Avx... should I care for gaming?

[Jay Deah]

Pretty simple this one.. does the avx instruction set get used in many games? If not I assume I should really care about having a large avx offset?

 

mainly play pubg... 8700k @ 5ghz (4.7 avx)

[Jurrunio]

at this point, games dont use AVX

[n4da]

So I know this is a bit old, but it contains a lot of misinformation. 

It is extremely easy to verify if games use AVX, by adding an AVX offset in BIOS and monitoring core frequencies in MSI Afterburner, and surprise-surprise, a lot of them do.

For example, modern games like SotTR, Darksiders 3, Monster Hunter World, AC:Odyssey (and probably Origins too), and even Overwatch, all use AVX, and you will see that when the frequency of the CPU goes down to respect the AVX offset you used in BIOS. 

So the actual truth is a lot of games use AVX, and it's also used relatively often. In Windows, you would see the CPU stuck at its highest OC frequency, but in games it will start to oscillate a lot because of some AVX being used.

This is important as if you truly want to OC, you will either have to accept lower/oscillating clocks because of AVX, or you will have to stress test the OC with prime95 last versions with AVX. Considering how power hungry that can get, you might have issues. For example:

- non-AVX prime95 4.7GHz 8700K, approx. 120W (depends on voltage used, of course)

- AVX prime95 4.7GHz can get to 160-170W+, and requires a lot more voltage to get stable, and a lot more cooling, and better VRMs on the motherboard. The games might not consume that much watts, that is true, but you will need to test the OC to see if it's stable, and p95 is basically your only option, most other tests are trash in comparison. I've forgot how many people would stresstest with Realbench or LinX or IBT and think they are stable, when prime95 would fail in a minute, and they'd have games crashing and even BSODs at times.

TLDR: most modern games use AVX and it's easy to prove.