Choosing a Gaming CPU: Single + Multi-GPU at 1440p, April 2013
by Ian Cutress on May 8, 2013 10:00 AM ESTSleeping Dogs
While not necessarily a game on everybody’s lips, Sleeping Dogs is a strenuous game with a pretty hardcore benchmark that scales well with additional GPU power. The team over at Adrenaline.com.br are supreme for making an easy to use benchmark GUI, allowing a numpty like me to charge ahead with a set of four 1440p runs with maximum graphical settings.
One 7970
Sleeping Dogs seems to tax the CPU so little that the only CPU that falls behind by the smallest of margins is an E6400 (and the G465 which would not run the benchmark). Intel visually takes all the top spots, but AMD is all in the mix with less than 0.5 FPS splitting an X2-555 BE and an i7-3770K.
Two 7970s
A split starts to develop between Intel and AMD again, although you would be hard pressed to choose between the CPUs as everything above an i3-3225 scores 50-56 FPS. The X2-555 BE unfortunately drops off, suggesting that Sleeping Dogs is a fan of the cores and this little CPU is a lacking.
Three 7970s
At three GPUs the gap is there, with the best Intel processors over 10% ahead of the best AMD. Neither PCIe lane allocation or memory seems to be playing a part, just a case of threads then single thread performance.
Four 7970s
Despite our Beast machine having double the threads, an i7-3960X in PCIe 3.0 mode takes top spot.
It is worth noting the scaling in Sleeping Dogs. The i7-3960X moved from 28.2 -> 56.23 -> 80.85 -> 101.15 FPS, achieving +71% increase of a single card moving from 3 to 4. This speaks of a well written game more than anything.
One 580
There is almost nothing to separate every CPU when using a single GTX 580.
Two 580s
Same thing with two GTX 580s – even an X2-555 BE is within 1 FPS (3%) of an i7-3960X.
Sleeping Dogs Conclusion
Due to the successful scaling and GPU limited nature of Sleeping Dogs, almost any CPU you throw at it will get the same result. When you move into three GPUs or more territory, it seems that having the single thread CPU speed of an Intel processor gets a few more FPS at the end of the day.
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IanCutress - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
I have those three CPUs in the 'ones I want for the next update'. I'm of course going to try and get them :)Ian
boulard83 - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
Thanks for the answer Ian ! :)whyso - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
A8 for single gpu gaming with a 7970? Really? Just because your limited run of 4 games did not show anything wrong with the a8 does not mean that the a8 is going to perform properly with other games. Play Hitman with it and a 7970 or multiplayer BF3, then see if you are still going to recommend the a8.HalloweenJack - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
anand have run BF3 with it and its perfectly fine.whyso - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Multiplayer?Spunjji - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
What's with all the people in here who don't understand statistics?! You can't do scientifically rigorous multiplayer testing and produce useful results. The time required alone to test... the mind boggles.airmantharp - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Keep in mind that the article's title doesn't start with 'Statistical Analysis of...', but rather 'Choosing a...'.That's important. While you can't 'properly' benchmark multiplayer games, you can make reasonable inferences and use them to support your conclusions. The reality being exposed here is that Ian's benchmarks are really only useful for choosing a CPU for single-player games, not that there's a damn thing wrong with that.
However, it's not unreasonable for people to point out that the gaming situations requiring real CPU power to maintain playability are not covered in a 'Choosing a Gaming CPU' article.
felang - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
+ 1,000,000frozen ox - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
In a multiplayer situation, you'll likely get similar ratios of performance, just lower average FPS. It's pretty easy to assume an X2 or i3 or other dual core is not going to hold up well, as these results support. But how in the hell are you supposed to have a baseline to compare systems in a multiplayer scenario? Do you have any idea what a cluster fuck that would be, even to compare just one game across only two systems, let alone as many as this review has?This review helps CPU buyers because they can look at these results, and multi-GPU setups, and see where the bottleneck will occur first. That doesn't mean there won't be more bottlenecks, but at least you can see which part of your system you should upgrade first.
felang - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Agree 100%. 4 games is not enough to reach a conclusion (dated ones at that). An A8 definitely is not going to cut it in more demanding games.