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.
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jhoff80 - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
I know they're more difficult to get a hold of, but I'd be curious how some of the lower power stuff, like the i7-3770T or the i5-3570T would do. Even a i5-3550S would be pretty interesting, I think.I mean, I know there's a lot of gamers that just want as powerful (or conversely, as cheap) a CPU as possible, but it would be interesting to see if Intel's more 'efficient' (for lack of a better word) chips do nearly as well.
TheInternal - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
I would be curious to see how "low-power" parts do as well, though that would be a secondary desire behind seeing these tests done on multiple monitor configurations.The0ne - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Odd. The i5-3570K is a very popular CPU and it doesn't get attention or recommendation? Does that mean that previous tests by numerous websites indicating and directing thousands of consumers to build with this CPU somehow became irrelevant? I could have sworn that the rule of thumb was you go with an i5-3570K instead of an I7 if you're not into heavy audio/video work but yet here it doesn't appear to be the case. Very interesting.IanCutress - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
I didn't have one to hand and couldn't get one in. We don't work in an office at AT, we're spread across the world. The nearest I had to it was the 2500K, which is an IPC decrease. i5-3570K (and the Haswell equivalent) should be in the next update :)Ian
mapesdhs - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
It's an IPC decrease, but it oc's far better than the 3570K due to the cap material issue;
end result is the 2500K will be faster overall. I still think the 2500K is a better buy, assuming
one can get them. Unless of course one is willing to replace the cap material with something
better, then the 3570K will be an easy winner.
Ian.
sherlockwing - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Could you investigate more into how AMD failed in Civilization V? could it be that RTS game are harder to multihread optimize thus favoring Intel CPUs?frozen ox - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
Civ V is more dependent on the CPU than the GPU, and in this case that's where AMD's shortcomings in single-threaded performance show. It will be very interesting to see what happens in these scenarios whem AMD starts releasing HSA capable APUs. When coupled with a discrete GPU, will they be able to manage both the integrated and discrete components to an advantage in games like Civ 5 and other CPU demanding strategy games?xinthius - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
I'm alright, thanks. You will find that I stated admirably. Compare the price difference between each SKU.kyuu - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
(No) Thanks for your input, but that's not what I was asking.beepboy - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Great job Ian! I'm really interested to see 680s in the picture please!