoke that. Only 40 grand for those alone. Peanuts.

Those might be able to run THREE mods, but it probably won't go beyond 10fps, and you'd have to add in 12 more 2080 Ti's and 4TB more RAM.

[NelizMastr]

1 minute ago, NunoLava1998 said:

Those might be able to run THREE mods, but it probably won't go beyond 10fps, and you'd have to add in 12 more 2080 Ti's and 4TB more RAM.

Shiiiieeeet son. 3 mods!? U crazy.

[ThatBlockishWay]

44 minutes ago, L2theb said:

Thank you so much so far!

 

Currently I have a i5 4690K.

If necessary, I am willing to get a new motherboard.

Check your mobo chipset, if you dont know offhand you can probably fairly easily find a model number or something and google that

[L2theb]

it is a Z97

[ThatBlockishWay]

1 minute ago, L2theb said:

it is a Z97

Try OCing it if you're just trying to get better performance, assuming you haven't already, alot of new chips are about to launch so if you can OC and be fine on performance it may be worth waiting. If not new stuff always comes out so it's not a terrible choice to upgrade now, assuming it's still not performing at an acceptable level

[epsilon84]

2 hours ago, ThatBlockishWay said:

Try OCing it if you're just trying to get better performance, assuming you haven't already, alot of new chips are about to launch so if you can OC and be fine on performance it may be worth waiting. If not new stuff always comes out so it's not a terrible choice to upgrade now, assuming it's still not performing at an acceptable level

Agreed, if the game really only takes advantage of 4 cores then the 4690K overclocked to say, 4.5GHz, wouldn't be too far off your modern 8th/9th gen i5s and i7s. Sure, you can overclock those CPUs too, to around 5.0GHz, and they are a bit faster per clock, but its still probably not worth the expense IMO. We're talking about hundreds of dollars for a small 20% improvement...

 

EDIT - Just stumbled across this comparison, the game definitely doesn't seem to scale much beyond 4 cores since the 6600K (4C/4T like your 4690K) outperforms the Ryzen 1700X, an 8C/16T CPU: 

Definitive proof that the game doesn't really scale beyond 4 cores:

 

[L2theb]

Thank you guys! You've been very helpful.

Now I know what to look for. I may even try overclocking