Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

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~El~Jefe~
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Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Fri Dec 25, 2015 12:51 pm

http://www.technologyx.com/featured/amd ... -showdown/

I have never been to their website until today. I am attempting to navigate an upgrade path for gaming.

I love how this review shows the FRAPS 1% and 0.1% framerate dips. This ACTUALLY is what annoys someone when they play a game. If you play at 32 frames per second and never drops, not for 0.1% of the time, below 32, it will look really good aside from competitive gaming. Being that I am 40 years old, I know that I will suck at competitive gaming compared to 18 year old caffeined gamers.

What is fascinating is the low performance at the 0.1% range of higher end games at higher end resolutions on... Intel. I am certain that Skylake 6700k would fix more of this issue, but the board+chip+ram of skylake is like super pricey compared to same with AMD.

Anyone's thoughts on this? I am thinking about making a system using Asus or MSI GTX 970 and want it to run right and not stutter at the 1%-0.1% range. The max frames i never care about.

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by CA_Steve » Fri Dec 25, 2015 1:11 pm

Frankly, the article is a little baffling to me. The premise is that you need an 8 core CPU for gaming...and that's completely wrong. Few games are optimized beyond 4 cores and many of the games listed can max out on the CPU side with a 2+2 core. As a baseline he should have had a fast i5 in there..cause that's all you need.

The Tech Report has spent a couple of years discussing frame times rather than fps (and why it matters). It's a good resource when looking at gfx card comparisons.

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Fri Dec 25, 2015 1:56 pm

tech report does seem to be producing some interesting tests on frame time. Thank you for that mention. reading about its benchmark results on skylake now.

Only bad thing is that no one else on the planet who reviews things talks about this. I dont know if i can find all the info i would need to build my non-typical systems. I tend to leapfrog. First a higher end gpu, like 250 dollar type, then I get a higher end cpu/mobo with now not so high end gpu. I need a lot of websites to triangulate what my experience would be due to impossibility of testing such odd combos.

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by CA_Steve » Fri Dec 25, 2015 2:49 pm

Not so different than many other DIYers. My prior build (socket 775) went through 2 motherboards and CPUs, and two or three gfx cards over it's long life, swapping out one or another part as needed for games.

I still recommend an Intel i5 over anything from AMD at present - the latter's platform is ancient at this point and the CPU is very inferior to Intel on instructions per clock. Heck, an i3 can compete againt the "8 core" AMD parts.

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Sat Dec 26, 2015 2:12 am

"To Windows, each of the Core i7’s physical cores appears as two logical processors. The Core i5 doesn’t have this feature; its four cores work on four threads." Does this mean anything in windows 10? having separate processors for any advanced function?

I should mention that I was given a strange bottle of Old Overholt and I have poured myself a drink while typing all this and listening to paranormal radio at the same time

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by Vicotnik » Sat Dec 26, 2015 3:36 am

What do you mean? Any modern OS can use more cores. HT is useful sometimes, but like extra cores it's dependent on the task. The i7 has HT, the i5 does not and the price premium you pay for the i7 only makes sense if you do lots of stuff where HT really helps. Lots of movie encoding? Consider the i7. Mostly gaming? Go with the i5.

Or if you are light gamer like me, get the i5. Then realize you don't need it and swap it for an i3 and some cash. :)

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by xan_user » Sat Dec 26, 2015 6:40 am

I wonder what percentage of i7 owners really need an i7?
I bet its under 10% :roll:

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by CA_Steve » Sat Dec 26, 2015 7:53 am

Probably similar to the percentage of people who buy 1000W PSUs.
Image

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Sat Dec 26, 2015 1:42 pm

Vicotnik wrote:What do you mean? Any modern OS can use more cores. HT is useful sometimes, but like extra cores it's dependent on the task. The i7 has HT, the i5 does not and the price premium you pay for the i7 only makes sense if you do lots of stuff where HT really helps. Lots of movie encoding? Consider the i7. Mostly gaming? Go with the i5.

Or if you are light gamer like me, get the i5. Then realize you don't need it and swap it for an i3 and some cash. :)
OK, my 1090T. Slow for a lot of things compared to most benchmarks, but then on things that use Cores vs ht, it all of a sudden is rather competitive in performance even 5 years old.

I guess the HT helps but isnt a real core. For a while there were 6 core intels. I guess they dont bother making them anymore because AMD hasnt released a competitive machine in a long time. Most would rather a 6 core intel than a 4x4 HT intel.

