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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A5 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
To finish that thought, I do wish Intel still had some mainstream (aka cheaper) 130W CPUs on their normal platform.just4U - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Yep.. you should also be able to tell the difference simply by measuring heat.. The SandyB's tend to run a little cooler than the IvyB although they must have done something in Haswell since it does run cooler in normal operation.. but heats up rather quickly under load just like the IvyB. But on the surface their all fairly comparable I think anyway.brucek2 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
My main system is still rocking an i7-920. These charts help explain rationally what my brain must have somehow known subconsciously: that there's not yet much reason to upgrade. (I'm discounting the +50% gains on the CPU benchmarks, because my i7-920 is overclocked, making the gains much less. And I'm rarely CPU bound for long.)I would like a 6GB/sec SATA controller some day. My poor SSDs must be very frustrated with their host.
Senti - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I'm in a similar boat: using i7-930 @4GHz. Seriously, who runs those wonderful Nehalem CPUs on default clocks when they easily overclock 1.5x? And with this overclock advantage of the newer CPUs is really underwhelming: far less than i7-920 line here shows.As for SSD, I use PCI-E based one and it's probably still faster or at least on par with newest SATA ones.
A5 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
My 920 refused to go over 3 GHz after I updated the BIOS one day. Before that I still only got 3.5 or so.My 4770K is a crappy overclocker, too. Maybe it's just me :-p
cbrownx88 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
A5 - was your 920 a C0 stepping? Mine is a D0, which at the time of purchase I remember going way out of my way to check the stepping before pulling the triggerBOMBOVA - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
i put in a value pcie 6 Gbs, Syba controller card, only capable of 32k or 64k blocks, but is value at less than fifty bucks. works well,ninjaquick - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Isn't Win7 old? Benchmarks like these should be run on the latest Windows, at least IMHO.brucek2 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Hasn't Win8 been rejected by large numbers of desktop enthusiasts & gamers? Its adoption rate on older platforms like many included here is pitiful.Fortunately my sense from other articles is that its not likely to have made a significant difference either way?
DanNeely - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
The Steam HW survey has W8 at 16.4% vs 66.8% for W7.I suspect W7 is being used in order to keep results directly comparable to historic results.