Gadgetory

for a while now I've wanted to create a video that compares gaming performance of various Intel processors from gamers perspective of course the driving force behind this idea has been you guys the hardware unbox tribe my loyal sub-region it's an interesting question that isn't easily answered hence the need to create this video ultimately it comes down to two things first and foremost the types of games you play if Rama succeeds is all your plan on playing for example then don't bother upgrading that core i3 it won't get you any extra performance this is because Rainbow six siege is primarily a GPU bound game which means you'll be far better off investing in your graphics card than your CPU for this title on the other hand games such as civilization beyond Earth for example require great deal of cpu firepower and this is where your money we best spend for performance gains of course we're talking about gaming performance so regardless of the title the GPU plays a key role in fact your graphics card really dictates just how useful your CPU is going to be even in CPU intensive games for example pairing a low end GPU such as the Radeon r7 370 with a powerful processor such as the core i7 6700 K won't be doing you any favors this is because a much slower processor such as the core i3 6100 will deliver the same performance regardless of how CPU intensive the title is so obviously there's a balance to be had between CPU and GPU power there probably being finding that perfect balance in an effort to discover this I'll be testing a huge range of Intel skylake processors from the lowly pentium g 4400 to the mighty kora 760 700 K using three different GPUs the graphics cards in question of the Radeon r9 fury acts r9 390 and i9 380 please note that due to the fact I've tested eight Schaick processors using three different graphics cards only five games have been used however I feel these five games paint a very clear picture and by that I mean they give a good indication with CPUs best compliment which graphics cards even though I've only tested five titles there's a good mix of CPU and GPU intensive games the mostly GPU intensive games used include Far Cry primal and rise of the Tomb Raider while the CPU intensive games include The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt civilization beyond Earth and ashes of the singularity finally I'd just like to point out that all testing takes place at 1080p there's little point testing CPU performance at any resolution greater than 1080p as high resolutions will result in GPU bottlenecks in fact we're already seeing is a 1080p on the i-90 380 so if you're running at 1440p or higher for example you can expect the performance margins to be reduced when compared to what I'm about to show you ok so far cry primal doesn't support dual core processors as many of the game's main assets run on the third thread so I couldn't test the Pentium processors moving forward we see that even with a fury X installed the game doesn't appear particularly CPU intensive as the core i3 6100 was just 10% slower than the 6700 K when comparing the minimum frame rate interestingly despite the slight variation in the minimum frames the majority of the processors tested produced the same 72 FPS average frame rate lowering the GPU rendering power with the radiant I know 390 we see that the core i3 Core i5 and core i7 processors all deliver the same performance downgrading the GPU further with the r9 380 we again find that all tested processors deliver the same performance rise of the Tomb Raider can make good use of multi-core processors but I wouldn't describe it as CPU intensive here the core i7 6700 K was just 14 percent faster than the G 4400 when comparing the minimum frame rates while the core i5 6400 was just 8 percent faster now with the I 9 390 installed the core i7 6700 K is just 7 percent faster than the G 4400 what's a very slim margin indeed that said the G 4400 clearly wasn't hitting the same high as the average frame rate was a bit slower though this was corrected with the G 45 20 here we see that with the r9 380 installed all eight processes deliver pretty much the same result in fact all of them do with the exception of the G 4400 which was a whiskey slower despite testing The Witcher 3 in the CPU intensive town of novigrad we don't see a huge difference in performance from the G 4400 to the 6700 K when using the fury X in fact here the 6700 K was just 8% faster which I have to say was a real surprise moving to the r9 390 saw a much larger variation in performance when comparing the dual core Pentium processors the four threaded core i3 and ultimately quad core Core i7 processors it's a bit strange that this wasn't seen with the fury X but these are much more in line with the results that I was expecting to find here the core i3 6100 was able to get the most out of the Radeon r9 390 and was 22% faster than the G 4400 the core i5 6400 was actually slightly slower than the core i3 processors due to its much weaker core clock speed now with the lowly r9 380 installed it appears that the processor becomes far less important as the Pentium G 45 20 was able to match the core i3 i5 and i7 processors probably the most CPU intensive game featured in this video is civilization beyond Earth here the 6700 K was 66 percent faster than the G 44 hundred and fifty-six percent faster than the G 45 20 when comparing the minimum frame rate the 6700 K was also 33% faster than the core i3 63 20 and 10% faster than the 6600 K going with a