6 Cores vs. 8 Cores for Gaming: 24 Game Benchmark

Good read.
Seems like there is little point to go for 8 cores for anyone with screen resolution 1440p or higher.
 
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Thanks for the very informative review.

While there isn‘t really a difference to speak of as far as gaming is concerned, I think I‘ll still go for a 5700x as upgrade from my 2700x. The reason is that my kid likes to multi task quite a bit, so the two additional cores should come in handy.

Am still hoping prices will be lower once Zen 4 has been released.
 
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Good article. Its tempting to get the more expensive product "just-in-case", but the smart move to to benchmark and get some hard numbers.

In my experience even midrange desktop parts are very powerful, should last a long time time and allow you to get a lot of value out of them. If your requirements change you can upgrade later - that's the beauty of Desktop PCs.
 
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6 core for 1440p+ gaming like dangh said. That's why I got a 5600X.

WOW, 5900X is $399US everyday price now. It's $499CAD "on sale".
That's $50 less than the (US) MSRP of the 5800X. Looks like the sale prices I've been seeing the last month or so in Canada should become permanent soon.
 
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So my bigger question is what to do if you're still on a paltry four cores?

From my side - should I upgrade my 6700K or my GTX1080 when new products drop in the Fall? (gaming only use case)

I suspect even with the horrendous bottlenecking an RTX 4k upgrade will give more (if not smoother) FPS. Don't know if the fact I've got HT will be any comfort!
 
This is more or less what I expected because my R5-3600X only bottlenecks my RX 6800 XT in Witcher III by 10fps at 1080p. Twelve threads is more than enough for gaming today.
 
Jon Tseng said:
So my bigger question is what to do if you're still on a paltry four cores?

From my side - should I upgrade my 6700K or my GTX1080 when new products drop in the Fall? (gaming only use case)

I suspect even with the horrendous bottlenecking an RTX 4k upgrade will give more (if not smoother) FPS. Don't know if the fact I've got HT will be any comfort!
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If you aren't playing new games, upgrade your CPU. 6700K is still an okay CPU but even now, and great for its time, you're bottle necking your 1080 at this point. If gaming is all you do, get 5600x or an equivalent i5. You don't have to spend a lot to get the most out of your 1080 and a few more good years out of it. I'm still on my 1070ti. My plan is to drop in 5800X3D to replace my 1800X and snag up a used 6800 whenever the new cards come out. I suspect that will get me another 4-5 years without a major system overhaul.

Full disclosure, I'm an AMD guy so take what I'm about to say with whatever grain of salt you have near by, but this is what I would do. Since you need a full system upgrade ANYWAY, I'd wait until the new AMD socket is released and go with a Ryzen. You can get a few generations out of your hardware and even drop in a new CPU later down the road if you don't feel like doing a complete rebuild. I also feel it's most cost effective long term.

Instead of having to buy new ram and motherboard and who knows what else, I can take that money to either spend on better hardware or just pocket the extra change.

TL;DR, wait until next gen comes out and decide what fits your budget paired long term performance goals. I'm already on 5 years with my 1800x and 1070ti and I expect to get atleast 4 more out of a CPU and graphics card upgrade. All told, after the upgrade, I'd be into this platform for $3000 over about 10 years which, at $300 a year, is a STEAL.
 
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Irata said:
Thanks for the very informative review.

While there isn‘t really a difference to speak of as far as gaming is concerned, I think I‘ll still go for a 5700x as upgrade from my 2700x. The reason is that my kid likes to multi task quite a bit, so the two additional cores should come in handy.

Am still hoping prices will be lower once Zen 4 has been released.
Click to expand...
2700X and 5700X are both 8c16t. Might wanna shoot for the 5900X (12c24t)
 
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Jon Tseng said:
So my bigger question is what to do if you're still on a paltry four cores?

