Top 5 CPUs for Gaming: It's all about those glorious frames per second

[Julio Franco]

We're looking at CPU offerings once again but this time we're focusing solely on gaming, so we'll be picking each CPU based on almost nothing other than it's gaming performance. For the close fought battles we'll take the platform into account but for the most part it's all about those glorious frames per second.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/bestof/gaming-cpu/

 

[Jamlad]

Can any Intel processors currently be recommended due their underlying architectural security flaws?

 

[Burty117]

Can any Intel processors currently be recommended due their underlying architectural security flaws?

If I was building a no compromises Gaming PC, I would still pick Intel, They perform better and I don't think Virus Makers care about my Overwatch Rank.

Also, I thought they had been patched? The latest flaw found only affected 10 year old OS's?

 

[MoeJoe]

No AM4 2700? TS BS.

 

[BSim500]

Can any Intel processors currently be recommended due their underlying architectural security flaws?

As Burty said, is that really an issue for gamers? It's certainly an issue that needs attention for servers publicly visible on the web, but I don't think I've ever actually heard of any remote targeted Spectre / Meltdown exploit being used once "for real" vs a consumer at home. Seems far less of an issue than router malware (from not changing default passwords), exploits of outdated web browsers or most common of all, not making a PC "id*ot proof" in general (opening "FreePorn.exe" in e-mail attachments, mailing bank details to honestman_at_nigerianprince.com or browsing "those sites" stuffed full of malvertising scripts...). The bulk of online security really is common sense / "PEBKAC" rather than fringe hardware specific vectors.

 

[Shadowboxer]

I think gaming performance is the most relevant when it comes to consumer advice as that’s what I think most people opt to spend their own money on in terms of PC hardware. Like me, I do need a powerful system for work but I wouldn’t buy my work PC with my own money. On the other hand I play games in my spare time and naturally I spend lavish amounts of cash to ensure I have the best experience. I’m sure there are people out there buying RGB motherboards, fast DDR4 Ram and $300+ CPUs so they can open multiple spreadsheets without a hitch but I’ve never seen it.

 

[Greg S]

No AM4 2700? TS BS.

This is specifically for gaming. The facts are what they are. There is no bias intended towards any product on this site.

Have a read through our Best CPUs of 2018 that includes factors beyond just gaming. AMD Ryzen 7 2700X earns a recommendation for productivity, but in this case cannot be given the recommendation for gaming exclusively.

 

[tipstir]

If the games support the latest CPU or APU then find. I know already that my I-3 is fast for gaming I also have AM4 and AM8 both are quick as well. Still for the money I play at the max graphic and 16X frame rate.

 

[Julio Franco]

No AM4 2700? TS BS.

 

[ghostf1re]

Can any Intel processors currently be recommended due their underlying architectural security flaws?

Intel is still the better of the two if you're talking performance, especially in gaming. Security is generally speaking non-existent when a gamer goes to buy a new rig. So in the sense of if it can be recommended for the purpose of gaming, they should be on the list. If you want to talk security, then we are in another conversation all together.

 

[hahahanoobs]

No AM4 2700? TS BS.

The i5 8400 beats it in gaming and is cheaper....

 

[theBest11778]

Let's face it Intel needs a win where it can get it. Outside of gaming they have nothing going for them, and without a functional 10nm process they're obsolete in 2019 entirely.

Best for gaming today... yes. Any AM4 combo... better long term. It just is what it is.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Let's face it Intel needs a win where it can get it. Outside of gaming they have nothing going for them, and without a functional 10nm process they're obsolete in 2019 entirely.

Best for gaming today... yes. Any AM4 combo... better long term. It just is what it is.

You're dismissing the fact that almost any machine with an Intel CPU and descrete graphics is good or overkill for 80% of consumers. Ryzen is the other 20%.

Consumers are also not going to jump to AMD without seeing a consistent track record, performance and stability. AMD doesn't have that yet.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Can any Intel processors currently be recommended due their underlying architectural security flaws?

Yup. As much as we recommended the GTX 970.

 

[MoeJoe]

No AM4 2700? TS BS.

This is specifically for gaming. The facts are what they are. There is no bias intended towards any product on this site.

Have a read through our Best CPUs of 2018 that includes factors beyond just gaming. AMD Ryzen 7 2700X earns a recommendation for productivity, but in this case cannot be given the recommendation for gaming exclusively.

LMAO. Whatever. It's anecdotal but my personal experience with a month old 2700 (not 2700x) Crosshair Hero married to a 580 08G GPU spanks any Intel rig I've ever played on. Stability arguments are always corrupted by OCers that push frame limits for purely OCD reasons. Stability lost on high number pushers = a laugh riot. TS has nothing on Anand but a guy needs a comedy outlet bookmark.

And for what it's worth, exclusivity is BS in terms of most try-hard analytics.

 

[MoeJoe]

I know, right?

 

[Burty117]

my personal experience with a month old 2700 (not 2700x) Crosshair Hero married to a 580 08G GPU spanks any Intel rig I've ever played on.

Can I ask what Intel rig(s) you're referring to? Because pretty much all articles across the entire web show Intel CPU's are better for gaming. That's fact at this point but since you're insisting the 2700 it'd be great to know what Intel CPU's you're comparing it to

TS has nothing on Anand but a guy needs a comedy outlet bookmark.

Bare in mind this article was the best CPU's for gaming, Anand agree with TechSpot on this, Intel CPU's perform better than AMD CPU's in games.

