Question on i5's

[FearTheCow]

I am looking to upgrade from my AMD 965 for various reasons. Would an i5 4670K be overkill for gaming with a 7950?

 

[Araxie]

why should be a 4670K overkill for gaming?. not, not really.

its all fine..

 

[ccityinstaller]

I am looking to upgrade from my AMD 965 for various reasons. Would an i5 4670K be overkill for gaming with a 7950?

As long as you don't take it to a LAN party hosted by your old neighbors, then your good to go!

 

[Joga]

Definitely not overkill. I have a 7950, and I upgraded from a Phenom II X4 955 (overclocked to 3.6 GHz) to a 4770K @ 4.5 GHz, and have not regretted it for a second. I got my 7950 first, so I had a little time to do some benchmarks before and after upgrading my CPU.

Google Docs spreadsheet with my benchmark results (sorry if it's a little hard to read - each cell has minimum, maximum, and average framerate, respectively)

Some games showed little or no difference, but some games almost (or even literally) doubled my average framerate. Specifically, GTA4, Sleeping Dogs (with FXAA), Hard Reset (with FXAA), and Dawn of War 2 Retribution. And while I didn't "officially" benchmark them, my framerate also doubled in Starcraft 2 (from the 40's to the 80's), Battlefield 3 64-man multiplayer maps, and several parts of Borderlands 2 also doubled (looking out over large vistas, lots of enemies on screen, etc.). This upgrade gave me a new-found appreciation for how vital it is to have a powerful CPU.

It seems that open world games are especially CPU intensive, and since "open world" seems to be the official genre of next gen console ports, you'll likely get a lot of benefit out of a powerful CPU in the coming years. So 4670K is definitely not overkill, and (depending on the game) you will see a huge improvement in your gaming experience. The 4770k on the other hand probably is overkill (vs. the 4670k), but I felt like spending lots of money.

 

[Nenu]

There is no such thing as CPU overkill on a modern gaming machine when you consider its speed.
There are a few games that need more core speed than is available, even when highly overclocked.
A few games can use more than 4 cores and give a small benefit.
SLI/crossfire and x3, x4 use more CPU as well.

Most games will run great with a stock clocked modern intel CPU.
To give yourself the certainty of getting the max from all games, get a K series chip,an overclockable motherboard (not an H series), a good CPU cooler and a case with good airflow.

 

[ZodaEX]

There is no such thing as CPU overkill on a modern gaming machine when you consider its speed.
There are a few games that need more core speed than is available, even when highly overclocked.
A few games can use more than 4 cores and give a small benefit.
SLI/crossfire and x3, x4 use more CPU as well.

Most games will run great with a stock clocked modern intel CPU.
To give yourself the certainty of getting the max from all games, get a K series chip,an overclockable motherboard (not an H series), a good CPU cooler and a case with good airflow.

Unless you play BF3 or Civ5 anything more than a quad is overkill for gaming.

 

[Nenu]

Yep.
For now at least, see where we are after a few years of 6+ core consoles.

 

[J Macker]

Yep.
For now at least, see where we are after a few years of 6+ core consoles.

ROFL.. do you actually think that the games that are being developed for the PS4 and Xbone systems (which both have 8 core 1.75/1.6Ghz amd cpus) will actually cause the PC games in the future to be "bottlenecked" by a 4670k?

Really?

I do not think the 4670k is overkill at all for a 7950. I also think that these next-gen consoles with increased cores will only teach developers how to utilize and spread the load more efficiently, but they will not touch the performance of a 4670k

First, even if you multiply out the clockspeed:
Xbone & ps4
1.75 * 8 = 14 Ghz / 12.8 Ghz

[email protected] = 17.6 Ghz (stock 3.6*4=14.4)

Now, I know it's not all about frequency, but we all know that Intel's cpu's are more efficient and capable on a clock-for-clock basis than AMD cpus.

So the cpu in the ps4 and xbone are handily outclassed by the 4670k. I would safely bet that any changes game programmers make to make their games run better on the xbone and ps4 will still be slower than a PC with a 4670k.

Besides, the Xbone and Ps4 are getting paired up with Radeons that only have 768 and 1152 shader cores. That's the ballpark of the 7790 and 7850. If anything, that's telling that those gpus utilize the equivalent slower cpu and a 7950 would benefit from a faster cpu.

It's just so sad to see the bar set so low by Microsoft and Sony with the gpu. The 7950 is the mid-range part these days and it's nearly 2 years old. So they're going to use a 2-year old low end gpu to put in their next-gen consoles. Oh well. I'm done with consoles for quite some time.

 

[Nenu]

ROFL.. do you actually think that the games that are being developed for the PS4 and Xbone systems (which both have 8 core 1.75/1.6Ghz amd cpus) will actually cause the PC games in the future to be "bottlenecked" by a 4670k?

Really?

Dont be such a dipstick.
You could have asked nicely what I mean.

With consoles having so many cores, it follows that coders may start to make better use of them.
Once that happens, we may get more games that can use more cores.

I do not think the 4670k is overkill at all for a 7950. I also think that these next-gen consoles with increased cores will only teach developers how to utilize and spread the load more efficiently, but they will not touch the performance of a 4670k

Agreed, my point was that PC games can make use of more cores, not that next gen consoles will beat PCs.

Blah