From my side - should I upgrade my 6700K or my GTX1080 when new products drop in the Fall? (gaming only use case)

I suspect even with the horrendous bottlenecking an RTX 4k upgrade will give more (if not smoother) FPS. Don't know if the fact I've got HT will be any comfort!
Click to expand...
It all depends on the games you play. I wouldn't arbitrarily pull the trigger on a system overhaul until you see what performance you get on a particular title with your current system. Your current system specs are very similar to mine (i7-4790K/RTX 2060) and I'm still very satisfied with the performance I get out of the games in my catalog. Though there aren't many AAA titles that have held my attention for long over the last several years.....I mainly stick to small dev/indie titles. To each their own, but I would test the performance first.
 
yRaz said:
If you aren't playing new games, upgrade your CPU. 6700K is still an okay CPU but even now, and great for its time, you're bottle necking your 1080 at this point. If gaming is all you do, get 5600x or an equivalent i5. You don't have to spend a lot to get the most out of your 1080 and a few more good years out of it. I'm still on my 1070ti. My plan is to drop in 5800X3D to replace my 1800X and snag up a used 6800 whenever the new cards come out. I suspect that will get me another 4-5 years without a major system overhaul.

Full disclosure, I'm an AMD guy so take what I'm about to say with whatever grain of salt you have near by, but this is what I would do. Since you need a full system upgrade ANYWAY, I'd wait until the new AMD socket is released and go with a Ryzen. You can get a few generations out of your hardware and even drop in a new CPU later down the road if you don't feel like doing a complete rebuild. I also feel it's most cost effective long term.

Instead of having to buy new ram and motherboard and who knows what else, I can take that money to either spend on better hardware or just pocket the extra change.

TL;DR, wait until next gen comes out and decide what fits your budget paired long term performance goals. I'm already on 5 years with my 1800x and 1070ti and I expect to get atleast 4 more out of a CPU and graphics card upgrade. All told, after the upgrade, I'd be into this platform for $3000 over about 10 years which, at $300 a year, is a STEAL.
Click to expand...
You say it's "a steal" @$300/yr but I've been buying and selling top parts each time they drop for over a decade and by buying day 1 of a new part and using it right until before its replacement drops I've been able to sell and recoup the majority of my "investment".

I won't bore you with an entire breakdown of my upgrades but having averaged what I've spent (keep in mind at NO time was my hardware older than a gen OR not within 10% performance of "the best") and I've only spent on average about $200-250/year.

To me it's absolutely worth it to take the time every year or 2 to sell off parts and replace with the newer better option and by doing so my pc NEVER felt dated or in need of an upgrade.

I've been gunning for 4k/60 ever since 2013 and throughout most of this time I've been quite close and in recent years quite past it.

Now and for the last 2 years I've had a 4k/120hz display so that now my goal and I'll continue to do my buy sell upgrade pattern til I'm there.

And I just feel my money is best spent this way vs buying a rather decent setup then running it til it has little to no value left and has been something that has been limiting my performance for quite some time.

Stay on top constantly AND spend less?

Yea that's what I prefer.
 
Rdmetz said:
You say it's "a steal" @$300/yr but I've been buying and selling top parts each time they drop for over a decade and by buying day 1 of a new part and using it right until before its replacement drops I've been able to sell and recoup the majority of my "investment".

I won't bore you with an entire breakdown of my upgrades but having averaged what I've spent (keep in mind at NO time was my hardware older than a gen OR not within 10% performance of "the best") and I've only spent on average about $200-250/year.

To me it's absolutely worth it to take the time every year or 2 to sell off parts and replace with the newer better option and by doing so my pc NEVER felt dated or in need of an upgrade.

I've been gunning for 4k/60 ever since 2013 and throughout most of this time I've been quite close and in recent years quite past it.

Now and for the last 2 years I've had a 4k/120hz display so that now my goal and I'll continue to do my buy sell upgrade pattern til I'm there.

And I just feel my money is best spent this way vs buying a rather decent setup then running it til it has little to no value left and has been something that has been limiting my performance for quite some time.

