Choosing a Gaming CPU: Single + Multi-GPU at 1440p, April 2013
by Ian Cutress on May 8, 2013 10:00 AM ESTCivilization V
A game that has plagued my testing over the past twelve months is Civilization V. Being on the older 12.3 Catalyst drivers were somewhat of a nightmare, giving no scaling, and as a result I dropped it from my test suite after only a couple of reviews. With the later drivers used for this review, the situation has improved but only slightly, as you will see below. Civilization V seems to run into a scaling bottleneck very early on, and any additional GPU allocation only causes worse performance.
Our Civilization V testing uses Ryan’s GPU benchmark test all wrapped up in a neat batch file. We test at 1440p, and report the average frame rate of a 5 minute test.
One 7970
Civilization V is the first game where we see a gap when comparing processor families. A big part of what makes Civ5 perform at the best rates seems to be PCIe 3.0, followed by CPU performance – our PCIe 2.0 Intel processors are a little behind the PCIe 3.0 models. By virtue of not having a PCIe 3.0 AMD motherboard in for testing, the bad rap falls on AMD until PCIe 3.0 becomes part of their main game.
Two 7970s
The power of PCIe 3.0 is more apparent with two 7970 GPUs, however it is worth noting that only processors such as the i5-2500K and above have actually improved their performance with the second GPU. Everything else stays relatively similar.
Three 7970s
More cores and PCIe 3.0 are winners here, but no GPU configuration has scaled above two GPUs.
Four 7970s
Again, no scaling.
One 580
While the top end Intel processors again take the lead, an interesting point is that now we have all PCIe 2.0 values for comparison, the non-hyper threaded 2500K takes the top spot, 10% higher than the FX-8350.
Two 580s
We have another Intel/AMD split, by virtue of the fact that none of the AMD processors scaled above the first GPU. On the Intel side, you need at least an i5-2500K to see scaling, similar to what we saw with the 7970s.
Civilization V conclusion
Intel processors are the clear winner here, though not one stands out over the other. Having PCIe 3.0 seems to be the positive point for Civilization V, but in most cases scaling is still out of the window unless you have a monster machine under your belt.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
242 Comments
View All Comments
creed3020 - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
Yeah I find it strange to go with GCN on the AMD side but then use Fermi on the NVIDIA side. Kepler would have been a better match.tedders - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
I would also like to see a AMD Phenom II X3 720BE. That processor was very popular back in the day but also has pretty good OC capability. I am getting ready to build a new machine and I'd like to see how my current setup would compare to newer Piledriver and Haswell chips. Great review BTW!aznchum - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
A reference Geforce GTX 580 should have 1.5 GB of RAM, not 2GB. Minor typo :P.kyuu - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Seriously Anand, people like this are why we need an ignore/block function for the comment threads.calyth - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Got a link for the core parking updates?Kogies - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
Try these, I think they will be the ones!http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2646060
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2645594
Stuka87 - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Uhm, did you not just read this article? Unless you are running multi-GPU's AMD's CPU are fine. With the exception of Civ5 which is CPU bound. But outside of that one case, saving $150 by buying an AMD makes a lot of sense. Especially if it allows you to put that money into a better GPU.silverblue - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
It's sans2212. He popped up again the other day on Toms Hardware. Ignore it.Xistence - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
You are wrong sir, there are WAY more cpu bound games than you think, almost any MMO will fall into this category, Skyrim is another one and most games that only use one or two cores, sadly this is alot of games. Trust me I love AMD and have used them for years but after upgrading everything I was still getting poor performance in most of the games I play. I broke down and bought a 2600k after a lot of research and wow was it an improvement over my 1100t (6 core amd)Its sites like this and slanted test like these that kept me with AMD for years, glad I finally figured it out and still hold out hope AMD will improve their IPC along with future games using more cores properly.
rpsgc - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Can you please ban this 'Intellover' troll?