Is it better to have more cores or higher clock speeds for gaming?

[GamerBlake]

FOR GAMING ONLY: 

 

Is it better to have lots of cores or higher clock speeds?

 

Like would you rather have 4 cores clocked at 8 GHz

 

Or 8 cores clocked at 4 GHz?

 

Which would provide higher FPS assuming all other components are exactly the same in both?

[Haro]

Doesn't matter 

There is more to the conversation 

Ipc count , the imc , how it can be affected by ram speeds , the fpu can matter

[gloop]

The question that has been asked a thousand times and still ends in a big argument. 

[GamerBlake]

Just now, TofuHaroto said:

Doesn't matter 

There is more to the conversation 

Ipc count , the imc , how it can be affected by ram speeds , the fpu can matter

Well let’s just say that all that is equal.

 

Take an 8700K for example..

 

It has 6c/12t but would it perform better with 3c/6t running at 5GHz or with all 6c/12t enabled running at only 3GHz?

[GamerBlake]

Just now, gloop said:

The question that has been asked a thousand times and still ends in a bit argument. 

It’s a good question though.

 

People would want to know if it’s better to buy say a Ryzen CPU with 12 cores running at like 4.2 GHz or an Intel CPU with only 8 cores running at 5 GHz.

[Haro]

Just now, GamerBlake said:

It has 6c/12t but would it perform better with 3c/6t running at 5GHz or with all 6c/12t enabled running at only 3GHz?

What game ?

Can it take advantage of the extra cores ?

[Mateyyy]

Just now, GamerBlake said:

Well let’s just say that all that is equal.

 

Take an 8700K for example..

 

It has 6c/12t but would it perform better with 3c/6t running at 5GHz or with all 6c/12t enabled running at only 3GHz?

Depends on the game.

 

Just now, GamerBlake said:

It’s a good question though.

 

People would want to know if it’s better to buy say a Ryzen CPU with 12 cores running at like 4.2 GHz or an Intel CPU with only 8 cores running at 5 GHz.

This used to be the case with Zen 1 where it was well-known that you're giving up single-core performance by going with Ryzen, but since Zen 2 has launched this hasn't been the case. I mean sure you can run Coffee Lake at higher clocks than Zen 2, but the superior IPC of Zen 2 will more than make up for the "lack" of clock speed, hence why in multi-threaded workloads for example you'd notice the 3800X come out ahead of the 9900K, despite the 9900K running at 5GHz and the 3800X at 4.35GHz or whatever it might run at.

[GamerBlake]

1 minute ago, Mateyyy said:

Depends on the game.

 

This used to be the case with Zen 1 where it was well-known that you're giving up single-core performance by going with Ryzen, but since Zen 2 has launched this hasn't been the case. I mean sure you can run Coffee Lake at higher clocks than Zen 2, but the superior IPC of Zen 2 will more than make up for the "lack" of clock speed, hence why in multi-threaded workloads for example you'd notice the 3800X come out ahead of the 9900K, despite the 9900K running at 5GHz and the 3800X at 4.35GHz or whatever it might run at.

Oh ok, I just wasn’t sure because my 8700K only had 6 cores but it’s running OC’ed at 5 GHz all cores and I didn’t know if upgrading to a Ryzen with 16 cores would be a solid upgrade if the cores run below 5 GHz.

[Mateyyy]

Just now, GamerBlake said:

Oh ok, I just wasn’t sure because my 8700K only had 6 cores but it’s running OC’ed at 5 GHz all cores and I didn’t know if upgrading to a Ryzen with 16 cores would be a solid upgrade if the cores run below 5 GHz.

They're meant for different use cases, it's not as simple as more cores equals more better in every scenario.

Those who buy 3950Xes might do video editing or 3D editing or whatever else that might be able to leverage 32 threads, and they also want the ability to game just fine, but it's not their absolute top priority. Nobody buys a 3950X if they're just gaming, except those who don't do any sort of research.

 

The 8700K is still plenty for gaming in 2020. Maybe the standard will slowly move towards 8C/16T CPUs, considering the next-gen consoles' hardware, but still I can't see 6C/12T CPUs falling behind in gaming any time soon.

[Enderman]

Assuming you have the minimum core count required for the game, 8GHz 4 cores would outperform 4GHz 8 cores.

This is because while the total net computational power is equal, multithreaded programs do not scale perfectly to the amount of cores.

So as long as you have the minimum amount of cores necessary for the concurrent processing that the game is programmed with, having the tasks run sequentially at double the frequency will actually have higher performance.

 

However, as you can see from the fact that there are no 8GHz CPUs, the engineering behind a processor makes core count much easier to increase than frequency.

 

Also, this only applies for CPUs with identical architectural design.

[5x5]

17 minutes ago, GamerBlake said:

It’s a good question though.

 

People would want to know if it’s better to buy say a Ryzen CPU with 12 cores running at like 4.2 GHz or an Intel CPU with only 8 cores running at 5 GHz.

No, it really isn't. It's a question that will start a flame war and won't lead to any insight into anything.

[GamerBlake]

Just now, Enderman said:

Assuming you have the minimum core count required for the game, 8GHz 4 cores would outperform 4GHz 8 cores.

This is because while the total net computational power is equal, multithreaded programs do not scale perfectly to the amount of cores.

So as long as you have the minimum amount of cores necessary for the concurrent processing that the game is programmed with, having the tasks run sequentially at double the frequency will actually have higher performance.

 

However, as you can see from the fact that there are no 8GHz CPUs, the engineering behind a processor makes core count much easier to increase than frequency.

Ah ok thanks!