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by Vicotnik » Sat Dec 26, 2015 2:17 pm

Haswell-E is six core right? $1000 and 140W, what's not to like? :)

Isn't the GPU taking over much of the heavy work nowadays anyway? In specific situations they blow any general purpose CPU out of the water.

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by washu » Sat Dec 26, 2015 3:01 pm

~El~Jefe~ wrote:OK, my 1090T. Slow for a lot of things compared to most benchmarks, but then on things that use Cores vs ht, it all of a sudden is rather competitive in performance even 5 years old.
I'm not sure where you get that idea. HT on modern CPUs is far better than the crap found on P4s. It's not a replacement for a real core, but it makes a noticeable difference in applications that can make use of it. A current i3 6100 which is the same clock as your 1090T gets 83% of the passmark score. Not bad for only 2 real cores VS 6. Any recent Intel with 4 or more cores blows your 1090T out of the water, HT or not.
I guess the HT helps but isnt a real core. For a while there were 6 core intels. I guess they dont bother making them anymore because AMD hasnt released a competitive machine in a long time. Most would rather a 6 core intel than a 4x4 HT intel.
Unlike AMD, Intel does still release CPUs with 6 real cores in the consumer market. They are fairly expensive due to the lack of competition, but they do exist. They also have HT, so they can run 12 threads.

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by washu » Sat Dec 26, 2015 3:13 pm

Vicotnik wrote:Haswell-E is six core right? $1000 and 140W, what's not to like? :)
Haswell-E comes in 6 and 8 core versions. The lower end 6 core one (5820K) was just over $400 when I got it, but more now due to CAD being weak. The 8 core one is around the $1K mark.
Isn't the GPU taking over much of the heavy work nowadays anyway? In specific situations they blow any general purpose CPU out of the water.
No, because of those specific situations. In the right case a GPU is really fast, but in the wrong case it will be far slower than a general purpose CPU. Very simplified GPUs suck at non extremely parallel tasks and branching. If the problem doesn't scale to 100s of threads or makes many decisions in the code then a GPU will suck at it. Some tasks can be parallelized but only to a handful of threads. Some tasks are limited by the speed of a "master" thread, the faster the master the more "slave" threads can run. Some tasks simply cannot be parallelized.

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by Vicotnik » Sat Dec 26, 2015 10:27 pm

washu wrote:No, because of those specific situations. In the right case a GPU is really fast, but in the wrong case it will be far slower than a general purpose CPU. Very simplified GPUs suck at non extremely parallel tasks and branching. If the problem doesn't scale to 100s of threads or makes many decisions in the code then a GPU will suck at it. Some tasks can be parallelized but only to a handful of threads. Some tasks are limited by the speed of a "master" thread, the faster the master the more "slave" threads can run. Some tasks simply cannot be parallelized.
But seti@home for example. If the chief now uses a 125W 1090T, wouldn't it be better to use a GPU for that?

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:06 am

does the SETI@home use the gpu much better? can it run regular SETI/astropulse analysis just as well?

Interesting if it could. I know that AMD's a great butthey are torches. Also, could I make the gpu work at lower %?

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by CA_Steve » Sun Dec 27, 2015 7:34 am

A quick search says:

Yes, yes, and maybe. Chances are, the folks over here have the answers.

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:44 pm

yeah looks like might be an issue limiting the % of gpu. I wonder if i could just downclock the gpu to like half the mhz. I wouldnt want the fan spinning up a lot when i get my 970

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by nancy7 » Tue May 02, 2017 11:13 pm

unless you are playing the most demanding games.. doing tons of video rendering.. or running a domain server go with "AMD", don't waste money on an i3 or i5, get an a6, a8 or zen. If your going to burn money on Intel get an i7

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Re: Interesting review of Intel vs AMD for gaming, Detailed.

Post by Olle P » Tue May 09, 2017 6:09 am

Digging up an old relic?
There's been quite a few new releases since that article was written...
nancy7 wrote:unless you are playing the most demanding games.. doing tons of video rendering.. or running a domain server go with "AMD", don't waste money on an i3 or i5, get an a6, a8 or zen. If your going to burn money on Intel get an i7
That's also not quite optimal.
Now there are only a few applications for Intel CPUs:
* Extreme gaming requirements. (Ryzen will probably catch up in a year or two.)
* Professional video rendering (or equivalent) where it can be beneficial to spend a >$600 premium to get ~5% more performance from Intel's top CPU over Ryzen 7 1800X.
* Very low cost gaming computer, where AMD can't offer the same $70 performance as Pentium G4560.

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