Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed alright so on October 18th I put together a fairly comprehensive set of gaming benchmarks covering a wide range of new intel core i7 and core i5 processors and compared them to the AMD arisin range in total nine games were tested at 720p 1080p and 1440p using the second highest quality preset with a Radeon rx and Vega 64 liquid-cooled graphics card the focus of that video was stock out-of-the-box performance but I noted that I also planned to create an overclocking version as well so far I have the numbers for the rising 5 1600 though I thought rather than delay showing them to you for another week or two let's compare the r5 1600 at 4 gigahertz to the core i5 8400 I've been getting dozens of requests every day to make this comparison so I thought I'd make it happen sooner rather than later however the video with all the benchmark results will be coming this time tomorrow today I want to discuss a few things that came up in the previous video and will no doubt come up again in tomorrow's video so rather than address all those comments individually let's just discuss them here and then I can skip this explanation at least out of tomorrow's benchmark video and just get on with all the benchmarks anyone who makes a comment about the topics or things covered in this video tomorrow will be linked back to this video so hello person complaining about 720p testing ok so first let's talk about the graphics card choice the Radeon rx Vegas 64 liquid-cooled has been used because it offers true DirectX 12 support and gives us a much better idea of how these multi-core CPUs will perform in modern titles using DirectX 12 meanwhile the GTX 1080i it does rely on driver trickery to offer DirectX 12 support and therefore doesn't take full or proper advantage of the more modern API since we aren't using ultra type settings and almost all the games tested and I am showing 720p results Vegas 64 liquid-cooled isn't the bottleneck that many made it out to be in the previous video in fact it's faster than the GTX 1080i in the DirectX 12 titles test and the results in most of the DirectX and holes aren't that different especially 720p the margins certainly are very similar between the CPUs tested perhaps the biggest point of contention though was the 720p testing which was included to help remove the graphics card as a potential bottleneck pro tip for other tech channels if you want to weed out toxic AMD fanboys include 720p testing in all your videos and be prepared to play whack-a-mole with YouTube's ban feature seriously though low resolution testing really is the only way to truly determine what kind of difference the CPU makes when it comes to gaming that said though it's not like I only included 720p results reading some of the comments on that video you would certainly think that was the case but no it wasn't just as much focus was placed on the 1080p and 1440p testing by the time you get to 1440p though you really no longer testing CPU performance for the most part it's really a GPU benchmark then but still I include the 1440p results to satisfy those that request it and I really don't have a problem with providing a broader range of data when I can basically anyone in the comment section I'm berserk over either the 720p or 1440p results being included pretty much has an agenda in my opinion there really is no valid reason to demand that certain datasets be excluded the more information we have the better I'll cover the low resolution topic in more detail with benchmarks very soon for now though I don't see how this information is misleading or hurts anyone anyone commenting that it is misleading or useless because no one plays at 720p sadly doesn't get why reviewers test at low resolutions for CPU benchmarks again if 720p testing is provided alongside 1080p and even 1440p testing then frankly you don't have a leg to stand on alright moving on to the next issue the core i5 8400 and here I want to talk about budget motherboards enhanced multi-core support and pricing first up cheap motherboards next year we're expecting sub $100 u.s. 300 series motherboards are supporting say the H 370 and B 360 chipsets to arrive and this will drastically reduce the cost per frame of the I 580 400 and my little charts at the end of the videos that I do then this will make it a better value product and likely give AMD a few more headaches in the process looking at the comment section of the previous video it seems that AMD fans seem to be arguing that the core i5 8400 will be slower on the more budget orientated 300 series motherboards with these new affordable chipsets that I just spoke of and I'm not really sure why that is we've certainly never seen this in the past the core i7 77 okay for example delivers the exact same performance out of the box on a h1 10 board as it does as n270 that is a core streaming that you keep the memory speed at ddr4 2133 on this end through 70 board but yeah performance doesn't change for the chipsets between the chipsets why why is that a new thing now there are a few things to discuss here and all of them were a counter form our core i5 8400 review officially the 8400 supports ddr4 2666 memory and this is the maximum memory speed that will be supported on motherboards that don't feature overclocking support so that means B 360 and H 370 boards all of the core i5 8400 results that I've shown so far were gathered using ddr4 3200 memory so in CPU bound scenarios the 8400 will be slower on cheaper motherboards using ddr4 2666 memory it won't be drastically slower but it will be slower all the same getting back to the AMD fans they also claimed that the base clock speed of the 8400 is suspicious and Intel is pulling some kind of shifty move