27 replies to this topic

[Summon3r]

i5-3470 3.2ghz with a 660ti on max settings and very very rarely dip below 60fps and never under 55 ever.

[Rogue Jedi]

Use the i7.

AMD is better for the price but Intel i7s are more powerful than anything AMD makes

[Catamount]

Durant Carlyle, on 10 January 2014 - 10:01 AM, said:

Not true.

I have a plain-Jane 4770 (which cannot overclock) with a GTX 780, playing at 2560x1440 resolution, and I don't go under 60 FPS very often.

Any reasonably powerful CPU and GPU combination can net 60fps some of the time, and subjectively it may seem to hold that high a lot or even most of the time, but I suspect, were you to start recording and posting fraps information on averages and timed fps measurements, you'd find that your minimums get a fair bit lower, a fair bit of the time. I run a CPU setup that's substantially faster than yours in quad threaded apps (3570k, 4.2ghz), and even I don't get 60fps minimums, and most people who run newer i5s and i7s do not report near-60fps minimums on stock-clocked chips.

Quote

People have been saying "tomorrow's games will take advantage of more cores" for many years. Yet dual-core machines still play most games just as well as anything with more cores. More-core machines will remain the platform of choice for people who use Photoshop and other graphic programs, or who do audio/video processing, and things like that. It will be a LONG time before anything more than four cores is commonplace in gamers' machines. By that point, you'll need a new CPU anyway.

They've been saying it for years, and it's been true for years. Single threaded games dominated up until a few short years ago, that era hopefully finally ending with Skyrim. Dual-threaded games were around for a short bit, but these days, nearly all games are quad-threaded, and that's even becoming a minimum for reasonable performance in multiple titles.

Why, given the incredibly short span in which that has happened, and given the proclivity of all other software to move to being highly-threaded, would you expect games to just "stop" at being quad-threaded? Now don't get me wrong, I don't think quad-threaded CPUs will be inadequate for a long time, maybe not even within this decade given how slowly things are moving in the hardware world, but games will definitely be able to take advantage of 6+ threaded CPUs before long at all, I imagine.

Edited by Catamount, 10 January 2014 - 11:00 AM.

[Durant Carlyle]

Catamount, on 10 January 2014 - 10:54 AM, said:

Any reasonably powerful CPU and GPU combination can net 60fps some of the time, and subjectively it may seem to hold that high a lot or even most of the time, but I suspect, were you to start recording and posting fraps information on averages and timed fps measurements, you'd find that your minimums get a fair bit lower, a fair bit of the time. I run a CPU setup that's substantially faster than yours in quad threaded apps (3570k, 4.2ghz), and even I don't get 60fps minimums, and most people who run newer i5s and i7s do not report near-60fps minimums on stock-clocked chips.

Your CPU is only 300MHz faster than mine (4.2GHz versus 3.9GHz), so the horsepower difference isn't all that substantial. It's there, but not as much as you think.

I said it doesn't go under 60 FPS very often. Even if it's 30% of the time, that's still not very often.

Catamount, on 10 January 2014 - 10:54 AM, said:

Why, given the incredibly short span in which that has happened, and given the proclivity of all other software to move to being highly-threaded, would you expect games to just "stop" at being quad-threaded? Now don't get me wrong, I don't think quad-threaded CPUs will be inadequate for a long time, maybe not even within this decade given how slowly things are moving in the hardware world, but games will definitely be able to take advantage of 6+ threaded CPUs before long at all, I imagine.

We already have 8-thread CPUs like mine. We won't be needing 6+ actual cores for a good long time in gaming.

[Catamount]

Well keep in mind, 3.9ghz is the maximum single-core turbo. That's different than what all four cores will go to. Intel doesn't publish all-core turbo clockspeeds on Ark, but my 3570k, for instance, has a maximum turbo of 3.8ghz, yet only on one core. It will only push all four cores to 3.6. I suspect yours caps at 3.7. That's still quick, and ~93% of what my chip will do in MWO, but again, even I don't get 60fps sometimes. It's at close, at least, but MWO's CPU absurdity still never ceases to amaze.

[The Gunman]

If the choice was which one you'd buy I'd recommend FX 8320 as it has more than acceptable performance and is cheaper than the i7.

However since you already own both, go with the i7. Its more powerful in most situations (including gaming), and runs cooler.

[Durant Carlyle]

Catamount, on 10 January 2014 - 05:04 PM, said:

Well keep in mind, 3.9ghz is the maximum single-core turbo. That's different than what all four cores will go to. Intel doesn't publish all-core turbo clockspeeds on Ark, but my 3570k, for instance, has a maximum turbo of 3.8ghz, yet only on one core. It will only push all four cores to 3.6. I suspect yours caps at 3.7. That's still quick, and ~93% of what my chip will do in MWO, but again, even I don't get 60fps sometimes. It's at close, at least, but MWO's CPU absurdity still never ceases to amaze.

My CPU does 3.9 GHz on all cores. ASUS BIOSes have a special setting that enables all cores to do the top Turbo speed at the same time, and I have verified this with several CPU monitoring programs.

Check out my YouTube channel for MW:O videos to see the performance. Just started uploading today, and all of the games are from today. The in-game FPS readings are in the upper-left corner as usual. There's no voice chat, just the in-game sound.

Edited by Durant Carlyle, 16 January 2014 - 10:30 PM.

[Catamount]

So you backdoor overclocked it? Huh, not bad