Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unbox today we are discussing quad-core processors namely how relevant they are in 2019 now the last time I covered this topic was back in 2017 and recently quite a few of you have been referring to that video asking me if I can revisit this subject in create an updated 2019 version the 2017 version was purely a discussion piece there were no new benchmarks at the time as I pretty much done all the testing that was necessary to discuss whether quad cores were worth it in 2017 recently though the channel focus has mostly been on GPUs and I suppose understandably so with the release of Nvidia Tsar txseries the RX 590 Radeon 7 and the newly released geforce gtx 1660 TI the quad core cpu discussion in my opinion is far less relevant than it was back in 2017 for the simple fact that there's no longer a top-tier cpu that only features 4 cause the most expensive quad core sold today is the core i3 8350 k and we wrote that thing off that day it was released today it's priced just over $200 and you'd be bonkers to spend much over $100 on it then from AMD we have the horizon 3 1300 X which you can also ignored you to pricing the r3 1200 is far more sensible at $90 though we suggest budget shoppers look at the r 320 200 G which is currently just five to ten dollars more and offers a decent integrated graphics solution those of you shopping for a budget Intel CPU should be looking at the core i3 8100 but at 125 dollars u.s. my opinion is that the horizon 322 energy is a far better value option anyway the point of this video is to explore if these budget quad-core CPUs are worth buying today for gamers or are they dead on arrival I was going to explore how the core i5 7200 K is faring in 2019 but once I started getting into that testing I felt like it was probably an observer to own video as there was just a whole lot more I had to do I really had to test the horizon 5 1600 as well it wasn't really worth just including the 70 season or okay so perhaps in the near future I can do an updated Core i5 nisi Turner kV vs. Verizon v 1600 comparison let me know down in the comments section below if that's something you want to see happen anyway quickly while touching on the 7600 okay back in 2017 I said the following as much as I like the rise in cpus the 70 she's going to wreak a is arguably better right now for the vast majority of gamers out there you can certainly find titles where the Rison v 1600 is faster and will no doubt end up being the superior cpu down the track but most DirectX 11 titles play better with the higher clocked quad-core having said that I wouldn't buy the 70 singer okay I'd get the rise in v 1600 which is not only cheaper but also supports overclocking on more affordable motherboards and it ships with a decent cooler so just to make it clear to all the AMD fans out there back in 2017 we weren't recommending the 7600 K but I also didn't agree with the claim that quad-core CPUs were dead like some people were claiming at the time what does quad cores are dead even mean to me it means new games either a refused to load when attempting to run with a fork or CPU or be run so poorly that the games simply not playable thus far the first point hasn't yet happened all games that I'm aware of will execute and run on a quad-core processor as for the second point it's still quite rare to find a title it's unplayable on a quad-core it might not be the best experience going around but it's always very playable granted you certainly wouldn't want to be paying mid-range or higher end money for a fork or CPU but as an entry level gaming option in 2019 I believe they're still perfectly fine for this video I'm going to explore CPU scaling performance using AMD Zen based processors I've got a few games to go over and I'd like to take a closer look at a few different configurations using shut off the Tomb Raider please note the GPU used for each test is labeled on the graph as are the resolution and quality settings the horizon processors were tested with ddr4 3200 CL 14 memory while the Athlon 200 G uses ddr4 2400 CL 14 memory starting with Rainbow six siege we have the horizon 320 200 G representing the four core four threaded CPUs and we see a few interesting things here firstly at 1080p for those seeking big frame rates the quad core is still very punchy in this title alone from 183 FPS on average with over 129 FPS at all times that's at a dual core processor with SMT enabled also allowed for very playable performance still whereas we saw the 2200 trailing the 2700 X by 28% margin at 1080p that figure is reduced to just 13% at 1440p and then 9% at 4k in fact even the Athlon 200g is able to deliver a similar gaming experience at 4k that said this won't be the case for all games for example let's take a look at project cars to testing with project cars 2 showed pretty consistent performance gains as we increase the core count again the quad-core Rison 320 trilogy still enabled play performance attorney P never dipping below 60fps but when using a high end GPU it is clearly creating a system bottleneck we see basically the same scaling at 1440p as well and it's not until we hit 4k that the r-tx 20 atti becomes the limiting component for most of these configurations in fact at 4k it's only the dual-core Athlon 200g that can't keep up for testing with hitman I've used the DirectX 12 API and I've selected an NPC heavy scene this basically crushed the dual-core processor at the point where it was unplayable effectively killing it in this title then we have the quad core 20 20 G and it's right on the edge with a 1% low of 33 FPS however we do see a 70% variance between the 1% alone average frame rate at the 22 energy whereas the 2500 G which supports SMT only saw a 31% variance what this suggests is that the 22 energy wasn't as smooth and this is certainly what I saw when testing Assassin's Creed Odyssey is another cpu demanding title and here we see with the dual-core Athlon 200 g it really struggles to provide playable performance the 2200 G on the other hand while not ideal it did provide playable performance and we found it 4 K that it was comparable to the four core 820 400 G making it slightly slower than the Rison 5 2600 now I've deliberately included force for horizon for because like a lot of games it's not very CPU in fact it plays perfectly fun on a modern dual core processor and we see that here