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Civilization VI, Battlefield 1 & Dawn of War III
Civilization VI AI Test
Our Civilization VI AI test measures performance in a turn-based strategy game, and it tends to favor a mixture of high frequency and core count.
Core i3-7350K performs well in this test, though the i3-8350K leads once we start overclocking. Notably, Core i5-8600K offers nearly the same performance as an overclocked i3, but accomplishes this at its stock frequency. The Ryzen 3 1300X also performs well, beating out more expensive CPUs.
The Kaby Lake-based -7400 languishes at the bottom of the group due to its 3.5 GHz peak Turbo Boost frequency.
Civilization VI Graphics Test
Core i3-8350K is impressive during the Civilization VI graphics benchmark at stock clocks rates, where it essentially ties the Core i5-8600K and surpasses the Core i5-8400. Tuning provides a nice boost that catapults Core i3 ahead of everything else in our test pool. It seems this title responds exceptionally well to four physical cores, even if the -8350K encounters higher frame time variance in the beginning seconds of our benchmark.
Battlefield 1 (DX11)
Core i3-7350K's bottom-dwelling performance serves to hammer home the -8350K's step up: it provides a 20% advantage over its predecessor at stock settings. Tuning the Kaby Lake-based chip doesn't do much to close the gap, either.
Ryzen 5 1500X can't match the Ryzen 5 1600 when we lock them to the same frequency, showing that Battlefield responds well to higher core counts, among other factors.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III
The Warhammer 40,000: DoW III benchmark scales well with execution resources, but aggressive clock rates also provide a big benefit.
Intel's Core i3-8350K falls beneath the i5-8600K and i5-8400 at stock settings, and the tuned Ryzen 5 1600 also proves to be a formidable competitor.
Overclocking the Core i3-8350K unleashes a big speed-up, though, that reminds us of what we saw from Intel's Core i5-8600K. We don't have the overclocked -8600K in this batch of results, but it does outperform the -8350K with 122.8 FPS.
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