Choosing a Gaming CPU at 1440p: Adding in Haswell
by Ian Cutress on June 4, 2013 10:00 AM ESTDiRT 3
DiRT 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters. DiRT 3 also falls under the list of ‘games with a handy benchmark mode’. In previous testing, DiRT 3 has always seemed to love cores, memory, GPUs, PCIe lane bandwidth, everything. The small issue with DiRT 3 is that depending on the benchmark mode tested, the benchmark launcher is not indicative of game play per se, citing numbers higher than actually observed. Despite this, the benchmark mode also includes an element of uncertainty, by actually driving a race, rather than a predetermined sequence of events such as Metro 2033. This in essence should make the benchmark more variable, but we take repeated runs in order to smooth this out. Using the benchmark mode, DiRT 3 is run at 1440p with Ultra graphical settings. Results are reported as the average frame rate across four runs.
One 7970
While the testing shows a pretty dynamic split between Intel and AMD at around the 82 FPS mark, all processors are roughly +/- 1 or 2 around this mark, meaning that even an A8-5600K will feel like the i7-3770K. The 4770K has a small but ultimately unnoticable advantage in gameplay.
Two 7970s
When reaching two GPUs, the Intel/AMD split is getting larger. The FX-8350 puts up a good fight against the i5-2500K and i7-2600K, but the top i7-3770K offers almost 20 FPS more and 40 more than either the X6-1100T or FX-8150.
Three 7970s
Moving up to three GPUs and DiRT 3 is jumping on the PCIe bandwagon, enjoying bandwidth and cores as much as possible. Despite this, the gap to the best AMD processor is growing – almost 70 FPS between the FX-8350 and the i7-3770K. The 4770K is slightly ahead of the 3770K at x8/x4/x4, suggesting a small IPC difference,
Four 7970s
At four GPUs, bandwidth wins out, and the PLX effect on the UP7 seems to cause a small dip compared to the native lane allocation on the RIVE (there could also be some influence due to 6 cores over 4).
One 580
Similar to the one 7970 setup, using one GTX 580 has a split between AMD and Intel that is quite noticeable. Despite the split, all the CPUs perform within 1.3 FPS, meaning no big difference.
Two 580s
Moving to dual GTX 580s, and while the split gets bigger, processors like the i3-3225 are starting to lag behind. The difference between the best AMD and best Intel processor is only 2 FPS though, nothing to write home about.
DiRT 3 conclusion
Much like Metro 2033, DiRT 3 has a GPU barrier and until you hit that mark, the choice of CPU makes no real difference at all. In this case, at two-way 7970s, choosing a quad core Intel processor does the business over the FX-8350 by a noticeable gap that continues to grow as more GPUs are added, (assuming you want more than 120 FPS).
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IanCutress - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
Hi Ternie,To answer your questions:
(1) Unfortunately for a lot of users, even DIY not just system integrators, they leave the motherboard untouched (even at default memory, not XMP). So choosing that motherboard with MCT might make a difference in performance. Motherboards without MCT are also different between themselves, depending on how quickly they respond to CPU loading and ramp up the speed, and then if they push it back down to idle immediately in a low period or keep the high turbo for a few seconds in case the CPU loading kicks back in.
2) This is a typo - I was adding too many + CPU results at the same time and got carried away.
3) While people have requested more 'modern' games, there are a couple of issues. If I release something that has just come out, the older drivers I have to use for consistency will either perform poorly or not scale (case in point, Sleeping Dogs on Catalyst 12.3). If I am then locked into those drivers for a year, users will complain that this review uses old drivers that don't have the latest performance increases (such as 8% a month for new titles not optimized) and that my FPS numbers are unbalanced. That being said, I am looking at what to do for 2014 and games - it has been suggested that I put in Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider, perhaps cut one or two. If there are any suggestions, please email me with thoughts. I still have to keep the benchmarks regular and have to run without attention (timedemos with AI are great), otherwise other reviews will end up being neglected. Doing this sort of testing could easily be a full time job, which in my case should be on motherboards and this was something extra I thought would be a good exercise.
Michaelangel007 - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
It is sad to poor journalism in the form of excuses in an otherwise excellent article. :-/1. Any review sites that make excuses for why they ignore FCAT just highlights that they don't _really_ understand the importance of _accurate_ frame stats.
2. Us hardcore games can _easily_ tell the difference betwen 60 Hz and 30 Hz. I bought a Titan to play games at 1080p @ 100+ Hz on the Asus VG248QE using nVidia's LightBoost to eliminate ghosting. You do your readers a dis-service by again not understand the issue.
3. Focusing on 1440 is largely useless as it means people can't directly compare how their Real-World (tm) system compares to the benchmarks.
4. If your benchmarks are not _exactly_ reproducible across multiple systems you are doing it wrong. Name & Shame games that don't allow gamers to run benchmarks. Use "standard" cut-scenes for _consistency_.
It is sad to see the quality of a "tech" article gloss and trivial important details.
AssBall - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
Judging by your excellent command of English, I don't think you could identify a decent technical article if it slapped you upside the head and banged your sister.Razorbak86 - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
LOL. I have to agree. :)Michaelangel007 - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
There is a reason Tom's Hardware, Hard OCP, guru3d, etc. uses FCAT.I feel sad that you and AnandTech tech writers are to stupid to understand the importance of high frame rates (100 Hz vs 60 Hz vs 30 Hz), frame time variance, 99 percentile, proper CPU-GPU load balancing, and micro stuttering. One of these days when you learn how to spell 'ad hominem' you might actually have something _constructive_ to add to the discussion. Shooting the messenger instead of focusing on the message shows you are still a immature little shit that doesn't know anything about GPUs.
Ignoring the issue (no matter how badly communicated) doesn't make it go away.
What are _you_ doing to help raise awareness about sloppy journalism?
DaveninCali - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
Why doesn't this long article include AMD's latest APU, the Richland 6800K? Heck you can even buy it now on Newegg.ninjaquick - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
The data collected in this article is likely a week or two old. Richland was not available at that time. It takes an extremely long time to do this kind of testing.DaveninCali - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
Richland was launched today. Haswell was launched two days ago. Neither CPU was available two weeks ago. It all depends on review units being released to review websites. Either Richland was left out because it wasn't different enough from Trinity to matter or AMD did not hand out review units.majorleague - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
Here is a youtube link showing 3dmark11 and windows index rating for the 4770k 3.5ghz Haswell. Not overclocked.Youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Yo2A__1Xw
Chicken76 - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
Ian, in the table on page 2 there's a mistake: the Phenom II X4 960T has a stock speed of 3 GHz (you listed 3.2 GHz) and it does turbo up to 3.4 GHz.