What's important to look at besides GHz?

anthonio5636 · Jul 13, 2014

So I'm looking at spending about $1000ish on building on a computer and I'm trying to decide what CPU to buy. I'm sure there are some decent AMD CPUs but I just perfer Intel for some reason. By the way, this computer will be used pretty much for gaming and stuff like that, not things such as video editing, etc. So I figured looking at a benchmark site (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php) would help me make a decision. I don't have much knowledge about CPUs and this is the first computer that I will be building. So could someone explain what exactly "cores" are and what it means to have multiple cores. I know the number of cores is important and so is the GHz but when I was looking at this website it seems that certain processors with lower GHz outperform processors with more GHz. E.G. Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 @ 2.70GHz vs. Intel Core i5-4690K @ 3.50GHz. Now I don't plan on buying the first one, this is sort of an extreme example, and I know there is a large difference between the number of cores but overall I just want to understand what else I should look at besides GHz and is the number of cores more important than GHz (because that's the way it seems)?

Any help is appreciated.

Just finished doing some more reading on the subject and people have been talking about the "architecture" of the processor. If someone could explain what exactly that means as well I would greatly appreciate it.

Been looking at more processors and I've noticed something called an intergrated graphics core. I understand that this is basically like a built in graphics card but can I still get a dedicated graphics card to put in my computer as well?

PandaBear270 · Jul 13, 2014

By the way, this computer will be used pretty much for gaming and stuff like that, not things such as video editing

Then go with Core i5. The hyperthreading will be unnoticeable in games.

So could someone explain what exactly "cores" are and what it means to have multiple cores

A core is a unit of processing inside a chip. Every core can handle a task independently. More cores mean more tasks being handled at the same time.

I know the number of cores is important and so is the GHz but when I was looking at this website it seems that certain processors with lower GHz outperform processors with more GHz

This is because architecture. As an example: AMD have less money and less engineers than Intel, this is why their design is less efficient than Intel. Intel can, with their tech, process more things at the same clock speed.

just want to understand what else I should look at besides GHz and is the number of cores more important than GHz

Is easy. Videogames at this current generation uses 1-2 cores mainly. 3 or 4 at the best scenario, and this is rare. This mean, for gaming you will be better suited with a processor that have faster and stronger single cores, than a processor with lots of cores that perform poorly. This is why the Intel Core i5 is really popular among gamers. They get four cores that have great speed at relatively low clocks and consumptions.

Just finished doing some more reading on the subject and people have been talking about the "architecture" of the processor. If someone could explain what exactly that means as well I would greatly appreciate it

Architecture is like the blueprints of the processor, its structure design, how it works, how it performs, how it handles everything. The better the architecture, the better the processor can perform a task with less power and less clock.

Been looking at more processors and I've noticed something called an intergrated graphics core. I understand that this is basically like a built in graphics card but can I still get a dedicated graphics card to put in my computer as well

Those are little "graphic cards" inside the processor, and are aimed to people who doesn't want to game. They are really underpowered. Always look for dedicated cards.

This is a little suggestion for a good system that will endure:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97-HD3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($98.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Kingston Blu 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($138.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card ($219.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $687.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

ksham · Jul 13, 2014

Oh boy... that's a lot of questions. I'll try my best to address them all.

anthonio5636 :

You can go with AMD or Intel. The budget is the deciding factor. The majority of games do not use more than two cores so there's no reason to buy a CPU with more cores if you won't end up using them.

The ideal candidate right now is an Intel Core i5-4690 or Intel Core i5-4690K (if overclocking). On the AMD side, it will be FX-6300, FX-8320, or FX-8350. But AMD has dropped the FX series to work on their APU series so there will be no direct upgrades if you go that route.

anthonio5636 :

Synthetic benchmarks won't help you in a real-world case scenario.

anthonio5636 :

This will start off as a tangent to your question but play along. You are the CEO of a company that develops video games. Your company has two facilities in different regions. Let's call those facilities West One and East One. In West One, you have four employees (yourself not included). In East One, you have eight employees (yourself not included).

One day, for whatever reason, you told both facilities to create the same game. You gave them the specifications for the game and the facilities create the game. Assuming the employees in West One and East One are all competent equally, then East One will finish the job faster because they have four extra personnel.

Now, back to the CPU. If the CPU is you (the CEO), and the cores are workers, then each core does one task. More cores mean that you can perform multiple tasks simultaneously.

anthonio5636 :

Let's go back to my scenario above. If West One completes the task close to the time East One finishes the same task, then the extra four personnel in East One is doing a whole lot of nothing. Either that or West One's employees are more efficient and are better than East One. So in that regard, having more personnel (or cores) didn't help much. This is true in games that use upwards of two cores. in fact, many games do not use more than a few cores.

GHz is actually not important. At the very least, it's not conclusive. So if a CPU runs at 3.0 GHz and another CPU runs at 1.50 GHz, you would assume the CPU running at 3.0 GHz to be faster, right? That is not true. Let's say the CPU running at 3.0 GHz performs one task. The CPU running at 1.50 GHz performs two tasks. In this case, both CPUs are essentially identical. The first CPU is twice as fast, but it completes tasks in half the time. The terminology for this is Instructions per Cycle or IPC for short.