 

Yeah I only said 8 GHz to try to use an example so I could ask my question even though I know most CPUs are maxed out at ~ 5GHz unless there is some crazy LN2 stuff going on.

[Enderman]

13 minutes ago, GamerBlake said:

Oh ok, I just wasn’t sure because my 8700K only had 6 cores but it’s running OC’ed at 5 GHz all cores and I didn’t know if upgrading to a Ryzen with 16 cores would be a solid upgrade if the cores run below 5 GHz.

In this case it completely depends on the game, the settings, the resolution, what programs you have running in the background, etc.

It's not as simple as 2X GHz Y cores vs X GHz 2Y cores.

[GamerBlake]

1 minute ago, 5x5 said:

No, it really isn't. It's a question that will start a flame war and won't lead to any insight into anything.

It’s still a good question because it’s valid and has actual real world applications.

 

Someone (like myself) could be trying to decide between a 10900K with higher clockspeeds or a Ryzen with lower clockspeeds and more cores.

 

 

[GamerBlake]

Just now, Enderman said:

In this case it completely depends on the game, the settings, the resolution, what programs you have running in the background, etc.

It's not as simple as 2X GHz Y cores vs X GHz 2Y cores.

Oh..well how do people decide between buying say a 10900K with higher clock speeds and less cores or like a 3950X with more cores and lower clock speeds?  

[For Science!]

There will always be edge cases, so since you're comfortable to limiting yourself to "gaming only" you should also limit which games you're interested in, resolution, and general settings, to make the question even approachable.

[Enderman]

Just now, GamerBlake said:

Oh..well how do people decide between buying say a 10900K with higher clock speeds and less cores or like a 3950X with more cores and lower clock speeds?  

Oh this has been answered already many times, and you can see it in the benchmarks, the 10900K performs better for pretty much all games because it has a higher frequency and almost no games need more than 8 cores, which makes the additional cores of ryzen useless unless you're trying to stream or run other stuff in the background.

 

[GamerBlake]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

Oh this has been answered already many times, and you can see it in the benchmarks, the 10900K performs better for pretty much all games because it has a higher frequency and almost no games need more than 8 cores, which makes the additional cores of ryzen useless unless you're trying to stream or run other stuff in the background.

 

Ah ok thanks! I didn’t know someone else had asked that. I’ve seen benchmarks and stuff but usually those benchmarks are done on systems that have different components from my own.

[GamerBlake]

2 minutes ago, For Science! said:

There will always be edge cases, so since you're comfortable to limiting yourself to "gaming only" you should also limit which games you're interested in, resolution, and general settings, to make the question even approachable.

I play a lot of games though.

 

However I can say I’m playing at 1440p/144hz and I prefer max settings because I enjoy more of a “cinematic experience” (as Riley from LTT says ).

[5x5]

2 minutes ago, GamerBlake said:

I play a lot of games though.

 

However I can say I’m playing at 1440p/144hz and I prefer max settings because I enjoy more of a “cinematic experience” (as Riley from LTT says ).

In that case you might as well buy a 3300X - the experience will be the same as a 10900K but for 1/5 the price

[kamiraasu]

52 minutes ago, GamerBlake said:

Is it better to have lots of cores or higher clock speeds?

General rule for me is to get the best possible graphics card
and cpu for it that doesnt limit the performance of it by bottlenecking it.
Ram that is enough to be near the best there is, but with great value.

Getting best of the best performance is not really much more than waste of money imo.

Passmark is fine for getting a picture what performance could be expected with different harware.
For gaming performance only, i would look at single thread performance more:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
If there is demand for multithreaded workloads too, then this is what i look at too:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
 

I think its safe to say that future games will be using threads more efficiently so this is subject to change.

EDIT:
For gaming, now 3300x is high on the single thread list.
So thats really good money saver if you need only great gaming performance.
Doesnt mean that its useless for other tasks!

[porina]

34 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

I mean sure you can run Coffee Lake at higher clocks than Zen 2, but the superior IPC of Zen 2 will more than make up for the "lack" of clock speed

IPC is not a single value modifier. It varies significantly with workload. On average, Zen 2 has higher IPC than current lakes, but how much more can vary a lot, and there are some scenarios where it falls behind. I did a limited test on this previously:

 

 

[Enderman]

29 minutes ago, GamerBlake said:

Ah ok thanks! I didn’t know someone else had asked that. I’ve seen benchmarks and stuff but usually those benchmarks are done on systems that have different components from my own.

Yeah, if you're only gaming I would keep your current CPU and only upgrade to a 10900K or whatever comes next.

[Mateyyy]

12 minutes ago, porina said:

IPC is not a single value modifier. It varies significantly with workload. On average, Zen 2 has higher IPC than current lakes, but how much more can vary a lot, and there are some scenarios where it falls behind. I did a limited test on this previously:

[...]

True, I was just trying to keep it fairly short and this post was mostly about gaming, not specialised workloads, where you'd obviously have to go into a lot more into the nitty-gritty details.

[porina]

5 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

True, I was just trying to keep it fairly short and this post was mostly about gaming, not specialised workloads, where you'd obviously have to go into a lot more into the nitty-gritty details.

If it is worth analysing, it is worth over-analysing  The same probably applies to gaming, but it is not an area I test for since it gets much more complicated with the impact of GPU performance also.  I suppose the short version would be, Zen 2 has on average a higher IPC but don't count on it always offsetting any clock differences.

 

IMO if someone is looking for best of best, they need all the details. Personally, and likely for many people, once we reach some level of "good enough" we stop looking for more.

 

I never did finish that Zen 2 test, never did the SMT/HT off testing... I'll leave it for Zen 3 now it is so late...