How many CPU cores for gaming?

heatonpkmassive · March 4, 2023

1 hour ago, deadlou666 said:

What's your problem! You sent me a link which had nothing to do with performance issues instead it was temps with an inadequate cooler.

He sent you a link in which there are two screenshots from Crysis 3, one with the 6 core chip getting 122fps and the 8 core chip getting 146fps in the same part of the game.

Even 6 core chips are now starting to be a little behind 8 and 12 core chips with some games.

starsmine · March 4, 2023

On 3/2/2023 at 7:47 AM, sushi456 said:

How many CPU cores should I get for gaming considering I won't be upgrading for 6 years?

EDIT: Do Intel E-Cores count as a full-fledged cores?

Today? 4 is still good enough for gaming.
For 6 years? 6 cores will be long in the tooth.
For not upgrading the CPU for 6 years, I would look at 8 core minimum

that said, heterogenous confuses the question.
intel i5, 6p+8e will work better then 8p cores, so therefore I would go intel raptor lake i5 w/ ddr5 as a baseline for this plan. As game engines get better at parallel threads, E core is fine for non world threads.

e-cores completely count as full fledge cores, they dont have HT and the massive front end that goes along with the p-cores and clocks way less, but its still skylake performance.

Wolverine2349 · January 30

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The question I'd have is, what games? That strategy might suit older games that may care more about clock and don't scale out. Or are they running Windows 10 still? But forward looking games are capable of using more CPU. It was an eye opener for me when I saw 12 cores give a tangible improvement over 8 cores on my own system as I wasn't expecting that. If we're looking forwards, I'd consider 8 cores to be the minimum, not the recommended. If I were to build a high end gaming system today, I'd look at either 8P+xE on Intel side (basically i7 upwards) or 12+ cores on AMD side. As OP mentioned looking forward 6 years, I'd lean to more cores if possible, although a later CPU swap may be an option if that is not viable now.

Which game did you see a difference in going form 8 to 12

And you state 8 cores would be considered minimum and not recommended now in this almost 1 year old thread. Well if that is true given the current state of affairs in the CPU market, that is pretty bad. I mean there are 0 CPUs with more than 8 strong cores on a single ring or CCD form either Intel or AMD. Intel maxes out at 8 P cores and uses the rest as e-cores. AMD has up to 16 cores, but only 8 on one CCD and cross CCD latency is very bad penalty for 1% lows.

The last CPU with more than 8 cores on a single ring from Intel was the Comet Lake Core i9 10900K and 10850K. But that is on old not only slight bump if any from Skylake IPC and newer archs. And none of the newer archs from Intel have more than 8 cores and AMD only has 8 on a single CCD which is important for gaming. And sadly Zen 5 and Zen 6 are going to max out at 16 cores with 2 CCDs of 8 cores each meaning same problems. And Intel only 8 P cores with only more e-cores or even a 3rd type of core down the line of next few generations as well.

I recommend 8 cores for gaming even high end with RTX 4090 if strictly gaming because that is the only CPU you can get without having to deal with e-cores and/or has a single CCD. I got a 7800X3D with my RTX 4090 and some would say well if money no object why not a 7950X3d. Well I hate the scheduling issues with dual CCDs with different cache and the latency penalty. So in a way I hope 8 powerful cores is more than enough for games for a long while with newer and newer GPUs come down the line with newer ad newer games given the depressing fact that neither Intel nor AMD appear to have a single CCD/ring 10 P core CPU coming anytime in the next few years if ever. Its almost like they do not want there to be one CPU best for everything gaming. The dual CCDs do not matter for productivity but for gaming the latency is a terrible thing.

Or go back to 10900K and have gimped IPC that even with 2 core advantage in heavily threaded games gets thumped by even Intel Alder Lake Quads let alone gets severely beaten by even 6 core parts from current gen Intel and AMD.

Though having said all of that which games really take advantage of more than 8 cores. On my 7800X3D even with CyberPunk 2.0 on RTX 4090 with 4K DLSS Quality which gives like 90 FPS, CPU usage is only 30% usually and peaks at like 45%. SO really it seems the ones in this thread who say 6 cores is plenty for a long while may be correct. Or is CPU usage not tell the whole story? Well I would think CPU usage tells whole story for core count usage, but certainly not for single thread bottleneck as you would need to see 100% CPU usage on a single core to see single thread bottleneck. For lack of core bottleneck I would think total CPU usage from MSI Afterburner tells whole story?