How important are 8 cores for gaming going forward?

[adb1028]

I’m sitting here staring at my brand new rig with a 5600x in it. I have a 5800x new in the box next to it. I can’t decide which one to keep. For $150 is it worth it for the 5800x to future proof the machine provided 8 cores are required in the future? Or is future proofing just a wast of money? This rig is ONLY for gaming at 1440p 144hz+ and 4k 120hz (paired with a 3080)

[eeeee1]

for the next few years, I would imagine you don't need more than 6 for pure gaming. but 8 would be a good investment if you decide to branch into things like video editing, streaming, etc

[Dr0y]

It mostly depend on how long you intend to keep it and also what will you use it for.  I would say that if you didn't have the cpu sitting there then the upgrade is not worth it ... but you have the cpu sitting there and doing nothing so just install it and resell the 5600x or build another rig. 

 

As for the NEED of 8 core for gaming ... that probably won't be relevant before a long time ... even tho the consoles have 8 cores, some are reserved for system usage so it's not 8 cores dedicated for gaming ... also even if a game is optimized to use 8 core or more in gaming that doesn't mean that it will be unplayable with less core ... there's already games that use more than 4 or 6 cores and people with 4c4t cpu are still able to play them ... even tho the experience might not be the best, it's still playable. 

 

The future proofing just depend of what people are doing with the pc.  I kinda don't like the concept of future proofing since you can't predict the future ... and often people will just throw away money for nothing as they will buy high end stuff but will upgrade waaaayyyy before the time it's not doing what they want it to do anyway. ... a core 2 quad is still a worthy pc and can do well for web browsing, youtube watching and school work.  So it was future proof for those use but probably not for playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider ... it always depend of the use case. 

 

So all in all you have the cpu, why not use it specially if you do stuff that will use those 2 more cores.