Sleeping 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

Sleeping Dogs - One 7970, 1440p, Max Settings

With one AMD GPU, Sleeping Dogs is similar across the board.

Two 7970s

Sleeping Dogs - Two 7970s, 1440p, Max Settings

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

Sleeping Dogs - Three 7970, 1440p, Max Settings

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

Sleeping Dogs - One 580, 1440p, Max Settings

0.4 FPS between Core2Duo and Haswell.  For one NVIDIA GPU, CPU does not seem to matter(!)

Two 580s

Sleeping Dogs - Two 580s, 1440p, Max Settings

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.

GPU Benchmarks: Civilization V Final Results, Conclusions and Recommendations
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  • Harry Lloyd - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link

    I am sorry to say that, but I never expected to see a completely useless test at AnandTech. 99% of singleplayer games are fine with a Core i3, 99.9% of all games are fine with a stock Core i5, but there is that 0.1 % that is not, and it is mostly multiplayer.
    Go look at the BF4 beta tests, where even a Haswell i7 is a bottleneck. Even BF3 muliplayer performs better with a modern i5 than with a 1156/1366 CPU.

    And with next-gen games right around the corner, the situation might change drastically with more and more games needing a very fast quad core CPU.
  • Dribble - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link

    Agree. What's the point of running time demos (need less cpu grunt) on single player games (need less cpu grunt) at very high res/settings (gpu bound max fps) with no min fps (so weak cpu bottlenecks hidden).

    Makes those with weak cpu's feel better and leads to lots of "surprising my AMD processor is good enough" comments, but it actually for many people it's not.
  • just4U - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link

    Personally I'd say that's a load of BS. I work with a lot of different setups, and unless your an enthusiast the average gamer really can't tell the difference. Their coming off of older setups already so unless your cutting a ton of corners you can easily go the AMD route for a good majority of them.
  • glugglug - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link

    I don't understand the recommendation for "at least quad core" for Civilization V.

    Having looked at task manager during the game, it quickly becomes apparent that the game is effectively entirely single threaded. It doesn't even have a separate thread for video rendering vs. AI, or if it does, they completely block each other. Setting the CPU affinity to keep the game on a single core makes absolutely no difference in that game.
  • JPForums - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link

    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.


    I've got to say, I'm impressed with the common sense approach, both to the setup of a benchmark of this size, and some of the conclusions I'm reading.

    I'm interested to see how many AMD processor's end up above the "good enough to not bottleneck the GPU setup" line. I wonder if they will be cost effective vs and Intel setup.

    A future experiment of interest to me is whether or not more budget oriented chipsets significantly hinder performance. I guess the question that's on my mind is "Is there any situation in which a faster processor on a board with lesser capabilities would be outperformed by a (somewhat) slower processor on a board with greater capabilities?" Or put a different way, "How much processing power is it logical to sacrifice in pursuit of a better platform (I.E. more PCIe lanes for multiGPU setups)?"
  • KaarlisK - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link

    Could you please test a Haswell Pentium? In comparison to the i3, it has only slight lower frequency, but no HT, and is way cheaper.
  • ShieTar - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link

    I second this request. From the limited amount of tests I could find so far it seems that saving money on the CPU and investing it into the GPU is the way to go for most games. That seems to include even seemingly unbalanced combinations like a Pentium and a GTX 780 beating a Quad-Core and a GTX 770.
  • Flunk - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link

    I was quite surprised to see the Sandy Bridge chips hanging in there. There doesn't seem to be much need to upgrade if you have a i5-2500K or i7-2600k, especially if you factor in how easy they are to overclock for 4.5Ghz and sometimes beyond.
  • just4U - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link

    Wasn't much of a bump for ivyB or Haswell really.. Put all three on a table ("STOCK") /w similar hardware and I'd lay money on 99.9% not being able to tell the difference. CPU's have been going sideways in performance rather than upwards. (My opinion..) for sometime now.

    What's interesting is Socket1366 cpu's are finally beginning to show some age..
  • A5 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link

    Performance hasn't been increasing (as much) because of the focus on power consumption in laptops. That and AMD's utterly noncompetitive products at the high end.

    I could 100% tell you which system was which if I had a Kill-A-Watt, though.

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