Choosing a Gaming CPU October 2013: i7-4960X, i5-4670K, Nehalem and Intel Update
by Ian Cutress on October 3, 2013 10:05 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
Civ5 seems to love IPC, with our Haswell and Ivy-E CPUs all near the top. All our PCIe 3.0 combinations hit 80 FPS or above.
Two 7970s
On multiple AMD GPUs the PCIe 3.0 combiantions get the biggest boost, along with anything using a PLX or NF200 chip to boost lane allocations. There seems to be a barrier around 100-108 FPS that only Haswell and Ivy Bridge CPUs are moving over, except the one 990X result. The i7-4960X takes top spot, and the i7-920 is 45 FPS behind - almost 1/3. The i5-4430 is lower than expected, showing little scaling after the first GPU.
Three 7970s
Civ5 has terrible scaling behond one GPU let alone two, meaning most of our tri-GPU results are similar to dual GPU. Again, anything purely PCIe 3.0 seems to get the biggest boost, with the 4670K still fighting alongside the 4770K.
One 580
For a single GTX 580 the top spots above 80 FPS are all on the side of Sandy Bridge and above, with Nehalem scoring below this marker. It seems that dual core CPUs take a bashing, suggesting a quad core minimum.
Two 580s
More NVIDIA GPUs for Civ5 means more cores and more lanes where possible, with the i7-4960X taking the top spot. This is almost 40 FPS higher than the i5-4430 and the Nehalem CPUs. The 4670K doesn't miss a beat against the i7-4770K.
Civilization V Conclusion
We see some of our biggest variations in CPU performance in Civilization V, where it is clear that a modern Intel processor (Ivy/Haswell), at least quad core, is needed to get the job done for the higher frame rates. Arguably any high-end AMD processor will perform >60 FPS in our testing here as well, perhaps making the point moot. For single CPU, the i5-4430 performs well in Civ5, though in dual GPU the i5-4670K might be a better investment.
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Harry Lloyd - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I am sorry to say that, but I never expected to see a completely useless test at AnandTech. 99% of singleplayer games are fine with a Core i3, 99.9% of all games are fine with a stock Core i5, but there is that 0.1 % that is not, and it is mostly multiplayer.Go look at the BF4 beta tests, where even a Haswell i7 is a bottleneck. Even BF3 muliplayer performs better with a modern i5 than with a 1156/1366 CPU.
And with next-gen games right around the corner, the situation might change drastically with more and more games needing a very fast quad core CPU.
Dribble - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Agree. What's the point of running time demos (need less cpu grunt) on single player games (need less cpu grunt) at very high res/settings (gpu bound max fps) with no min fps (so weak cpu bottlenecks hidden).Makes those with weak cpu's feel better and leads to lots of "surprising my AMD processor is good enough" comments, but it actually for many people it's not.
just4U - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Personally I'd say that's a load of BS. I work with a lot of different setups, and unless your an enthusiast the average gamer really can't tell the difference. Their coming off of older setups already so unless your cutting a ton of corners you can easily go the AMD route for a good majority of them.glugglug - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I don't understand the recommendation for "at least quad core" for Civilization V.Having looked at task manager during the game, it quickly becomes apparent that the game is effectively entirely single threaded. It doesn't even have a separate thread for video rendering vs. AI, or if it does, they completely block each other. Setting the CPU affinity to keep the game on a single core makes absolutely no difference in that game.
JPForums - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I've got to say, I'm impressed with the common sense approach, both to the setup of a benchmark of this size, and some of the conclusions I'm reading.
I'm interested to see how many AMD processor's end up above the "good enough to not bottleneck the GPU setup" line. I wonder if they will be cost effective vs and Intel setup.
A future experiment of interest to me is whether or not more budget oriented chipsets significantly hinder performance. I guess the question that's on my mind is "Is there any situation in which a faster processor on a board with lesser capabilities would be outperformed by a (somewhat) slower processor on a board with greater capabilities?" Or put a different way, "How much processing power is it logical to sacrifice in pursuit of a better platform (I.E. more PCIe lanes for multiGPU setups)?"
KaarlisK - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Could you please test a Haswell Pentium? In comparison to the i3, it has only slight lower frequency, but no HT, and is way cheaper.ShieTar - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I second this request. From the limited amount of tests I could find so far it seems that saving money on the CPU and investing it into the GPU is the way to go for most games. That seems to include even seemingly unbalanced combinations like a Pentium and a GTX 780 beating a Quad-Core and a GTX 770.Flunk - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I was quite surprised to see the Sandy Bridge chips hanging in there. There doesn't seem to be much need to upgrade if you have a i5-2500K or i7-2600k, especially if you factor in how easy they are to overclock for 4.5Ghz and sometimes beyond.just4U - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Wasn't much of a bump for ivyB or Haswell really.. Put all three on a table ("STOCK") /w similar hardware and I'd lay money on 99.9% not being able to tell the difference. CPU's have been going sideways in performance rather than upwards. (My opinion..) for sometime now.What's interesting is Socket1366 cpu's are finally beginning to show some age..
A5 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Performance hasn't been increasing (as much) because of the focus on power consumption in laptops. That and AMD's utterly noncompetitive products at the high end.I could 100% tell you which system was which if I had a Kill-A-Watt, though.