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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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.