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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
242 Comments
View All Comments
Pheesh - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
"2) Min FPS falls under the issue of statistical reporting. If you run a game benchmark (Dirt3) and in one scene of genuine gameplay there is a 6-car pileup, it would show the min FPS of that one scene. So if that happened on an FX-8350 and min-FPS was down to 20 FPS when others didn't have this scene were around 90 FPS for minimum, how is that easily reported and conveyed in a reasonable way to the public? A certain amount of acknowledgement is made on the fact that we're taking overall average numbers, and that users would apply brain matter with regard to an 'average minimum'."The point of a benchmark is to provide a consistent test that can be replicated exactly on multiple systems. If you're not able to do that then you aren't really benchmarking anything. That's why 99% of games are not tested in multiplayer but rather single player in experiences they can strictly control. (i.e. with test demos). If for some reason the game engine is just that unpredictable even in a strictly controlled test situation you could do multiple trials to take a minimum average.
Minimum FPS is an extremely necessary test and its easily possible to do. Other sites include it with all of their gaming benchmarks.
Spunjji - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
That doesn't necessarily mean that the numbers they give you are worth a damn...beginner99 - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
"Minimum FPS is an extremely necessary test and its easily possible to do. Other sites include it with all of their gaming benchmarks."Or you could do 5 runs, discard the worst and best and average the rest (min, max average FPS).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truncated_mean
But yeah statistics is extremely complex and error prone. I once read that a large amount of statistics in scientific publications have errors to a certain degree (but not necessarily making the results and conclusions completely wrong!!!)
Or if you actually know such a "special scene" can happen, discard all test were it happened.
beginner99 - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
The main issue here is actually available time or the amount of work. Averages over 3 aren't really that great. if you could run everything 100 times such "special scenes" would be irrelevant.mapesdhs - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
Ian,
P55 boards can offer very good RAID0 performance with SSDs, or more importantly
RAID1 or RAID10 (I hope those with RAID0 have some kind of sensible backup
strategy). See my results:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/ssd_tests.txt
One will obviously get more out of newer SSDs using native SATA3 mbds for the
sequential tests, but newer tech won't help 4K numbers that much. In reality few
would notice the difference between each type of setup. This is especially true
given how many later mbds use the really awful Marvell controllers for most of the
SATA3 ports (such a shame only a couple are normally controlled by the Intel or
other chipset); performance would be better with an older Intel SATA2. I expect
many just use the non-Marvell ports only if they can.
What matters is to have an SSD setup of some kind in the 1st place. My P55 system
(875K) boots very quick with a Vertex3, gives a higher 3DMark13 physics score than
a 3570K, and GPU performance with two 2x 560Ti is better than a stock 680. It's
really the previous gen of hw which can present more serious bottlenecks (S775,
AM2, DDR2, etc.), but even then results can often be surprisingly decent, eg. oc'd
Ph2 965, etc.
Also, RAID0 with SSDs often negates the potential of small I/O performance.
Depending on the game/task, this means SSD RAID0 might at times be slower than a
single good SSD.
Dribble is right in that respect, improvements are often not as significant as
people think or expect (I've read sooo many posts from those who have been
disappointed with their upgrades), though it does vary by game, settings, etc.
Games which impose a heavier CPU loading (physics, multiplayer, AI etc.) might see
more useful speedups from a better CPU, but not always. There are so many factors
involved, it can become complicated very quickly.
Ian.
Felix_Ram - Sunday, May 26, 2013 - link
Your 120 hz screen has a frame latency of about 8 ms. Meaning it effectively can't show you more than 60 new fps. Anything above that it shows you the same pixel twice. So basically, you are watching reruns, and anyone who states that he can tell a difference between 60 fps and +60fps is basically kidding himself.http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=23049...
http://forums.steamgames.com/forums/showthread.php...
Felix_Ram - Sunday, May 26, 2013 - link
Can't edit. A screen latency of about 16 ms*tehh4ck3r - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
You should test a Phenom II X4-965 and a i5-3570K.B-Unit1701 - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
And throw in a 45nm Core2, preferably over 3.0Ghzboulard83 - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Really great review and testing. As for the CPU to add to the list, you could add some very cheap solution like the G1610 and G2020 too see how these 40-60$ chip perform againts all other chip or simply compare to an older E6700 like the one on the test. Other than that, you could also add a 3820 in the testing simply to lower the cost of the X79 setup, making it a little more mainstream VS a 600$ 3930k.