To the surprise of no one, GPU is way more important than CPU

[ajoy39]

 

Interesting test. For true budget builds that you still want to have good gaming performance on you might be better off going with the Athlon and using the $140ish dollars you save to get a much improved graphics card. We always knew that GPU was more important than CPU, but this really highlights that pretty starkly. Outside of a few games (that you honestly shouldn't be trying to play on a low budget build on those settings anyway) you'd be better off skimping on the CPU

[Emperor_Piehead]

the only problem with skimping is a lot of games are still single core cpu heavy games. Gpu heavy games a fm2 socket cpu is all you really need on a budget.

[TechSage]

Yeah I guess..would you rather have an i7 with a GTX 660 ti or an i5 with a gtx 670. I would go with the better graphics card. 

[Samdb]

<sarcasm>

         I would never have guessed. This has changed the way I see computers and how they perform.

</sarcasm>

 

But it actually was kind of obvious, there isn't much point having a 3930K and a 650.

[WoodenMarker]

Yeah I guess..would you rather have an i7 with a GTX 660 ti or an i5 with a gtx 670. I would go with the better graphics card. 

Then again, comparing an i5 and an i7 isn't exactly a good example of skimping for a gaming rig.

[ProGearUk]

I was talking about the whole how gpu's are so much more powerful and all that to a friend of mine and we both agreed that if apu technology was to come into the mainstream but for it to be more gpu technology and be a good cheap chip that would act as a cpu it would change everything.

[TechSage]

Then again, comparing an i5 and an i7 isn't exactly a good example of skimping for a gaming rig.

It was off the top of my head. My apologies 

[WoodenMarker]

<sarcasm>

         I would never have guessed. This has changed the way I see computers and how they perform.

</sarcasm>

 

But it actually was kind of obvious, there isn't much point having a 3930K and a 650.

I wonder if that's the reason we have gaming gpus and not gaming cpus... :P

[ajoy39]

<sarcasm>

         I would never have guessed. This has changed the way I see computers and how they perform.

</sarcasm>

 

But it actually was kind of obvious, there isn't much point having a 3930K and a 650.

yeah we've always know that the benefit from like a 3770k isn't worth the added price just in games, but here we're talking about the difference between a 4670k (the chip everyone talks about for gaming) and a 75 dollar CPU that still is holding it's own just fine in gaming. For people operating on a budget that is a HUGE price drop that they can now use on a much better graphics card. 

[Samdb]

I wonder if that's the reason we have gaming gpus and not gaming cpus... :P

 

There are CPUs oriented towards gaming, but no actual gaming CPUs, it's just not needed at this current moment in time.

[Samdb]

yeah we've always know that the benefit from like a 3770k isn't worth the added price just in games, but here we're talking about the difference between a 4670k (the chip everyone talks about for gaming) and a 75 dollar CPU that still is holding it's own just fine in gaming. For people operating on a budget that is a HUGE price drop that they can now use on a much better graphics card. 

 

And with an 8350 you can get even more performance for your money.

[ajoy39]

And with an 8350 you can get even more performance for your money.

8350 is still $200 and about the performance of a 3570k, if the difference between the athlon chip and a 4670k isn't that great than the difference between an athlon and a 3570k/8350 is even less, and you're paying $125+ dollars more for each of them. I have an 8120, moving to an 8350 eventually, but if someone asks me to build a gaming rig for them for 500 bucks right now I'm getting them an athlon because it gives me an extra $125 to spend on their graphics card. 

[NannerBeans]

The only reason I'm going for a 4670k for my computer that I'm building in like 2 weeks is because there are no SFF boards for AMD.

[GaZinggEr]

Unrelated: Why is Intel's box art so stupid?? it looks like a 2 year old made it on MS Paint.

[Hirad123]

Unrelated: Why is Intel's box art so stupid?? it looks like a 2 year old made it on MS Paint.

I miss the old box art :'(

[dyent10]

How come whenever I render in cinema 4d, my gpu never gets hotter than 35 degrees while my cpu is climbing to almost 90 degrees? Also, usage on my gpu, according to hwinfo, is only 0% to 5%? I think the title is misleading.

