Choosing a Gaming CPU October 2013: i7-4960X, i5-4670K, Nehalem and Intel Update
by Ian Cutress on October 3, 2013 10:05 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
Civ5 seems to love IPC, with our Haswell and Ivy-E CPUs all near the top. All our PCIe 3.0 combinations hit 80 FPS or above.
Two 7970s
On multiple AMD GPUs the PCIe 3.0 combiantions get the biggest boost, along with anything using a PLX or NF200 chip to boost lane allocations. There seems to be a barrier around 100-108 FPS that only Haswell and Ivy Bridge CPUs are moving over, except the one 990X result. The i7-4960X takes top spot, and the i7-920 is 45 FPS behind - almost 1/3. The i5-4430 is lower than expected, showing little scaling after the first GPU.
Three 7970s
Civ5 has terrible scaling behond one GPU let alone two, meaning most of our tri-GPU results are similar to dual GPU. Again, anything purely PCIe 3.0 seems to get the biggest boost, with the 4670K still fighting alongside the 4770K.
One 580
For a single GTX 580 the top spots above 80 FPS are all on the side of Sandy Bridge and above, with Nehalem scoring below this marker. It seems that dual core CPUs take a bashing, suggesting a quad core minimum.
Two 580s
More NVIDIA GPUs for Civ5 means more cores and more lanes where possible, with the i7-4960X taking the top spot. This is almost 40 FPS higher than the i5-4430 and the Nehalem CPUs. The 4670K doesn't miss a beat against the i7-4770K.
Civilization V Conclusion
We see some of our biggest variations in CPU performance in Civilization V, where it is clear that a modern Intel processor (Ivy/Haswell), at least quad core, is needed to get the job done for the higher frame rates. Arguably any high-end AMD processor will perform >60 FPS in our testing here as well, perhaps making the point moot. For single CPU, the i5-4430 performs well in Civ5, though in dual GPU the i5-4670K might be a better investment.
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BOMBOVA - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
This article, prompted me to pull my P6T Asus mb out and replace it with a MSI 7666 which holds the 1366 I7 chip, i put in a 960 over my 920 , and clocked it up to 3.8x so far, and with my Nvidia 470 gpu, n raid 0 2x120 Gbyte ssd's things are rocking along, really good, it seems compared to the high end stuff presented here. , i had to install a cheap Syba controller card, on the Marvell chip set, set to 32 kbits, over 64 kbs, better data storage efficiency over speed, n a 4 channel usb 3.0 card, and it is good to go. , since i bought good , near new , used, i am in it for say half, price. and it works for me, i had a tough go, with microsoft critical patch updates. flooded on oct. 8th, n 15th. so my system restore points, crashed, , i am now set on NO automatic downloads, and all is good, " this is like a 3 day experience " i don't want to go through again, , enjoyed the article, and comments. good comments, thanks guys and girls. and am looking for the DD$4 stuff n Haswell super processor of 14, or early 15, now on to doing work with my computer :) , Cheers, all , have fun with candies, next, and have a good Xmas, buy yourselves something nice. lets keep america working, rtg. Vancouver CanadaWHISP - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Your review is talking about recommendations based on # of GPU's but seems to make the assumption GPU = graphics card. I have a GTX 690 and am looking to possibly upgrade my cpu/mobo, what would your recommendation be keeping in mind in the future I may buy another gtx690 to boost performance? What CPU PLX or non PLX combo do I need to satisfy two 690's in sli?Gastec - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
You don't need PLX with dual-SLI, you don't even need a second GTX 690 :P I myself would never ever consider spending so much money on a video card, but I guess you play on multiple 30'' monitors with the maximum available resolution. Each with it's own. If you insist, then get the Intel i7-4960X, a socket 2011 X79 Asus motherboard with a PLX chip on it and 3 Nvidia GTX Titan. That would surely give you at least 150 FPS in any game except those that are specifically designed not to give more than what the designers want, like Crysis.Gastec - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
I'm on a i7-860 since 2010 and HT was also a decision factor for buying it. But over the years I don't think HT has helped me that much with what I did and do on the PC. So now, after reading this article -which is very helpful- I think a i5-4670(K) with it's $100 lower price difference will suffice. Unless...upcoming games like The Elder Scrolls Online(that I want to play) will make use of HT, but I don't think so. Does anyone know of any game that makes good use of Hyper-Threading, or at least 4 cores?BlackOmega - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
Goddammit. 6 years I spent without upgrading my rig, now I come back to anandtech and I can't understand one a single one of those benchmarks.Hell, WHERE ARE THE CPU CLOCK SPEEDS? How the hell Intel and AMD expect me to understand this gibberish the use to name their processors, I want to compare IPC on every bench I see, I want to see em every test how the ghz of one CPU compares to another. I'm not going to read those benchs with a cpu dictionary trying to interpret every name on this list, nor have I a good enough memory to remember what CPU have more cache ou clock speed than the other as described in the first page.
6 years I stood away from the hardware scene, now I came back and I can't understand anything.
/frustrated
BlackOmega - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
ps: AMD and Intel naming scheme suck, give us back clock speed.oranos - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - link
2500k best value gaming processor of all time :)