Choosing a Gaming CPU October 2013: i7-4960X, i5-4670K, Nehalem and Intel Update
by Ian Cutress on October 3, 2013 10:05 AM ESTMetro2033
Our first analysis is with the perennial reviewers’ favorite, Metro2033. It occurs in a lot of reviews for a couple of reasons – it has a very easy to use benchmark GUI that anyone can use, and it is often very GPU limited, at least in single GPU mode. Metro2033 is a strenuous DX11 benchmark that can challenge most systems that try to run it at any high-end settings. Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the inbuilt DirectX 11 Frontline benchmark to test the hardware at 1440p with full graphical settings. Results are given as the average frame rate from a second batch of 4 runs, as Metro has a tendency to inflate the scores for the first batch by up to 5%.
One 7970
Almost all our test results fall between 31-35 FPS, which technically means a 10% difference between Nehalem CPUs and the latest Intel and AMD CPUs.
Two 7970s
Doubling up to two 7970s and the Nehalems are in the ballpark of the Piledriver CPUs, but for comparison the quad core i5-4670K is similar to the full fat i7-4770K. Anything quad core and Intel, Sandy Bridge and above, hits 60 FPS average.
Three 7970s
At three GPUs we have a bit more seperation going on, with the Nehalems losing out due to IPC - only on the NF200 enabled motherboard do we get 70 FPS. There are no benefits moving to the hex-core Ivy Bridge-E i7-4960X, but the jump from 4670K to 4770K nets five FPS.
One 580
Similar to the 7970s, most modern CPUs perform the same. Beware of single core CPUs however, with the G465 not fairing well.
Two 580s
Similarly in dual NVIDIA GPU, there is not much difference - ~3 FPS at most unless you deal with dual core CPUs. Interestingly the results seem to be a little varied within that 41-44 FPS band.
Metro2033 Conclusion
In terms of single GPU, almost all the CPUs we have tested perform the same within a margin. On dual AMD GPUs we start to see a split, with the older Nehalem CPUs falling under 60 FPS. On tri-GPU setups the i5-4430 performs close to the Nehalems, and moving from 4670K to 4770K merits a jump from 72.47 FPS to 74-77, depending on lane allocation.
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BOMBOVA - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
a low cost raid controller yes, 64kb, 128kb, show the merit of raid 0, at 6 Gbs each, i was doubtful myself, but took the test of the device, for i need better video editing performance, at least it works :) now we have to watch out for the 12Gbs devices coming soon, imo for games, not much notice of improvement to be seen, but in big data transfers, sata 3 improvements, can be had for low costs. gl, trying it out, borrow a card to try, if you can, Cheers.BOMBOVA - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
fact is you can set to 32 K blocks, or 64K, 'only" , but is a true Marvel controller chip, in the Syba, and is on the PCI e buss. , Control M, sets the chipset, works rite off, is quick, but, there is a hint, that the lanes are only 5 Gbit second, still is a fine patch upgrade, on low cost 6Gbit second ssd's i am in for 2x120 ssd's and controller for 250,R-Type - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Results are typical for a variety of games where the resolution is set to 1920 x 1200. Games include Dirt 3, Civilization V, Guild Wars 2, Mechwarrior Living Legends, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, etc.augiem - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I'm really kind of shocked to see how well Nehalem stands up still in many benchmarks. If you adjust the i7 920 benchmarks to make up for the difference in frequency between it and the 4770K, it's not half bad. I used the difference between the i7-920 and i7-950 to determine how the benchmark scaled on Nehalem. If it was close enough to linearly (+/- 1%), I considered it. I saw a 6% - 40% performance advantage for Haswell across the CPU tests, which is actually smaller than I expected for an almost 6 year old chip. (Obviously this includes differences in the platforms too.) Striking that even in 6 years the speed hasn't even doubled.I'm still on an i7-920@3.6, so this was very relevant to me. If it were 40% across the board, it might be more compelling, but quite a few were more like 15%, 20%, etc. Now I understand Haswell is going to OC a lot further than this one, so in that way you could get the performance diff up there.
I'm just dumbfounded that this Nehalem has lasted me 4.5 years already and it still doesn't feel slow. On the one hand its great value for the money, but on the other hand its a little disappointing to see performance curve drop off like it has over the past 6 years.
That would be a fun project. Make a graph showing average CPU performance increases over the last 30 years.
