Choosing a Gaming CPU October 2013: i7-4960X, i5-4670K, Nehalem and Intel Update
by Ian Cutress on October 3, 2013 10:05 AM ESTSleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs is a strenuous game with a pretty hardcore benchmark that scales well with additional GPU power when SSAO is enabled. The team at Adrenaline.com.br is 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
With one AMD GPU, Sleeping Dogs is similar across the board.
Two 7970s
On dual AMD GPUs, there seems to be a little kink with those running x16+x4 lane allocations, although this is a minor difference.
Three 7970s
Between an i7-920 and an i5-4430 we get a 7 FPS difference, almost 10%, showing the change over CPU generations. In fact at this level anything above that i7-920 gives 70 FPS+, but the hex-core Ivy-E takes top spot at ~81 FPS.
One 580
0.4 FPS between Core2Duo and Haswell. For one NVIDIA GPU, CPU does not seem to matter(!)
Two 580s
Similarly with dual NVIDIA GPUs, with less than ~3% between top and bottom results.
Sleeping Dogs Conclusion
While the NVIDIA results did not change much between different CPUs, any modern processor seems to hit the high notes when it comes to multi-GPU Sleeping Dogs.
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pandemonium - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
It doesn't, because it doesn't exactly capture the dynamics of displaying several player models at once. It does a decent job at displaying several preprogrammed models at once.The FF benchmarks have been a fairly low estimation of actual game performance when it comes to more demanding instances of raids and large crowds. With that said, they do better than most other canned benchmarks for determining the performance of a machine. Given it's consistent testing environment, I guess it wouldn't hurt to use it as a go-to benchmark.
Tormeh - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
But where is the Civilization V end-of-turn benchmark? I don't care about the frame rates, I care about the times I'm staring at the screen waiting for the game to finish its calculations!defiler99 - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
I don't normally comment (as the reviews are generally excellent), but I was actually shocked to see the choice of graphics card(s) for this roundup. Nobody buying a gaming CPU is going to have stuff that slow, right? So many of the tests result in framerates under 60fps, etc.DPOverLord - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Be great to see this with the new 4930K, Titan @ 1600pdennphill - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Learn to write in the English language - or at least use the grammar checker. I wince reading this article. (But thanks for the effort. Content is OK)Hrel - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
I'm finally in the process of building a new desktop, mini-ITX. Gonna use a 4570S CPU. Primary duties will be media streaming but I'll game on it too. The computer it's replacing? 650i SLI chipset based computer running an E8400 Core 2 duo. I can still max out Mass Effect games with no issue. Minecraft maxes out the CPU but that's just because Java sucks. So that old 2007 era computer is still a viable gaming machine with the GTX460 in it. Talk of needing to replace a Nehalem CPU soon seems kind of absurd to me. But then again I have no interest in Far Cry or Crysis.markthema3 - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
What about The Witcher 2 for a benchmark? I have yet to see anything be more intense than that game's Ubersampling option.SeriousTodd - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
What are the disadvantages of buying a 4770K?Enterprise24 - Saturday, October 19, 2013 - link
Wanna see Total War Rome II in real time tactical mode (Probably the most CPU intensive game).boozzer - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
well damn. it seems like if I am single gpu gaming at 1080p, cpu doesn't matter much at all? a 5800k would do the job well enough.question: will aa amd 5800k bottleneck a gtx780? or a 290x? in 1080p. or it doesn't matter at all? since the resolution is so low. I am sure I am staying in 1080p for at least 5 more years. and my current pc parts are really old(c2d e8500 + 460 1gb) and thinking of upgrading. I am sure a 780 or 290x would last 5 or more years, so kinda want a matching cpu.