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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A5 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
To finish that thought, I do wish Intel still had some mainstream (aka cheaper) 130W CPUs on their normal platform.just4U - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Yep.. you should also be able to tell the difference simply by measuring heat.. The SandyB's tend to run a little cooler than the IvyB although they must have done something in Haswell since it does run cooler in normal operation.. but heats up rather quickly under load just like the IvyB. But on the surface their all fairly comparable I think anyway.brucek2 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
My main system is still rocking an i7-920. These charts help explain rationally what my brain must have somehow known subconsciously: that there's not yet much reason to upgrade. (I'm discounting the +50% gains on the CPU benchmarks, because my i7-920 is overclocked, making the gains much less. And I'm rarely CPU bound for long.)I would like a 6GB/sec SATA controller some day. My poor SSDs must be very frustrated with their host.
Senti - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I'm in a similar boat: using i7-930 @4GHz. Seriously, who runs those wonderful Nehalem CPUs on default clocks when they easily overclock 1.5x? And with this overclock advantage of the newer CPUs is really underwhelming: far less than i7-920 line here shows.As for SSD, I use PCI-E based one and it's probably still faster or at least on par with newest SATA ones.
A5 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
My 920 refused to go over 3 GHz after I updated the BIOS one day. Before that I still only got 3.5 or so.My 4770K is a crappy overclocker, too. Maybe it's just me :-p
cbrownx88 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
A5 - was your 920 a C0 stepping? Mine is a D0, which at the time of purchase I remember going way out of my way to check the stepping before pulling the triggerBOMBOVA - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
i put in a value pcie 6 Gbs, Syba controller card, only capable of 32k or 64k blocks, but is value at less than fifty bucks. works well,ninjaquick - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Isn't Win7 old? Benchmarks like these should be run on the latest Windows, at least IMHO.brucek2 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Hasn't Win8 been rejected by large numbers of desktop enthusiasts & gamers? Its adoption rate on older platforms like many included here is pitiful.Fortunately my sense from other articles is that its not likely to have made a significant difference either way?
DanNeely - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
The Steam HW survey has W8 at 16.4% vs 66.8% for W7.I suspect W7 is being used in order to keep results directly comparable to historic results.