The only credit I'll give you is the fact Ryzen CPU's are actually very close to Intel CPU's now in games. You can't really go all that wrong buying an AMD CPU, however, if Gaming is your priority, the primary reason for your PC to exist, And money isn't an issue, then you will get more performance from an Intel CPU. Fact.

 

[Nobina]

If I was buying components on a budget I would look for second hand CPUs. Not many games are CPU dependant and you can save quite some money to add for a better GPU. Just get some decent i5 and you're gold.

 

[Jon Tseng]

Can any Intel processors currently be recommended due their underlying architectural security flaws?

As much as the Apple and AMD processors which share the same underlying architrxtutal flaws really.

Of course if you want to game on an old PowerPC rig running Windows NT on a hardware abstraction layer feel free. I think they probably predate the underlying architecture of speculative OOO processing. Probably will struggle with it though, unless Pac-Man is your thing...

 

[Steve]

No AM4 2700? TS BS.

This is specifically for gaming. The facts are what they are. There is no bias intended towards any product on this site.

Have a read through our Best CPUs of 2018 that includes factors beyond just gaming. AMD Ryzen 7 2700X earns a recommendation for productivity, but in this case cannot be given the recommendation for gaming exclusively.

LMAO. Whatever. It's anecdotal but my personal experience with a month old 2700 (not 2700x) Crosshair Hero married to a 580 08G GPU spanks any Intel rig I've ever played on. Stability arguments are always corrupted by OCers that push frame limits for purely OCD reasons. Stability lost on high number pushers = a laugh riot. TS has nothing on Anand but a guy needs a comedy outlet bookmark.

And for what it's worth, exclusivity is BS in terms of most try-hard analytics.

Shall we play spot the angry fanboy? It's the best when they go full blown toddler and spit the dummy.

 

[dirtyferret]

No AM4 2700? TS BS.

This is specifically for gaming. The facts are what they are. There is no bias intended towards any product on this site.

Have a read through our Best CPUs of 2018 that includes factors beyond just gaming. AMD Ryzen 7 2700X earns a recommendation for productivity, but in this case cannot be given the recommendation for gaming exclusively.

LMAO. Whatever. It's anecdotal but my personal experience with a month old 2700 (not 2700x) Crosshair Hero married to a 580 08G GPU spanks any Intel rig I've ever played on. Stability arguments are always corrupted by OCers that push frame limits for purely OCD reasons. Stability lost on high number pushers = a laugh riot. TS has nothing on Anand but a guy needs a comedy outlet bookmark.

And for what it's worth, exclusivity is BS in terms of most try-hard analytics.

Play on better Intel rigs then...

 

[Evernessince]

Let's face it Intel needs a win where it can get it. Outside of gaming they have nothing going for them, and without a functional 10nm process they're obsolete in 2019 entirely.

Best for gaming today... yes. Any AM4 combo... better long term. It just is what it is.

You're dismissing the fact that almost any machine with an Intel CPU and descrete graphics is good or overkill for 80% of consumers. Ryzen is the other 20%.

Consumers are also not going to jump to AMD without seeing a consistent track record, performance and stability. AMD doesn't have that yet.

Neither does Intel. Kind of hard to consider the parade of vulnerabilities this year as a "consistent track record". If you had said that in 2017 then yes but it's definitely in question right now.


That said, what are the chances we can get CPU utilization figures for benchmarks. I'm just interested in seeing how much fuel is left in the tank for processors when running games or applications.

 

[TrexAverell]

I agree that i5 8400 throw more fps than R5 2600 w/o OC.

But all these bechmarks were done with a GTX 1080ti so does any difference can be noted with a slower GPU like GTX 1060 ? and if the one allow you to play at 65fps rahter than 55fps for 15/20 more $, isn't it fair to say that the R5 is a good choice too ? not thinking about upgrade possibilites offered by H310 and B350

 

[fadingfool]

Problem with gaming benchmarks is that they don't measure the actual gaming experience. How many gamers do a clean install from an image every time they play a game? How many gamers only play on a local machine with no online matches? Given the margin of error in fps measurements are the hand-full of fps between the i5 and the Ryzen ever going to be seen in the wild?
Online gaming can be more CPU intensive - do the extra cores of Ryzen offset Intel in these situations (benchmarks won't help on this - too uncontrolled - need data from thousands of machines to make this kind of assessment) ?
So yes Intel produces the best benches in raw gaming benchmarks - hollow victory if you need to run a fresh install to get this performance (Ryzen's "spare" processor headroom may be able to cope with additional background tasks).
(disclaimer - my main rig is an intel i7 7820X).

 

[BSim500]

How many gamers only play on a local machine with no online matches

Almost half of us. Which out of 2bn gamers worldwide, even halving that by excluding mobile gamers = hundreds of millions. (There's more to gaming than "battle royale" despite tech sites giving those titles a disproportionate amount of attention).

How many gamers do a clean install from an image every time they play a game?

Given how bad the past couple of W10 updates have been, a lot of people are now forced to do a clean install twice per year due to MS breaking something or other on every "feature update", which is certainly more often than they'd install, play, uninstall, then reinstall later for a replay. Eg, the difference between W10 1607 vs 1703 = Ryzen APU's don't work properly (link) and anyone still on 1607 (or earlier) has hardware support for Ryzen APU's no better than 9 year old W7. "In-place" upgrades aren't good enough to fix it / other new hardware related BSOD's either, and you'll probably need yet another fresh install of 1903/1907 when Ryzen 2 / Cannon / Ice Lake comes out. I guess we'll chalk this up as another W10 "it's not a bug, it's a feature!" thing...