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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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 :)