Gadgetory

hey guys welcome back today we're taking a look at hyper-threading performance namely how it impacts games now the focus will be on the core i7 range I don't think there's much of a debate whether or not hyper 3 is useful on a core i3 processor as it most certainly is as many of you guys are probably well aware the desktop core i7s that is to say sort of the mainstream core i7s are quad core processors so like the core i5 processors they have 4 physical cores each with their own independent level 2 cache yeah assad's issei cache not cache so no need to point that out a thousand times in the comments we get it anyway the difference between the Core i5 and core i7 processors is the addition of hyper threading support the level 3 cache is also slightly larger but for gaming this usually doesn't have much of an impact so briefly what is hyper threading essentially hyper threading is a technology developed by Intel that allows a single core to act like two separate cores with hyper-threading a single core can execute two rather than one instructions from the operating system this boosts efficiency and reduces that delay between executions in the past that's been discovered that under certain circumstances hyper threading could actually slightly reduce gaming performance the reason for this being that most games don't use more than one or two cores and even those that used up to four still couldn't take advantage of hyper threading the problem here being with hyper threading enabled the physical cores were at risk of being overworked while other physical cores weren't being used at all the operating system was meant to do a better job of balancing low between physical and virtual cores but this wasn't always the case anyway fast-forward to today and we're starting to find games that are indeed using more cores or threads even so we've been recommending gamers stick with the core i5 range for now as it's rare that Core i7 processors will deliver noticeably better performance more and more you guys are starting a challenges saying that you've indeed seen performance gains when upgrading your core i7 processor we mostly believe this to be a placebo effect though recently we have seen a few games really pushing our core i7 6700k test machine quite hard so we've decided to investigate further the reason gamers worry about their CPU so much is because I don't want to limit their gpus performance in games the first reaction when seeing frame dips or any kind of performance drop off is to blame the cpu and well sometimes it might be the culprit so we will be using the skylake core i7 6700k processor with a range of new really released titles mostly 2016 titles and will be obviously testing with hyper-threading enabled and disabled for extreme sort of performance or extreme use case I'll be using the Titan XP doesn't really get much faster than one of those suckers and for realistic mid-range performance I think probably the gtx 1070 makes the most sense and then for a good sort of mid-range performance the gtx 1060 so that all sort of make up the three cards will be using for testing we will be using the relatively low 1080p resolution which i know is a bit unrealistic for the 1070 in particular and the titan XP not so much the 1060 but we've done this to remove the cpu as the limiting factor or bottleneck as it's commonly referred to so with that let's jump to the benchmarks first up we have f1 2016 a racing simulator not really known for its heavy demand on the CPU that said the built-in benchmark at our core i7 6700k with hyper-threading enabled constantly loaded between 50 and 80% using the Titan XP we see that hyper-threading boosted the average framerate by 11% and the minimums by 15% not a huge jump in performance but a noteworthy increase nonetheless what was interesting he however was as soon as we downgrade the GPU to the gtx 1070 there is zero difference having hyper-threading enabled and disabled this was also true when using the GTX 1060 whenever we do a gaming performance type comparison that focuses on CPU performance cities skylines always comes up that's setting our test using a large fully developed city with lots going on the CPU utilization only sat at around 30 to 40 percent on the core i7 6700k as a result disabling hyper-threading had almost no impact on performance certainly not a noticeable impact anyway using our BOTS benchmark we have found overwatch to be very CPU demanding and the game seems to eat up all available threads as such utilization never dipped below if you percent and was often found hovering around 70% and at times even exceeded 90% this enabled hyper-threading to deliver a 24 percent greater frame rate when using the Titan XP a very noteworthy gain indeed however once we step down to the gtx 1070 those gains completely evaporated and now the 6700k can be seen delivering much the same performance with hyper-threading disabled cpu utilization wasn't very high in total war Warhammer and with all eight threads available as 6700k was never taxed by more than about 40% this meant even when using the Titan XP disabling hyper threading had almost no negative impact on performance civilization is another game that always comes up when testing CPU performance though this latest version only pushed the 6700 cade to around 55 to 70 percent utilization as a result hyper threading offered a very small performance advantage when using the Titan XP and gtx 1070 while performance remained much the same with the gtx 1060 Gears of War 4 is a serious CPU hog and it's one of those games that spark the creation of this video the 6700 K with hyper threading enabled was utilized by as much as 95% and for the most part it's Saturday around 70% in this test as a result the minimum frame rate was 38% higher with hyper threading enabled when using the Titan XP the minimum frame rate was also 14% greater with hyper threading enabled when using the gtx 1070 however by the time we filtered down to the gtx 1060 we find hyper threading had a little to offer finally we have battlefield one another heavy cpu user for our test utilization hovered between 60 and 80% they'll occasionally did exceed 90% though only very briefly enabling hyper threading boosted the minimum frame rate when using the Titan XP by 8% so not a huge gain meanwhile no real gains were seen with the gtx 1070 or 1060 graphics cards right so six of the seven games tested our popular triple-a titles released this year so 2016 based on the sample of games that we did test it doesn't really look like much has changed so at this point some of you guys may have noticed them even be a bit disappointed that we didn't include a Core i5 processor in this comparison we genuinely want to avoid complicating things with a core i5 core i7 comparison as this is primarily a look at hyper-threading on the core i7 processors that said you can safely assume that when match o'clock four o'clock with the core i7 processor something like the 6600 K will deliver pretty much what we saw with hyper-threading disabled myself and many others have said for years now that gamers really do reach a point of diminishing returns with Core i7 processors for example the 6700 K cost a bit over 40% more than the 6600 K and even with the Titan XP handling the rendering we didn't see those kinds of gains for these reasons this is why we recommended the 6600 K is the best value CPU for gamers back in our September video and this is why we also use the 6600 K for our $1200 1440p build so then unless you're shooting for absolutely maximum performance with high refresh rate monitors and insane GPU configurations I really don't think a core i7 processors warranted at least over a core i5 will this change in the future yes eventually it will but I don't think that changes anytime soon we know that for the next generation Intel's doing much the same they're peddling their quad cores just as they have for their sort of mainstream high-end options so I don't think the changes around the corner with that I think I'll hand it over to you guys let me know what you think in the comments below is the core i7 worth getting or do you agree with me and think the core i5 is more than sufficient for the most part and if you think this video is useful consider giving it a big old thumbs up I'm your host Steve stay classy you