[martinrox1568]

I wonder if that's the reason we have gaming gpus and not gaming cpus... :P

explain . . . 780's and 7970's are marketed the same way 4670k's and 8350's are

[WoodenMarker]

explain . . . 780's and 7970's are marketed the same way 4670k's and 8350's are

No they aren't. 780's and 7970's are represented by gaming benchmarks and cpus are not.

[mymouthandi]

I watched this earlier and as with the rest of you I was in no way surprised. However, this is a good video for those who are less well informed. 

[qwertywarrior]

GPU is always more important than a CPU(unless u want to push lots of frames )

Q6600 quad core vs i7-4770k

with newer game engines demanding even less from CPUs

owning a new quadcore will last you a really long time

 

[NamelessTed]

yeah we've always know that the benefit from like a 3770k isn't worth the added price just in games, but here we're talking about the difference between a 4670k (the chip everyone talks about for gaming) and a 75 dollar CPU that still is holding it's own just fine in gaming. For people operating on a budget that is a HUGE price drop that they can now use on a much better graphics card.

I totally agree that it is good to know for somebody on a tight budget on how to spend their money properly. If you only have $400-500 to spend, you want to make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck. But if the budget is higher for the build, I wouldn't recommend going with a cheap CPU.

 

For me, the GTX 780 benchmark results are the most important. Yes, I realize that the card is way outside the budget of the type of computer we are talking about. But I am thinking long term here. The GPU upgrade is the easiest way to increase gamign performance in a PC. Next generation we will see 780 performance at about $400 with a "880" card. We will then see the sam performance with a "960" at the $300 price point. The pattern continues. So if you buy a cheap CPU today you are going to hit that wall of the CPU being the bottleneck in about 2 years when you upgrade you GPU. At that point you need to buy a new CPU, which means you might need to buy a new motherboard, depending on what AMD is doing with their sockets. Spending the extra money upfront on an i5 will give you a CPU that is going to last long in terms of keeping up with upgrading a GPU.

 

I have seen this for myself in the real world. I currently have an i5-3570k with a 660Ti. My brother has a rig that I built for him almost 5 years ago has an i7-920. I don't even remember what the original GPU he had in there was but he is currently using a 660Ti. His computer against mine in gaming, very very close. I remember seeing his rig destroy Skyrim and being super jealous back when I was still using an AMD 965 BE.

 

So, can a CPU that costs half that of the Intel i5-unlocked chip compete in game performance today with a mid-range GPU? Absolutely. Will it be able to do so in 3-5 years? Not a chance in hell.

 

GPU is always more important than a CPU(unless u want to push lots of frames )

Q6600 quad core vs i7-4770k

with newer game engines demanding even less from CPUs

owning a new quadcore will last you a really long time

 

Oh jesus. People really really need to stop posting this image. It is seriously starting to piss me off. If anybody seeing this hasn't actually read the article yet, I recommend checking it out over on LegitReviews. If you go through the article you will see that the i7-4770k is a MASSIVE upgrade from the Q6600 in everything outside of games. Then there is the fact that he only tested two games. Metro, as you can see if you actually read the article, shows the strength of the new i7 over the q6600. As far as BF3 is concerned, it has been highly documented that the game/engine is basically completely dependent on GPU. I literally can't think of another game that scales so directly with the GPU with very little difference in performance across a wide variety of CPUs.

[Theo]

That cpu might be good for now, but im guessing when next gen consoles come out with multi thread optimizations then the difference will be much bigger imo

[samuel]

FX 6300 is by far the best CPU for budget builds (gaming and hardcore computing) right now. Other than QuickSync, I cannot find any other reason NOT to buy it over Core i3.

[TechFan@ic]

The golden rule for gaming builds is to always spend 2x the amount on the graphics card as compared to the CPU.

[martinrox1568]

No they aren't. 780's and 7970's are represented by gaming benchmarks and cpus are not.

then what are cpu's represented by? Intel always throws in a couple slides of 3dmark and other benchmarks on release. Name one thing that gpu manufactors use to market something that cpu manufactors don't.