Is AMD Threadripper a gaming CPU?

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letsrun4it

letsrun4it

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Hi everyone,

I keep hearing about this AMD Threadripper and how amazing people think it will be, especially for the price point. For the high end gaming customer, is this supposed to be of interest? I've read stuff about how games only use 4 cores anyway, so there's no point. What about in the future? Any insight for a computer gaming newb would be appreciated.
 
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RektSkrubz

RektSkrubz

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Probably going to get smashed by AMD fanboys on this one, but I personally think how you are too. If you aren't doing much content creation, and have no need for SMT, you won't need more than 4 cores for 99% of games. Science Studio (Greg) was talking about losses he saw from going from an x299 i7 to a 1700x (I think) on a video he recently released, which were about 10-15 FPS in most titles. So it's really up to you if you wanted to get a CPU with a few strong cores, or a TON of less powerful cores. I currently have a 6700k myself, and am happy where I am. No need for me to upgrade to either threadripper or x299, even though I do sometimes do some intensive content creation in Vegas Pro (but I mostly game)



TL;DR: 4 Powerful Cores > 16 Weaker Cores for gaming.
 
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mdd1963

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There are a few games that scale well with more cores... (Civilizations?)

Most now seem to do best with processors utilizing 4-6 cores, 8 -12 threads....

Many cores, especially if forced to keep the clockspeed down, might actually hinder gaming performance, IMO....
 
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blockhead78

blockhead78

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considering the price, if it's purely for gaming, then threadripper is a waste of money

threadripper is most definitely going to shake things up in the world of high core/thread count

there's a much smaller gap between intel and amd now, and depending on budgets, the only things people should be looking at for gaming are i5/i7 or R5/R7
 
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synphul

synphul

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Mar 11, 2011
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High core count cpu's aren't generally the best at gaming nor are they meant to be. Video editing and encoding uses a lot of cores, blender uses a lot of cores. Even most 'workstation' applications like autocad or photoshop work better on fewer faster cores than they do 8+ cores. It's mostly overkill outside of a few tasks. Even with 8c/16t ryzen and intel cpu's out, the best gaming cpu is still the 4c/8t 7700k. Threadripper doesn't make sense as a gaming cpu anymore than intel's 10c/20t cpu's make sense for gaming.

Like using a dumptruck to win a street race, it'll get there and it'll do more work over the long haul if you've got work to get done but it's not getting there the fastest. Threadripper or intel's higher core count cpu's would be a waste for plenty of other things as well. More cores is mostly a marketing gimmick, the people who would benefit from high core counts generally know who they are. I say gimmick because it's advertised to people as 'moar cores! moar faster! moar better!' and not really, no.

Amd's done that type of marketing in the past with the fx series when they had 8 cores and it left many people disappointed. Even those who had fx 6xxx cpu's and thought well fx 8xxx has more cores, must be better but they weren't. Not for most tasks anyway. Not comparing ryzen to fx, ryzen's greatly improved their ipc but the concept remains the same. We're not seeing games getting 20-30fps better performance because of 'moar cores'. Even the 1700/1800 ryzen's with 8c/16t are overkill for most tasks just like intel's 6950x 10c/20t cpu. If more cores were better for the common gamer or user even performing general workstation tasks, everyone would be dying to get the 6950x and it would be touted as the gaming champion. It's just not. If moar cores don't make intel's cpu's better at most tasks outside of special case uses why would amd's higher core counts be better? And why would even more cores than that be better with threadripper?
 
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eblackmo

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I am always curious when I read these types of comments I pre-ordered a 1950X today. It will be replacing my 5820k which has a turbo frequency of 3.60Ghz. Would that be classified as strong? Because when that dropped it was part of intels HEDT line up. So I guess so?

I overclocked it but couldn't get it stable past 4.4Ghz. The 1950X should overclock to 4.5Ghz no worries. I guess what I am asking is this. Is your comment based on any technical knowledge or is it just your opinion? I am not trying to be an arsehole I am genuinely curious if I am missing something.

Because I could still cancel my pre-order. Prior to the 5820k I owned a FX-8350 which was clocked at 4.0Ghz. Would that be classified as strong? Maybe I should just get one of those....actually I still have it.

It's in my media player PC. Could have saved myself some money there.
 
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eblackmo

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I think that with the FX series AMD was using an architecture where they had separate cores for x86 and x64. So 8 core was actually 4 core.

At least that's what I heard. They did have something unusual going on with that architecture maybe.
 
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letsrun4it

letsrun4it

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According to the full nerd podcast under demonstration conditions it overclocked to 5.1Ghz. Lordy.
 
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Solarion

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Closer to 5.2Ghz, but that was on LN2.

AMD has been binning the best chips for threadripper, but even so I wouldn't count on a 4.5Ghz overclock. XFR is supposed to reach up to around 4.2, I'd say if you get all the cores up that high then that'd be mighty impressive.
 
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mdd1963

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kilyan

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Well, if you play old games this is not your cpu,mean waste of money. Now games take advantage of at least 6 cores, 4 cores are not enough anymore if we talk of 2017 games. I would watch some threadripper gameplays where streamers show how many cores are used to get an idea before buying.

 
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