Choosing a Gaming CPU October 2013: i7-4960X, i5-4670K, Nehalem and Intel Update
by Ian Cutress on October 3, 2013 10:05 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 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
Similar to Metro, pure dual core CPUs seem best avoided when pushing a high resolution with a single GPU. The Haswell CPUs seem to be near the top due to their IPC advantage.
Two 7970s
When running dual AMD GPUs only the top AMD chips seem to click on to the tail of Intel, with the hex-core CPUs taking top spots. Again there's no real change moving from 4670K to 4770K, and even the Nehalem CPUs keep up within 4% of the top spots
Three 7970s
At three GPUs the 4670K seems to provide the equivalent grunt to the 4770K, though more cores and more lanes seems to be the order of the day. Moving from a hybrid CPU/PCH x8/x8 + x4 lane allocation to a pure CPU allocation (x8/x4/x4) merits a 30 FPS rise in itself. The Nehalem CPUs, without NF200 support, seem to be on the back foot performing worse than Piledriver.
One 580
On the NVIDIA side, one GPU performs similarly across the board in our test.
Two 580s
When it comes to dual NVIDIA GPUs, ideally the latest AMD architecture and anything above a dual core Intel Sandy Bridge processor is enough to hit 100 FPS.
Dirt3 Conclusion
Our big variations occured on the AMD GPU side where it was clear that above two GPUs that perhaps moving from Nehalem might bring a boost to frame rates. The 4670K is still on par with the 4770K in our testing, and the i5-4430 seemed to be on a similar line most of the way but was down a peg on tri-GPU.
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CrystalBay - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
"Watch Dogs" coming on PC requires a octo-core or better for Ultra settings.jimhsu - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
Yes to strategy games. Supreme Commander (the original, not the horrible "2" version), 80km maps, 8 players, 2000 unit limit, replay. Stuff like that.You could also throw in some sandbox games; TES is a good choice for its many CPU constrained situations, GTA5 possibly, ... (results may vary depending on threading tweaks).
romrunning - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Why is the i3-3225 missing from most of the CPU benchmarks? From the beginning of that webpage, it doesn't appear until "Explicit Finite Difference Grid Solver (2D)".IanCutress - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
It was one of the first CPUs I tested and I only focused on the GPU results at that time - I ran my SystemCompute benchmark just to see what it was like. I have not gone back to retest as of yet, though on the platform refresh I'll make sure to add the numbers.Ian
crimson117 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
> It is possible to consider the non-IGP versions of the A8-5600K, such as the FX-4xxx variant or the Athlon X4 750K. But as we have not had these chips in to test, it would be unethical to suggest them without having data to back them up. Watch this space, we have processors in the list to test.I think you should make this a priority - one could save ~$20 with the 750K, which can make a big difference on a low budget.
Kai Robinson - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Why choose the P965 chipset for an LGA775 motherboard, instead of the P35 or P45 chipsets? And why no mention of the Q9650?DanNeely - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
For something that old testing came down to what Ian and the hardware vendors were able to scavenge up. A 965 and 9400 on the shelf somewhere beat a p45 and 9650 that need bought.cosminmcm - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
No, it doesn't. That processor (low frequency, half the cache) on that motherboard (no pcie 2.0) really doesn't do Core 2 Quad justice. A top model would probably beat (in my opinion it would certainly beat) similarly clocked Phenom 2 processors and be higher on the ladder.beggerking@yahoo.com - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
thats surprising... after all these years, i5-2500k still is a beast of a CPU...dishayu - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
"all these" = 2.