Gaming and Hyperthreading questions.

[LordBacon]

So i have been looking into building a custom gaming rig for a good while and have recently run across the fact that AMD has no hyper-threading but significantly faster clock speeds when compared to Intel which has hyper-threading but significantly lower clock speeds. the information out there regarding gaming and the use of hyper-threading and its effects on games in the current market has been far and few between, so i have a few questions.

 

1 ) do current generation games make use of hyperthreading?

A ) if so what kind of impact does it have on the game?

B ) if not do you see a trend going towards hyper-threading in games for the near future?

 

2 ) your suggestions for a good CPU?

A ) would your suggestion be able to handle gaming and streaming at the same time?

 

and before you say it yes i know that simply buying a low end rig to handle the stream is better for multiple reasons but humor me.

[Marinatall_Ironside]

So i have been looking into building a custom gaming rig for a good while and have recently run across the fact that AMD has no hyper-threading but significantly faster clock speeds when compared to Intel which has hyper-threading but significantly lower clock speeds. the information out there regarding gaming and the use of hyper-threading and its effects on games in the current market has been far and few between, so i have a few questions.

 

1 ) do current generation games make use of hyperthreading?

A ) if so what kind of impact does it have on the game?

B ) if not do you see a trend going towards hyper-threading in games for the near future?

 

2 ) your suggestions for a good CPU?

A ) would your suggestion be able to handle gaming and streaming at the same time?

 

and before you say it yes i know that simply buying a low end rig to handle the stream is better for multiple reasons but humor me.

No. Later in the future, hopefully we will get games that are multithreaded. Even my games will have that kind of support. Right now there's a very small impact you don't notice it.

 

An Intel Core i5 is what you want for now with gaming and streaming. People have streamed on an i5 before.

 

Welcome to the LTT community!

Edited January 19, 2016 by JurunceNK

[comicsansms]

1. No, but they should

A. Not much

B. Probably

 

2. i5 4690k or i5 6600k for OCing or i5 4460 or i5 6400 for not OCing.

A. Probably, but bumping it up to an i7 or Xeon couldn't hurt.

[Enderman]

hyperthreading and cores and clock speed are not a way to compare performance

look at benchmark comparisons and real world tests

 

for gaming, and i5 or i7 is much better than what AMD has on the market right now

[Guest]

No. Later in the future, hopefully we will get games that are multithreaded. Even my games will have that kind of support. Right now there's a very small impact you don't notice it.

 

An Intel Core i5 is what you want for now with gaming and streaming. People have streamed on an i5 before.

 

Welcome to the LTT community!

Well there are a few games out now that work better with HT. Take for example fallout 4 and gta v

[Benergy]

So i have been looking into building a custom gaming rig for a good while and have recently run across the fact that AMD has no hyper-threading but significantly faster clock speeds when compared to Intel which has hyper-threading but significantly lower clock speeds. the information out there regarding gaming and the use of hyper-threading and its effects on games in the current market has been far and few between, so i have a few questions.

 

1 ) do current generation games make use of hyperthreading?

A ) if so what kind of impact does it have on the game?

B ) if not do you see a trend going towards hyper-threading in games for the near future?

 

2 ) your suggestions for a good CPU?

A ) would your suggestion be able to handle gaming and streaming at the same time?

 

and before you say it yes i know that simply buying a low end rig to handle the stream is better for multiple reasons but humor me.

As I understand it, AMD cores may finish a clock cycle faster, but Intel cores get more work done per cycle (better use of instruction pipelining with more components on die).

 

Intel CPUs tend to have much better single core performance, which is what is important for gaming. An i5 is the sweet spot with 4 physical cores, as hyperthreading helps very little for games.

[Marinatall_Ironside]

Well there are a few games out now that work better with HT. Take for example fallout 4 and gta v

Well that's a start right there

[jjohnthedon1]

Fallout 4

Witcher 3

Gta v

Crysis 3

Farcry 4

All bennafit from hyperthreading

By a somewhat sizeable amount in CPU bound areas of the game

[LukeTim]

So i have been looking into building a custom gaming rig for a good while and have recently run across the fact that AMD has no hyper-threading but significantly faster clock speeds when compared to Intel which has hyper-threading but significantly lower clock speeds. the information out there regarding gaming and the use of hyper-threading and its effects on games in the current market has been far and few between, so i have a few questions.

 

1 ) do current generation games make use of hyperthreading?

A ) if so what kind of impact does it have on the game?

B ) if not do you see a trend going towards hyper-threading in games for the near future?

 

2 ) your suggestions for a good CPU?

A ) would your suggestion be able to handle gaming and streaming at the same time?

 

and before you say it yes i know that simply buying a low end rig to handle the stream is better for multiple reasons but humor me.

 

From the software's point of view, "making use of hyperthreading" is no different from making use of extra cores via multithreading. It is totally transparent. The software has no idea what's going on with its threads down in the silicon.

Most modern games benefit from no more than about 4 cores/threads. You are likely to see a huge benefit going from a non-hyperthreaded pentium to a hyperthreaded i3. However, you are unlikely to see as much of a benefit going from a non-hyperthreaded i5 to a hyperthreaded i7.

AMD cores (however AMD calls them modules) use a different method for handling two threads at once. It is called clustered multithreading. AMD essentially advertises its thread count rather than its core count on its CPUs. Hence all its 8 core desktop CPUs (really 4 modules with 2 threads each).

Personally, I would recommend buying an i5, as long as you don't need to do anything more than gaming. 4 full cores is better than 2 hyperthreaded cores and 4 threads.

[LordBacon]

hyperthreading and cores and clock speed are not a way to compare performance

look at benchmark comparisons and real world tests

 

for gaming, and i5 or i7 is much better than what AMD has on the market right now

my only problem with bench marks is that i am very inexperienced with them so it is hard for me to equate meaningful performance to a benchmark score.

[Enderman]

my only problem with bench marks is that i am very inexperienced with them so it is hard for me to equate meaningful performance to a benchmark score.

its not hard

you look at a graph and see oh, GPU X performs better than GPU Y

simple

[MageTank]

its not hard

you look at a graph and see oh, GPU X performs better than GPU Y

simple

You forgot to mention the part where he should look at benchmarks from multiple sources, not just a single source, due to potential bias. Seriously, some websites out there will outright lie about the performance they are getting on their CPU's. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

Hyperthreading makes a night and day difference for dual cores, eg i3 vs Pentium. The Pentium without HT is just a piece of crap for playing modern games on, whereas the hyperthreaded i3 is pretty damn nice. Even good enough to be enjoyable to use with a GTX 970. The only game I can think off right off hand that just doesn't play well on an i3 is Crysis 3, and that game just feels like a benchmark for your hardware (I don't think it's anywhere near as good as the classic Crysis 1).

 

For quad cores the effect is much less. Some games can still benefit from an i7 vs an i5, but you'll usually need a higher end GPU (GTX 970 / R9 390 level or better) to see the difference, since they tend to only show up at the highest settings. Settings you're not likely to be running with say an R9 380 or GTX 960 in really demanding games.