when looking at the Athlon 200 GE truth is the vast majority of games aren't that CPU demanding especially the popular eSports titles that said it is extremely frustrating when gamers run into CPU bounce scenarios which is why gamers talk about CPU performance so much a super demanding new title is shut off the Tomb Raider here we find the quad-core 22 RG right on the edge and again the disparity between the 1% low and average frame rate is much greater than what we see with the 2400 G even at the 4k resolution the 22 energy is massively limiting performance of the r-tx 20 atti and that suggests to me that this cpu will limit performance of much lower end GPUs as well so let's explore that now ok so here we've changed up things quite a bit by adding the RT X 2060 and GTX 1066 gigabyte also please note while all GPUs have been tested using Tim's optimised graphics profile the resolution does vary for example the 2080 - I was tested at 4k the r-tx 2060 at 1440p and then the 1066 gigabyte at 1080p what's interesting to note here is that the Athlon 200 G in Rison 320 turnigy limited frame rates across the board this is one of the reasons why we test CPUs with high-end GPUs to remove the GPU as a potential system bottleneck and while you might say pairing a 2200 G with the 2080 Ti is unrealistic it better informs you of the CPUs limits and chances are with a lower and GP you'll still find those limits anyway with appropriately adjusted quality settings anyway what we see here is that across the board the Athlon 200 G and rise in 3:22 energy are limiting performance and the same is also true for the 2400 G finally for an additional test I took the geforce gtx 1660 TI and benchmarked at 1440p using the lowest medium and highest quality presets again just in the highly demanding shot of the Tomb Raider the point of this test is to further illustrate just how difficult it is to cover this topic even with multiple hardware configurations using the highest quality preset the margin between the 2700 x 2600 X and 2400 G is reasonably small the 2200 G does well for the average framerate but I we've seen numerous times already lags behind for the 1% low result this is of course seen again with the medium quality preset and then is exaggerated even further with the lowest quality preset we also find the limits of the 2400 G here as well so even though we can increase the average framerate performance of the GTX 16 60 TI by 48 percent with the 20 20 G by going from the highest to lowest quality preset the one percent low performance which is heavily CPU limited is improved by just 27 percent in the case of the 2600 X and 2,700 X we do see consistent scaling for both the 1% lo and average frame rates as we're not CPU bound for those configurations so a quad-core CPUs dead in 2019 sounds like a simple question but simply answering yes or no that would be to oversimplify what is really a complex question I think we can all agree that high end or even mid-range quad-core CPUs even those with SMT support are dead if not for the fact that neither AMD nor Intel has produced a quad-core processor at least a mid-range a high-end one for over a year now but because they can limit performance in a number of modern tiles as we've just seen Intel's current mid-range protesters packed 6 cores with 6 threads while AMD's pack 6 cores with 12 threads this means 2017 s quad core Core i5 77 RK which was priced at $240 u.s. really is a thing of the past and I think for today's market $100 quad cores are perfectly fine especially for those gaming with an Rx 5 65 70 at GTX 10:50 right to a 3 gigabyte 1060 a cheap quad core really will get you by there that said I'd suggest aiming for at least the $165 rise in 5 2600 but I can also completely understand that spending that extra cash isn't an option for everyone generally speaking those buying $300 plus graphics cards aren't looking at pairing them with a $100 CPU of course I don't doubt that sort of thing happens but it's not the norm getting back to the core i5 7600 K for a moment I realize that the quad core performance shown in this video doesn't really reflect what the Intel 7th gen quad core cable eight-part can deliver we've seen in the past that the 7600 K really does lay waste to the 2200 G but like I said in its day it did cost twice as much so there's probably no surprises there but even so in more modern titles such as battlefield 5 multiplayer the the 76 honorary K really will start to struggle there though I suspect a heavy overclock with some decent memory will still be enough to get you out of trouble for now I guess the point here is that not all quad cores are created equally some can be overclocked around 5 gigahertz off a high IPC and low latency others come at much more modest clock speeds perhaps don't support the same memory bandwidth latency and so on on that note again I am keen to pitch the core i5 7600 K against the Rison 5 1600 and a huge range of games to see which processor offers the best gaming experience in 2019 so keep an eye out for that content then finally we have the games themselves and then the quality settings used if by chance you're mostly playing non CPU intensive tunnels such as Forza horizon for Ghost Recon wildlands dirt for fortnight for honor what else World of Tanks probably newer games such as Metro Exodus dirt rally 2.0 and even apex legends they look as though from my early testing that a modern quad core with a mid-range GPU will work just fine however if you're playing the battlefield multiplayer games a hitman the Assassin's Creed series or something like shut off the Tomb Raider for example a mid-range to low-end quad-core CPU such as the Rison 322 rog is really gonna struggle for the most part these games will still be playable the results will just be a little less than desirable so in short quad cores are perfectly fine as entry-level parts and thankfully today that's all they're being sold as at the mid range and beyond I suppose they are dead suppose you could say that and ideally you would want a 6 core 12 threaded CPU as a minimum and it's probably going to be true for at least the next few years anyway that is going to do it for this one if you did enjoy the video be sure to the like button subscribe for more content and if you appreciate we're doing our box then consider supporting us on patreon thank you for watching I'm your host Steve and I'll see you again next time