CPU for gaming

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Tim Downey

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Jul 21, 2014
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Hi,
I have a I7-2600 CPU with a Asus p8z68-v pro/gen3 motherboard. I have 2 x Sapphire R9 290 crossfired and 16gb RAM.

I was wondering if I would get better FPS etc with gaming with a CPU upgrade (and I'd have to upgrade my mobo also as its a 1155 socket)?? When I use MSI afterburner it only shows my cpu's at running @ ~ 60% when playing games at 2K res.

Thanks for any advice
 
Solution
geofelt
Good question.
There is more to it than you might imagine.

Your 2600 has 8 threads, 4 main and 4 hyperthreads.
If the games you play are multithread enabled, then 8 threads is very good and a 60% utilization would indicate that you have plenty of cpu power.
The reality is that most games can use only 2-3 threads and many can use only one main thread. That puts more importance on the power of each individual thread.
Task manager does not tell you this because the activity of one cpu limited single thread will be spread across the available threads. You can be cpu core speed limited and not know it.

How to tell?
Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 70%...
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geofelt

geofelt

Titan
Oct 9, 2006
54,291
4,145
174,240
Good question.
There is more to it than you might imagine.

Your 2600 has 8 threads, 4 main and 4 hyperthreads.
If the games you play are multithread enabled, then 8 threads is very good and a 60% utilization would indicate that you have plenty of cpu power.
The reality is that most games can use only 2-3 threads and many can use only one main thread. That puts more importance on the power of each individual thread.
Task manager does not tell you this because the activity of one cpu limited single thread will be spread across the available threads. You can be cpu core speed limited and not know it.

How to tell?
Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 70%.
Go to control panel/power options/change plan settings/change advanced power settings/processor power management/maximum processor state/
This will simulate what a lack of cpu power will do.
Conversely what a 30% improvement might do.

To assess how important many cores or threads are to your games,
Try removing hyperthreading and see if it makes a difference.
You could try deactivating one of your cores and see what that does.

Your i7-2600 @3.4 has a passmark rating of 8287.
The i7-4790K @4.4 has a passmark rating of 12270.
 
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