Stay on top constantly AND spend less?

Yea that's what I prefer.
Click to expand...
I break it down like this, when I can get a year of entertainment out of what is basically a night out with the lady, It's a good deal and I don't really care. I'm not someone who has to have the best or wants to play all the latest games. I've been playing at 4k since 2017 and I can say most of what I play ran at 60FPS just fine. Aside from cyberpunk, all I play is EvE and ESO. I also don't see many games on the horizon I'm interested in playing. I'm primarily interested in upgrading my display, I wish there was a connector that supported 8k120, but the features on my 4k Samsung TV are getting dated. 4k60 is kind of lame. While when I bought it in 2017, it was a best in it's class TV, TV's have come a long way. I want to go from 65"4k to 75"8K. Luckily, most 8k TVs these days do 4k120 no problem. Hopefully by the time these upgrades reach their end of life there will be an 8k120 standard. At that point, I will do a budget is no object build.
 
dangh said:
Good read.
Seems like there is little point to go for 8 cores for anyone with screen resolution 1440p or higher.
Click to expand...
Or instead of upgrading the cpu you can upgrade your resolution/ gpu.
Currently I am on a Almost 3 years old 9900ks although at 4k 120hz the cpu is not a bottleneck for next gen the gen 3 PCIe might be a problem at the higher end and enthusiast level graphics. Luckily these Ryzen 3 on 570 motherboards don't have this problem due to pcie gen 4 bandwidth. Take home message. Know your hardware limitations and the best upgrade path.
 
Benchmark fps numbers only say soo much. But the better CPU also provides better responsiveness, stuttering, smoothness, and overall user experience that can't be measured solely by FPS. Also the 8 core will last longer into the future. That's what I got from "tech deals" reviewer.
 
I think the extra $100 for more cores is well spent in terms of future proofing. Remember when everyone espoused we only need 8GB of RAM? Well today the optimal is really 16GB. The same goes with cores, more is ALWAYS better, especially considering the future.

Personally, I went through this decision about 18 months ago and decided to spend the money and go with the 10-core (i9-10850K) over the 4-6-8 core options. It cost more upfront but ultimately I'm cheap and I like my systems to last many years (5+).
 
Regardless of Cores and GPUs and FPSs, I always aim for the minimum 1% @ 60fps at the highest resolution my setup can run comfortably. (Currently, @ 1440p).
If my setup can run all games at the maxed out settings at 1440p with the minimum 1% framerate being 60 and above at all times, then I'm perfectly fine with it.
If my setup can do this at 1080p, I'm perfectly fine with that too.
No use facing stutters even occasionally if the setup can't keep up at 4K with min 1% less than 144 (or even 60fps), if all you're looking for is 4K res.
 
dangh said:
Good read.
Seems like there is little point to go for 8 cores for anyone with screen resolution 1440p or higher.
Click to expand...

You mean assuming you only game. If you also do some real work 8 cores is a much better choice and I'm moving to 12 cores with Zen 4, for photo and video editing, running simulations, using blender etc the more the better in most cases.
 
Strategy games , games like factorio? Anno ? Total war? Stellaris? Civ? What about couch co-op? If you play these games you might see improvements with really high core numbers... But for gpu games I agree.
 
At that price range... The only things matter is that can the cpu run the game at 60fps?

Nobody that competitive in playing at highFPS ( more than 60fps ) will bother looking at cpu at that price range..

But then again.. CPUs that already 10years old can gain 60fps easily provided has enough cores/threads ( heavily oced 2500k sandybridge wont be enough anymore )
 
jason lee said:
Benchmark fps numbers only say soo much. But the better CPU also provides better responsiveness, stuttering, smoothness, and overall user experience that can't be measured solely by FPS. Also the 8 core will last longer into the future. That's what I got from "tech deals" reviewer.
Click to expand...
literally 3 of the 4 things you say “can’t be measured” are made blatantly obvious by FPS and frame time testing.
 
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