here it's been suggested that intel has hand-picked the review samples and while they can maintain a 3.8 gigahertz all core operating frequency beyond the review sample chips that is under load the retail chips they're saying at least the bad ones will drop down to the 2.8 gigahertz base frequency and therefore will step to a 26% reduction in performance compared to the figures I showed in my review and the previous big benchmark video well I've bought a retail chip and the results were identical to the Intel sample Brian over at Tech your city bought two chips not one but two hey bought one locally and one from us and they were also exactly the same as my Intel sample as I understand it the reason the Intel Core i5 8400 has such a low base clock frequency is because of its 65 watt TDP rating for gaming and typical workloads it can stay within the power profile with all six cores at 3.8 gigahertz however it can't achieve this for avx2 workloads and therefore it has to drop down to 2.8 gigahertz to stay within the power spec the 8600 K on the other hand has been branded with a 95 watt TDP rating and therefore can maintain a higher base frequency for avx2 workloads 3600 K doesn't come with a cooler so Intel can get away with making in a higher TDP part if they did this with the 8400 that have to spend more money on providing a better cooler and we know they're opposed to that idea and really Intel just doesn't like cutting into profit margins as for my testing with the core i5 8400 well I used a Zed 370 motherboard there's simply no other choice right now for those buying this CPU for either using it or reviewing it that being the case I factored the cost of the Zed 370 motherboard into my cost per frame analysis if you're gonna buy an 8400 with a Zen 370 motherboard which as I said you have two right now then you're not going to limit yourself to ddr4 2666 memory so for now that data is irrelevant despite using a Zed 370 board I haven't been able to enable the enhanced multi-core feature on any of the asrock MSI or gigabyte boards that I've tested people have told me you can do this on a seuss boards and that it's enabled by default I'm not sure if that's true or not I think it's possible they might be getting a bit confused though this is certainly the case for unlocked K models but I haven't seen it confirmed by reliable source for non K locked models of course it could be possible I just don't know yet as I don't have an Isuzu 370 board yet anyway my testing hasn't been done with enhanced multi-core enabled in fact I've actually never enabled this feature for any of my CPU testing unless it was specified and this has been the case for years now I've always made sure it's disabled before testing but as I said in the case of the 8400 this feature isn't even available in the BIOS to be enabled finally pricing now reviewers like myself typically base pricing on the MSRP as this is generally the most accurate pricing metric there is there are certainly very little point in taking sale prices into account as they generally only be offered for a limited time and they are very regional specific so ya don't really make sense to use those I know guys like oh the rosin five 1600s this price your pricing metrics all out of whack it's like well yeah I I will go off current market prices so wait for the horizon five six five hundred most of the rise and five process is in that previous video I actually use prices that were below the MSRP but yeah they weren't micro center prices where they're selling the risin 5 1604 $18.55 bitter sarcasm there right now the core i5 8400 can't be had anywhere near the $182 MSRP in time you'll no doubt be able to get it for that price but right now you just simply can't in fact you probably can't get one at all so pricing comparisons are based on the MSRP but I do note the current market price and conditions there's no double standards here either I reviewed the Radeon rx Vega 56 graphics card with the MSRP and mind shortly after release it was selling for more like I think it was $700 u.s. not the $400 US MSRP that said for follow up content I still based everything on the MSRP but noted that availability and current market prices were great today it still is overpriced but it has come down a long way and now can be purchased for four hundred and seventy dollars and I'm hoping that early next year will be at the four hundred dollar MSRP so people watching that video next year you know won't be getting a skewed opinion on a price that no longer exists pricing certainly can be very volatile we see this all the time but the manufacturer's suggested retail price well it's a real thing and under typical market conditions that is the price you'll be faced with as always you do have to apply a little bit of common sense and be a bit realistic about all this some we can't base pricing comparisons on the current retail price in every region and really we shouldn't have to these prices do change regularly as I've seen they can be quite volatile and this is particularly true when a product has just been released all that being said it is my opinion that Intel has screwed up this release or at least rushed yet another release which has caused problems and it hasn't gone as well as should have so yeah not arguing that at all or debating it I completely agree with anyone who believes that they're clearly feeling the heat from Verizon and they've acted quickly as quickly as possible and this has been the result it's a bit of a messy release anyway that's gonna do it for this one I suspect there will be still people ranting about low resolution testing in the comment section below and all that but I've now said my bit on the subject for now I'm your host Steve say again soon guys you you