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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
137 Comments
View All Comments
pandemonium - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
It doesn't, because it doesn't exactly capture the dynamics of displaying several player models at once. It does a decent job at displaying several preprogrammed models at once.The FF benchmarks have been a fairly low estimation of actual game performance when it comes to more demanding instances of raids and large crowds. With that said, they do better than most other canned benchmarks for determining the performance of a machine. Given it's consistent testing environment, I guess it wouldn't hurt to use it as a go-to benchmark.
Tormeh - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
But where is the Civilization V end-of-turn benchmark? I don't care about the frame rates, I care about the times I'm staring at the screen waiting for the game to finish its calculations!defiler99 - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
I don't normally comment (as the reviews are generally excellent), but I was actually shocked to see the choice of graphics card(s) for this roundup. Nobody buying a gaming CPU is going to have stuff that slow, right? So many of the tests result in framerates under 60fps, etc.DPOverLord - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Be great to see this with the new 4930K, Titan @ 1600pdennphill - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Learn to write in the English language - or at least use the grammar checker. I wince reading this article. (But thanks for the effort. Content is OK)Hrel - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
I'm finally in the process of building a new desktop, mini-ITX. Gonna use a 4570S CPU. Primary duties will be media streaming but I'll game on it too. The computer it's replacing? 650i SLI chipset based computer running an E8400 Core 2 duo. I can still max out Mass Effect games with no issue. Minecraft maxes out the CPU but that's just because Java sucks. So that old 2007 era computer is still a viable gaming machine with the GTX460 in it. Talk of needing to replace a Nehalem CPU soon seems kind of absurd to me. But then again I have no interest in Far Cry or Crysis.markthema3 - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
What about The Witcher 2 for a benchmark? I have yet to see anything be more intense than that game's Ubersampling option.SeriousTodd - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
What are the disadvantages of buying a 4770K?Enterprise24 - Saturday, October 19, 2013 - link
Wanna see Total War Rome II in real time tactical mode (Probably the most CPU intensive game).boozzer - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
well damn. it seems like if I am single gpu gaming at 1080p, cpu doesn't matter much at all? a 5800k would do the job well enough.question: will aa amd 5800k bottleneck a gtx780? or a 290x? in 1080p. or it doesn't matter at all? since the resolution is so low. I am sure I am staying in 1080p for at least 5 more years. and my current pc parts are really old(c2d e8500 + 460 1gb) and thinking of upgrading. I am sure a 780 or 290x would last 5 or more years, so kinda want a matching cpu.