One thing I did not mention is Hyper-Threading. This is when one core performs two tasks at once. It's like multi-tasking for a single person. But of course, this is less efficient than having another physical body.

anthonio5636 :

A computer architecture is a list of instruction sets. How the CPU performs all the calculations. It's not like a human brain that can learn new things. Everything it has to do is programmed into it.

anthonio5636 :

Yes.

On a side note, if your primary goal is just gaming, looking into this much depth on CPU is not very useful. It doesn't hurt to know more about them, but CPUs don't do much in most games. There are CPU-intensive games where having a fast CPU matters, but most of the time, the GPU will be doing the work. You want to make sure that the CPU is not bottlenecking the GPU and vice-versa.

Bottlenecking is when something is restricting another thing from performing at full potential. So if the CPU is too slow to provide data to the graphics card, then the graphics card is under-performing because it is constantly waiting on the CPU.

ksham · Jul 13, 2014

tea urchin :

Or you are just not noticing all the indie games that are created. The majority of games do not. That doesn't mean "all games". And only a few many games use more than four cores. You want to only talk about the big titles out there?

PandaBear270 · Jul 13, 2014

ksham :

So the Indie games devs are the reason for AMD to still not shining :lol:

ksham · Jul 13, 2014

PandaBear270 :

You want me to have a talk with all game developers about that? In terms of marketing, it makes sense. It depends on the game. If it doesn't need more than two cores, then it's able to be played on more computers. Right?

That doesn't mean that if a game supports four cores, you can't play it on a dual-core processor.

PandaBear270 · Jul 13, 2014

The thing is Intel needs to move from the Quad-core mentality and start producing i5 with six cores for the mainstream gaming community. Why? Because that would force the developers to make threaded games. A threaded game means that you can add more expensive things, like realistic physics, particles, etc...
Oh wait, this is being done by the GPU actually. Nevermind.

ksham · Jul 13, 2014

tea urchin :

Then go and prove me wrong. In the same light, your comments are not productive either as you are just posting down your opinions with no actual data sample.

Most games are not heavily threaded. You actually need to program it for it to be threaded that way. And that gets trickier than it sounds. Most game engines optimize it and most games do NOT perform any better between a quad-core vs a dual-core. I don't want to hijack someone else's thread to explain that to you.

PandaBear270 · Jul 13, 2014

Don't worry and go ahead, the OP is actually hungry for knowledge on CPUs internals.

ksham · Jul 13, 2014

It has less to do with CPU internals and more to do with game programming. You can run BF3 or BF4 with a dual-core or quad-core (with or without hyper-threading) and they will perform almost identical (within some margin of error). If it used more then two cores simultaneously, you would get better performance on the quad-core, but you really don't because the games do not saturate the usage of all four cores.

Although, moot point, you cannot run BF3 or BF4 in single core mode unless it's a single core with hyper-threading. So there are boundary marks where the game either functions and sweet spot on where you don't gain much (if any) performance by adding in additional cores. Most of the things in-game is single threaded.

More cores may help if you want to run other programs while gaming. But the game itself won't benefit greatly from it.

PandaBear270 · Jul 13, 2014

Yes, the people always forget there are more things running in the background, not just the game.

LookItsRain · Jul 13, 2014

tea urchin :

Here you go, the 3258 with just 2 cores, no HT keeping up with an i5 4690k even coming quite close with stock clocks.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pentium-g3258-overclocking-performance,3849-5.html
it didnt paste <.<

LookItsRain · Jul 13, 2014

To add, i dont think its has much to do with what gets bought, but with what the game companies are willing to do with thier engines, they dont want to take the time and money to optimize for more cores, i hope the new gen consoles help change that view. Not utilizing available resources is just stupid for the consumer and the devloper.

PandaBear270 · Jul 13, 2014

LookItsRain :

+1

LookItsRain · Jul 13, 2014

tea urchin :

The stuttering does not surprise with with such an old CPU, that old quad is having its cores maxed which means it will stutter and suffer. Paird with a 690 that old cpu is being downright destroyed by the CPU workload. I dont think the newer cpu would have those issues, but im no expert and cant find how toms benchmarks bf4 in the short time i looked.

The compairsons are to far streched, for what you list, an e6600 is much slower than a dual core haswell pentium. There is an 8 year diffrence between an e6600 and a haswell i5. A modern dual core, like the cheap 3258, will provide good frame rates, even on a ludicris gpu, have a lower class gpu and the bottleneck wont really exist.

LookItsRain · Jul 13, 2014

tea urchin :

LookItsRain :

The stuttering kicked in when they cut the cores to 2.

' Now we have to be honest here; those with weaker dual-core CPUs will encounter A LOT of stuttering issues with BF4. While simulating a dual-core CPU, we found BF4 unplayable due to the constant stuttering and the really low framerate (even on low details). DICE suggests an Intel i5 as a minimum requirement, so that CPU may fare better than an older dual-core CPU.'

Yes, using a 6 year old cpu, use a recent dual core cpu and the frames will be fine.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Quad-Q9650-vs-Intel-Core-i3-3220
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Pentium-G2020-vs-Intel-Core2-Quad-Q9650

anthonio5636 · Jul 13, 2014

Well I appreciate the help given even though it seems to have turned into an argument or something... Nonetheless I obviously don't know much about computers so sorry about any dumb questions I may have asked.

What's important to look at besides GHz?

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