CPU performance does matter...

[Arachnotronic]

So I always thought my old i7 860 @ 2.8GHz was good enough for all games, but this apparently isn't the case. My sig chip has actually given me some very significant improvements. I doubt the games are using more cores, but I've got a 1.2GHz frequency advantage now & more memory bandwidth...games now feel "smoother".

Is this expected, or am I just seeing it in my head?

 

[Rubycon]

Games are probably THE everyday application where CPU/cache matters and is perceivable.

So no, it's not in your head.

 

[Arachnotronic]

But I thought it was pretty "commonly known" that most CPUs today are "overkill". Guess that's wrong...at least at the i7 860 level. I'm now curious to see how a 2600K @ 4.5GHz would do against this 980X which has worse single threaded performance.

 

[Rubycon]

Overkill is application dependent. If you're just web surfing then there is no way you're going to see much of a difference between those cpus.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I meant for gaming. I'm definitely starting to see why SNB & it's overclockability + IPC are such a big deal among gamers.

 

[Ferzerp]

I think the distinction is that they have a "good enough" point because it is very easy to move the bottleneck from the CPU to the GPU. At that point, no amount of CPU power will improve the game performance.

 

[Rifter]

When i OC'ed my i7 to 4.2Ghx from stock i noticed a large increase in minimum framerates which also happens to be the easiest thing to see and notice while playing so i dont think you are nuts.

 

[Olikan]

cpu matters in games only because of the lazy developers.

Every time that i see a "cpu matters" i remember starcraft 2, a cpu intensive game like any rts, but only use 2 cores.
Now the game had to be patched to avoid the "motherchip lag", and the game will fry your cpu in every major battle in 2x2 mode

and i am talking about blizzard, one of the best out there.

 

[Edrick]

So I always thought my old i7 860 @ 2.8GHz was good enough for all games, but this apparently isn't the case. My sig chip has actually given me some very significant improvements. I doubt the games are using more cores, but I've got a 1.2GHz frequency advantage now & more memory bandwidth...games now feel "smoother".

Is this expected, or am I just seeing it in my head?

May I ask why you went from a i7 860 to a i7 980x now, and not either a 2600K or 3930K?

 

[zlejedi]

But I thought it was pretty "commonly known" that most CPUs today are "overkill". Guess that's wrong...at least at the i7 860 level. I'm now curious to see how a 2600K @ 4.5GHz would do against this 980X which has worse single threaded performance.

That's common misinformation.

If you are running anything below i5 750 @3,6 Ghz (including every single cpu made by amd) you are bottlenecking yourself.

 

[nitromullet]

But I thought it was pretty "commonly known" that most CPUs today are "overkill". Guess that's wrong...at least at the i7 860 level. I'm now curious to see how a 2600K @ 4.5GHz would do against this 980X which has worse single threaded performance.

Clock for clock you generally don't see that much of a difference between Gulftown, Sandy Bridge, and Sandy Bridge-E with a single gpu in games.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/...-bridge-e-review-keeping-the-high-end-alive/6

What makes Sandy Bridge so attractive is the price difference between it and Guftown and Sandy Bridge-E.

That's common misinformation.

If you are running anything below i5 750 @3,6 Ghz (including every single cpu made by amd) you are bottlenecking yourself.

Well, yes and no...

Sure, I could probably squeeze a few fps out of my current i7 920/GTX 580 rig by switching to a Sandy Bridge platform, but the minimum cost for even a 2500K with a decent motherboard and RAM is still ~$400-500. If I took that same amount of money and put it towards a second GTX 580 I'd see a much bigger increase overall.

 

[happy medium]

A Sandybridge @ high clocks is a must for games like Skyrim to play at ultra settings.

"Skyrim simultaneously taxes CPU and GPU resources. So, if you’re looking to run at ultra detail settings using 1920x1080 and texture transparency AA, you need a Sandy Bridge-based CPU............

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-10.html

 

[Puppies04]

So I always thought my old i7 860 @ 2.8GHz was good enough for all games, but this apparently isn't the case. My sig chip has actually given me some very significant improvements. I doubt the games are using more cores, but I've got a 1.2GHz frequency advantage now & more memory bandwidth...games now feel "smoother".

Is this expected, or am I just seeing it in my head?

If you clocked your i7 860 to 4ghz the difference would be almost imperceptable.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I meant for gaming. I'm definitely starting to see why SNB & it's overclockability + IPC are such a big deal among gamers.

Looking at your sig [and reminding myself that I should post my own] -- I'm wondering what you've done with those three terabyte-plus drives to open the bottleneck at the bottom of the hardware pyramid.

I'm not going to sink into one of my pro-ISRT promotion rants, but my i7-2600K and component configuration seems faster than I need.

After I'd explained this (and the ISRT thing) to a friend who recently bought a $150K motor-home against his regular home's equity, he got into his "one-upsman-ship" mode, vowing to buy large SSDs to make his machine faster than mine. I tried to explain the cost-effectiveness issue, that he would spend $600 more to get a 20% edge over my system, but to no avail.

But it goes without saying, almost. Every new plateau reached in the hardware realm is countered by new software which raises the bar again . . . .

 

[RussianSensation]

i7 860 @ 3.9-4.0ghz would be almost as fast as the 980X @ 4.0ghz in games too. A stock i7 860 with Turbo On will never run below 1 speed bank --> 2.93ghz. Still your CPU has 36.5% more frequency. That's a healthy increase.

CPU limitation varies on a game-by-game basis.

