Fans of our Best Gaming CPUs for the Money column will recognize the hierarchy chart as a side-by-side comparison tool designed to help you pick an appropriate processing upgrade. It groups CPUs with roughly similar gaming performance into tiers. The top tier contains the highest-performing CPUs available and gaming performance decreases as you descend.
This hierarchy was originally based on the average performance each CPU achieved in our test suite. We have since incorporated new game data into our criteria, but it should be known that any specific title will likely perform differently depending on its unique programming. Some games, for example, will be severely graphics subsystem-limited, while others may react positively to more CPU cores, larger amounts of on-die cache or even a specific architecture. We don't have access to every CPU on the market, so some of the placements are based on the results similar models deliver. Indeed, this hierarchy chart is useful as a general guideline, but certainly not as a one-size-fits-all CPU comparison resource. For that, we recommend you check out our CPU Performance Charts.
Perhaps you noticed that we split the former top tier in half, moving a handful of quad-module AMD CPUs up in the process. Recognizing that a lot of older platforms are going to be paired with graphics subsystems multiple generations old, we wanted to define the top of our range to encourage balance between host processing and complementary GPUs. At this point, anyone with a Sandy Bridge-based Core i7 would realize a gain from stepping up to Skylake or Haswell-E, for example. And putting AMD's top FX CPUs next to a handful of Core i7s and those older Core i5s represents an upgrade to their status.
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| Intel | AMD |
|---|---|
| Core i7-3770, -3770K, -3820, -3930K, -3960X, -3970X, -4770, -4771, -4790, -4770K, -4790K, -4820K, -4930K, -4960X, -5775C, -5820K, 5930K, -5960X, -6700K, -6700 Core i5-6600K, ,-6600, -6500, -5675C, -4690K, 4670K, -4590, -4670, -4570, -4460, -4440, -4430, -3570K, -3570, -3550 | |
| Core i7-2600, -2600K, -2700K, -965, -975 Extreme, -980X Extreme, -990X Extreme Core i5-3470, -3450P, -3450, -3350P, -3330, 2550K, -2500K, -2500, -2450P, -2400, -2380P, -2320, -2310, -2300 | FX-9590, 9370, 8370, 8350, 8320, 8300, 8150 |
| Core i7-980, -970, -960 Core i7-870, -875K Core i3-4370, -4360, -4350, -4340, -4170, -4160, -4150, -4130, -3250, -3245, -3240, -3225, -3220, -3210, -2100, -2105, -2120, -2125, -2130 | FX-6350, 4350 Phenom II X6 1100T BE, 1090T BE Phenom II X4 Black Edition 980, 975 |
| Core i7-860, -920, -930, -940, -950 Core i5-3220T, -750, -760, -2405S, -2400S Core 2 Extreme QX9775, QX9770, QX9650 Core 2 Quad Q9650 | FX-8120, 8320e, 8370e, 6200, 6300, 4170, 4300 Phenom II X6 1075T Phenom II X4 Black Edition 970, 965, 955 A10-6800K, 6790K, 6700, 5800K, -5700, -7700K, -7800, -7850K, 7870K A8-3850, -3870K, -5600K, 6600K, -7600, -7650K Athlon X4 651K, 645, 641, 640, 740, 750K, 860K |
| Core 2 Extreme QX6850, QX6800 Core 2 Quad Q9550, Q9450, Q9400 Core i5-650, -655K, -660, -661, -670, -680 Core i3-2100T, -2120T | FX-6100, -4100, -4130 Phenom II X6 1055T, 1045T Phenom II X4 945, 940, 920 Phenom II X3 Black Edition 720, 740 A8-5500, 6500 A6-3650, -3670K, -7400K Athlon II X4 635, 630 |
| Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Core 2 Quad Q6700, Q9300, Q8400, Q6600, Q8300 Core 2 Duo E8600, E8500, E8400, E7600 Core i3 -530, -540, -550 Pentium G3470, G3460, G3450, G3440, G3430, G3420, G3260, G3258, G3250, G3220, G3420, G3430, G2130, G2120, G2020, G2010, G870, G860, G850, G840, G645, G640, G630 | Phenom II X4 910, 910e, 810 Athlon II X4 620, 631 Athlon II X3 460 |