Genericuser1234 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
As interesting these chips are for getting maximum performance from the high w parts. Will you do an article about the low TDP parts that are the true masterpieces Intel makes. I live in Denmark and energy cost more and more. My PC is running almost nonstop and I am curious how well these chips perform in a gaming environment. How far behind are they on performance and what kind of power cost on a year based on an average workload / idle time are we talking about you could save. I find the low power chips to be Intel's true stars. Do more with less. Maybe even throw in a power house chip from 2 years ago for comparison. That would be an interesting articleagent_x007 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Congrats to those who did testing part.Can't wait to see AMD added.
Too bad Pentium XE 955/965 (ie. Presler B1/C1 @ 3,46/3,73GHz) didn't "cut it" for this comparson :(
Hyper Threading and "Last of Netburst" legacy could be interesting in comparison with low end, fully-intergated setups, like VIA Nano or AMD Fusion.
+ There is also a possibility that todays multithreaded programs would better utilize the 4 threads of this kind of CPU, maybe to the point of matching Core 2 Duo's...
Either way, to sum it up in two words : GREAT WORK.
khanov - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
A good article, and nice to see an update now that new CPU's are out.Wouldn't it be nice if you could have all the benefits of X79 for multi GPU configurations, but without the added cost over Z87? Well actually you can, if you take in to account the quad-core LGA2011 CPUs.
The i7-4820K is no more expensive than the i7-4770K, and motherboard costs are very similar too. So people seriously considering 3 or 4 GPUs might be very interested in this option, to gain the benefits of extra PCIe lane allocation without the extra cost of a hex core CPU.
Ian, would you please consider adding i7-3820 and/or i7-4820K to the next update? It would be nice to see how well, or how badly, they fare against the competition.
MarcHFR - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Hi all,Sorry but i don't understand this review. What's the point of recommanding different CPU on the only basis of single/dual/tri/quad GPU ?
First, the GPU power is not related to the number of GPU only, with 2x660 you get lower performance than 1x780, but if i read the conclusion for 2x660 you recommand FX-8350 but A8-5600K for 1x780 ?
Second, for example with only a 7970 with a small CPU or a big CPU you get exactly the same performance on Sleeping Dogs 2560*1440 max settings. But what kind of player will keep a setting that offer 28 fps on such a carde ? None ! They will lower the graphic settings related to the GPU only to a point that they will get a higher framerate, like the 80 fps you get with three card.
Whatever the number/power of the GPU, as soon as it's not a lower-end card, the CPU needed to get playable framerate is the same with a GTX 660 or 2xGTX 780 as soon as you don't use graphics settings related to the GPU that lower the framerate that can be sustained by the GPU under the framerate that can be sustained by the CPU.
You can recommand different CPU to get more than 40/60/80/120 fps in some games (but good luck since integrated benchmark are generally not using the most CPU bound scene), but recommand different CPU for single/dual/tri/quad GPU seems a non-sense for me.
Majesticii - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Damn. How can you call this a CPU comparisson with data like this. The games are run at such extreme values that in no way they represent the impact of a CPU. Sleeping dogs is just 4 graphs with 28fps, how can any respected researcher show this data without severe shame. To add insult to injury, the vast majority seems to think this is how CPU tests are done and call it a nice review. Literally my heart sank as i read through these comments. Noone (except a few ignored), not even the reviewers has a clue what they're on about. This way of CPU-reviewing in games needs to stop. This isn't just uninformative, it's worse; It's completely misleading. Test games at 800x600 low settings, and pay no mind to those people calling for "real-world benchmarks". Stay true to what's real, instead of appealing to the community.3Ball - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Forgive me if this is pointed out in the article and I have missed it, but it is worth pointing out. Battlefield 4 will use up to 8 cores/threads. My i7-860 @ 4.0ghz with hyperthreading is outperforming a friends Ivy bridge (3570k) at 4.4ghz without hyperthreading, so much so that my frames are better using a GTX680 against his GTX780.This could be the product of the "beta", but I do believe it is a sign of things to come. The new consoles are most likely going to influence multithreaded performance greatly considering the lower sinlge thread performance present in the systems.
I have been planning on rebuilding with haswell early next year and was planning on getting a 4670k, but have now changed that decision to going with a 4770k due to this experience. Just my two cents. Cheers!