slower GPU in the o9 390 only reduced the 6700 K is lead over the G 4400 by a small amount as it's now 61 percent faster the low clocked Core i5 6400 was only able to match the core i3 63 20 you want a much higher clock 6600 K match the 6700 even with the iodine 380 handling the rendering work the 6700 K was still 53% faster than the G 4400 which dropped down to the 32 FPS it's important to note that while the average frame rates don't show much of a difference in performance the minimums tell a different story ashes of the singularity provides us with a look at both DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 performance unfortunately I'm only able to compare the average frame rates as the game doesn't report the minimum frame rate and I've no other means of recording and under DirectX 12 as programs like fraps don't work nevertheless the results are very interesting the Pentium results the most noteworthy for a few reasons firstly although the DirectX 11 performance is quite weak when compared to the mighty Core i7 processors it isn't that bad when compared to the core i3 and lower clocked Core i5 6400 processors the pentium g 4400 was 24% slower than the core i5 6400 for example not a bad result given the Core i5 processor has twice as many cores to play with however once we move to DirectX 12 G 4400 becomes 28% slower than the 6400 well the Pentium Pro is fall behind the core i3 processors are able to roughly match the core i5s and therefore the core i7 processors it is worth noting that although the Pentium processors didn't perform as well under DirectX 12 they still received a healthy 45% performance boost when compared to DirectX 11 similar performance trends are seen when using yarn and 390 G 4400 received 47% performance boost when using DirectX 12 this mean it was still over 20% slower than the core i3 processors in the more modern api on the other hand the core i3 i5 and i7 processors all delivered similar performance when using DirectX 12 now using the r9 380 the GPUs limits seem to be reached at 39 fps under DirectX 11 as evidenced by the core i7 6700 and 6700 K results this meant that the G 4400 was 28% slower while the core i3 in Core i5 6400 processors were just 8% slower retesting using DirectX 12 we find that all eight processors produce the exact same result of 41 fps so what can we take away from all this testing well firstly as many of you already know there isn't a great deal of difference between the core i5 and core i7 processors when it comes to gaming this is particularly true when comparing the unlocked 6600 K and 6700 K processors to higher frequencies such as four and a half gigahertz and beyond looking at the other end of the core i5 spectrum we find the core i5 6400 a processor that can't work any faster than 3.3 gigahertz and will often be found running below three gigahertz during heavy loads as a result the higher clocked core i3 processors were able to match and even beat the 6400 in CPU intensive games such as civilization using the following line graphs as an example we see the core i3 6320 is capable of matching the core i5 6400 when using high-end GPUs such as the fury X 6600 K is 6700 are also comparable while the 6700 K only appears faster due to its higher out-of-the-box operating frequency it's clear that civilization in games like it played best when at least four threads are available providing you meet that criteria the next important criteria is the clock speed of the physical cores the importance of the CPU clock speed becomes obvious when comparing the two Core i5 processors however although civilization is primarily a CPU bound game the performance difference between say the G 4400 6,700 k wouldn't be as extreme with lower end GPUs in fact out of interest I threw in the gtx 750ti a popular choice amongst budget gamers what I found was every single one of the CPUs featured in this video allow for an average frame rate of 45 FPS with a minimum of 31 FPS this then is why it's so important to match your GPU to your CPU or vice versa the budget game is using low end GPUs that little need for a core i5 processor as it's very rarely going to be more useful in a core i3 or in this case a dual core Pentium processor it is becoming harder and harder to justify investing in a dual core processor like the $60 G 4400 still given the performance that can be had in most modern titles along with the fact that it cost half as much as the core i3 6100 you can't go to wrong conveniently picking up an affordable Pentium processor now still leaves the option to upgrade down the track so it's not a dead end scenario rise of the Tomb Raider for example plays surprisingly well on modern dual-core processors such as the G 4400 or G 45:20 in fact depending on the GPU being used there might be little to no performance gain to be had when opting for a more powerful Core i5 or Core i7 processor so the answer to which CPU do I need still isn't a simple one but it ultimately comes down to which games you play in to a lesser degree the graphics card you'll be using as a rule of thumb sub $100 CPUs should be paired with the modern GPU they cost an excess of $150 the GTX 950 or r7 370 would be suitable the core i3 processors work well with the gtx 960 or r9 380 while the core i5 and faster are best paired the I know 390 gtx 970 or faster i hope you found this video useful I'm your host Matt as always if you have any questions at all then please leave them in the comments have a great day and I'll see you guys next time I'll keep you if