| Core 2 Extreme X6800 Core 2 Quad Q8200 Core 2 Duo E8300, E8200, E8190, E7500, E7400, E6850, E6750 Pentium G620 Celeron G1630, G1620, G1610, G555, G550, G540, G530 | Phenom II X4 905e, 805 Phenom II X3 710, 705e Phenom II X2 565 BE, 560 BE, 555 BE, 550 BE, 545 Phenom X4 9950 Athlon II X3 455, 450, 445, 440, 435, 425 |
| Core 2 Duo E7200, E6550, E7300, E6540, E6700 Pentium Dual-Core E5700, E5800, E6300, E6500, E6600, E6700 Pentium G9650 | Phenom X4 9850, 9750, 9650, 9600 Phenom X3 8850, 8750 Athlon II X2 265, 260, 255, 370K A6-5500K A4-7300, 6400K, 6300, 5400K, 5300, 4400, 4000, 3400, 3300 Athlon 64 X2 6400+ |
| Core 2 Duo E4700, E4600, E6600, E4500, E6420 Pentium Dual-Core E5400, E5300, E5200, G620T | Phenom X4 9500, 9550, 9450e, 9350e Phenom X3 8650, 8600, 8550, 8450e, 8450, 8400, 8250e Athlon II X2 240, 245, 250 Athlon X2 7850, 7750 Athlon 64 X2 6000+, 5600+ |
| Core 2 Duo E4400, E4300, E6400, E6320 Celeron E3300 | Phenom X4 9150e, 9100e Athlon X2 7550, 7450, 5050e, 4850e/b Athlon 64 X2 5400+, 5200+, 5000+, 4800+ |
| Core 2 Duo E5500, E6300 Pentium Dual-Core E2220, E2200, E2210 Celeron E3200 | Athlon X2 6550, 6500, 4450e/b, Athlon X2 4600+, 4400+, 4200+, BE-2400 |
| Pentium Dual-Core E2180 Celeron E1600, G440 | Athlon 64 X2 4000+, 3800+ Athlon X2 4050e, BE-2300 |
| Pentium Dual-Core E2160, E2140 Celeron E1500, E1400, E1200 |
Currently, our hierarchy consists of 13 total tiers. The bottom half of the chart is largely outdated; you'll notice those CPUs dragging down performance in the latest games, regardless of the graphics card installed in your PC. If you own a CPU in that range, an upgrade could really take your gaming experience to another level.
Really, it's the top five tiers or so that remain viable. And in that top half of the chart, an upgrade is typically worthwhile if it's a least a couple of tiers higher. Otherwise, there's just not enough improvement to warrant the expense of a fresh CPU, motherboard and memory (not to mention the graphics card and storage solution you'd be considering as well).
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Chris Angelini is Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.
In your's GPU hierarchy Chart the same hapens, mine HD 7750 it's twice faster than GTS 250 and the two cards are in the same tier in the chart.
Thanks in advance.
They perform the same as an i5 or i7 (depending on the Xeon having HTT or not) of the same architecture and frequency. Sure, they could be added, but it would be a little redundant.
If you include o/c performance,the a.m.d. chips will stay as they are or move downwards compared to the unlocked intel chips which would make the chart a bit complicated.
Intel games performance scales better with overclocking than a.m.d. chips.
It is not my chart,obviously_but as explained,the cpu's are tiered at stock frequencies.It is too complicated otherwise and there are no guarantees any cpu will overclock at all.
You will have to add the jollies value from overclocking yourself,which would obviously mean an i7 K 2 series is a lot better than a locked 3 series i5 chip.
In fact, considering the chart has been altered according to 'data' from new games which would perform better on older i7's than newer i5's,I would call the entire chart into repute and now consider it useless as a reference tool and unusable as a quotable guideline. Unless a fresh benchmarking suite is established and all the higher cpu's run again this chart is now a waste of time.
Considering this unseen evidence is based on more multithreaded games (The FX line have moved up)
I would assume your i7 should still be in the top tier.But I guess we will have to wait on this evidence.