In Blizzard games, it's very significant. In a game like Crysis 1/2 or Metro 2033, you are pretty much GPU limited with a modern CPU. In a game like SKYRIM that hardly uses more than 2 cores, you'll want high frequency and modern CPU architecture efficiency.

So in essence, it's incorrect to say that CPU speed doesn't matter. It depends on the resolution, your GPU and specific games being compared. For instance, if you took an i7 860 2.8ghz CPU and paired it with an HD5570, then you'll be GPU bottlenecked. If you took an i7 860 2.8ghz and paired it with an 2x HD6990s, you'd be CPU bottlenecked in most games. And in games like SKYRIM, you can be bottlenecked by both the CPU and the GPU.

It's important to keep in mind that when people throw the term "bottleneck" around, a lot of times it has to be taken into context properly.

For example, if your CPU can achieve 60 fps but a CPU 2x faster can do 100 fps with the same GPU, you are CPU bottlenecked, but it's not the end of the world. However, if you are severely CPU bottlenecked, your frames might be 30-44 fps vs. 60-70 fps, and thus actually impacting smoothness in many FPSers or racing games. On that basis, the i7 860 2.8ghz with TurboBoost (at minimum 2.93ghz) is likely sufficient for most games with any single GPU card today.

Even in SKYRIM, a stock i7 860 will hit 60 fps with Turbo on. So in that instance, I would say you won't achieve the most optimal performance, but I wouldn't call it a severe 'bottleneck'.

 

[RavenSEAL]

cpu matters in games only because of the lazy developers.

Every time that i see a "cpu matters" i remember starcraft 2, a cpu intensive game like any rts, but only use 2 cores.
Now the game had to be patched to avoid the "motherchip lag", and the game will fry your cpu in every major battle in 2x2 mode

and i am talking about blizzard, one of the best out there.

Although I would have worded it differently, this is pretty much spot on. Many developers have ignored PC gaming so much to the point that they cannot even use the hardware accordingly.

 

[magomago]

A Sandybridge @ high clocks is a must for games like Skyrim to play at ultra settings.

"Skyrim simultaneously taxes CPU and GPU resources. So, if you’re looking to run at ultra detail settings using 1920x1080 and texture transparency AA, you need a Sandy Bridge-based CPU............

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-10.html

Waaaa? I have a 2500k, play at 1080p with gtx460 SLI, and have ZERO issues with lag. I also have, except for Shadows on High, everything else on Ultra.
Finally, my AA is on 2X cause at 1080p I don't really notice the aliasing anyways. I think I might have FXAA cause I didn't really see how it impacted things....I think part of it (again) is that at 1080p jaggies isn't as much of an issue.

 

[RavenSEAL]

A Sandybridge @ high clocks is a must for games like Skyrim to play at ultra settings.

"Skyrim simultaneously taxes CPU and GPU resources. So, if you’re looking to run at ultra detail settings using 1920x1080 and texture transparency AA, you need a Sandy Bridge-based CPU............

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-10.html

Fail yet again, Skyrim runs fine @ Ultra settings on my X6.

 

[GaiaHunter]

A Sandybridge @ high clocks is a must for games like Skyrim to play at ultra settings.

"Skyrim simultaneously taxes CPU and GPU resources. So, if you’re looking to run at ultra detail settings using 1920x1080 and texture transparency AA, you need a Sandy Bridge-based CPU............

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-10.html

On the other hand doesn't scale past 2 cores.

It is annoying when something is CPU bottlenecked while not using 50%+ of the resources available.

 

[Avalon]

A Sandybridge @ high clocks is a must for games like Skyrim to play at ultra settings.

"Skyrim simultaneously taxes CPU and GPU resources. So, if you’re looking to run at ultra detail settings using 1920x1080 and texture transparency AA, you need a Sandy Bridge-based CPU............

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-10.html

I run at Ultra on an E8400 @ 3.6 w/GTX 460 HAWX, albeit at 1680x1050

Would def like a 2500K, though, especially for BF3. That kills me.

 

[blckgrffn]

Although I would have worded it differently, this is pretty much spot on. Many developers have ignored PC gaming so much to the point that they cannot even use the hardware accordingly.

Hey, did they actually patch SC2 to be more multithreaded? That's great... man, I haven't fired that up since I made Silver and started losing

 

[superccs]

Just like MTV killed music, consoles killed video games.

 

[Maximilian]

A Sandybridge @ high clocks is a must for games like Skyrim to play at ultra settings.

"Skyrim simultaneously taxes CPU and GPU resources. So, if you’re looking to run at ultra detail settings using 1920x1080 and texture transparency AA, you need a Sandy Bridge-based CPU............

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-10.html

Indeed. On the flip side skyrims engine is a POS that only uses 2 cores. If it actually used new technology like battlefield 3's engine does (up to 8 cores) a lowly Q6600 may well be able to pull off ultra settings in skyrim.

 

[Arachnotronic]

If you clocked your i7 860 to 4ghz the difference would be almost imperceptable.

I had an i7 860, it didn't clock well, so I got an 875K, then my board died. Neither of them could hit close to 4GHz without heat issues on my former Noctua NH-D14.

I'm getting 4GHz on the stock Intel cooler w/ this 980X. All around more pleasant. And the 980X setup only cost me about $350 after selling my 875 and buying the x58 mobo used & extra 8gb of memory to go triple channel.

 

[AdamK47]

On the other hand doesn't scale past 2 cores.

It is annoying when something is CPU bottlenecked while not using 50%+ of the resources available.

http://www.techspot.com/review/467-skyrim-performance/page7.html

It could very well be all the other useless features that helped the 3960X along though.