is this the best gaming pc?

aisle9 · April 19, 2021

2 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

I just can't see getting an 8 or 12 core part unless you're doing *something* other than gaming. Maybe if you're streaming, though NVENC kind of makes it unnecessary even then. The higher end chips don't buy you anything real as far as removing a CPU bottleneck. The clocks are slightly higher, but by the same token, you'd probably have better luck OCing the 5600X.

I remember hearing that exact argument when the Core 2 Quad entered the chat. It took up a while, but games eventually started demanding four physical cores. Far Cry 3 (2014?) is the first one I can remember that absolutely refused to load with two or three cores, and even that could be worked around with a few tweaks, but the optimization for four was showing up a few years before. The same thing is kind of happening now from four to six or eight.

There's a secondary consideration for me, and that's that AM4 is a dead socket. If I'm investing in a socket early on, I'm probably going midrange or low-end, because I know there's going to be another generation (or more) of silicon to upgrade to. If I'm buying on a dead socket (which I generally avoid unless the right deal is there), I'm more likely to go more towards the upper midrange of things. If a game shows up a year from now that absolutely refuses to cooperate with fewer than eight cores, I don't want to have to go out and sink $200-400 into a CPU that's already dead to be able to play it. I could see that being a problem for the 5600X in a year or two.

IkeaGnome · April 19, 2021

6 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

I could see that being a problem for the 5600X in a year or two.

This is why I went with the 5800x.

Series X, 8c/16t. PS5, 8c/16t.

Want to take a guess at what developers will be pushing for CPU optimization as they move on to next gen only games?

Chris Pratt · April 19, 2021

53 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

I remember hearing that exact argument when the Core 2 Quad entered the chat. It took up a while, but games eventually started demanding four physical cores. Far Cry 3 (2014?) is the first one I can remember that absolutely refused to load with two or three cores, and even that could be worked around with a few tweaks, but the optimization for four was showing up a few years before. The same thing is kind of happening now from four to six or eight.

There's a secondary consideration for me, and that's that AM4 is a dead socket. If I'm investing in a socket early on, I'm probably going midrange or low-end, because I know there's going to be another generation (or more) of silicon to upgrade to. If I'm buying on a dead socket (which I generally avoid unless the right deal is there), I'm more likely to go more towards the upper midrange of things. If a game shows up a year from now that absolutely refuses to cooperate with fewer than eight cores, I don't want to have to go out and sink $200-400 into a CPU that's already dead to be able to play it. I could see that being a problem for the 5600X in a year or two.

There's a vast difference from going from dual to quad and from 6-core to higher. Games just don't need that many cores. They need more than two, but 8+ it's not coming for a while. We just got to a point where even 6-core started to be useful. A lot of games still run just fine on a quad core.

As far as socket goes, I understand the rationale, but it's kind of flawed. Assuming MSRP, the difference between a 5600X and 5800X is $100 and a 5900X is $200. That difference mostly or completely covers the cost of a new board.