CPU vs GPU: We tested 16 hardware combinations to show which upgrade will boost your gaming performance the most

[Admin]

We've tested four different CPUs and GPUs, spanning the past seven years of PC hardware, to show how different upgrade paths can perform. That's full benchmarks of 16 different hardware configurations to help you plan for your next gaming upgrade.

CPU vs GPU: We tested 16 hardware combinations to show which upgrade will boost your gaming performance the most : Read more

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

FYI, I've redirected the initial article to a new URL (which also changes the comment thread), to see how that impacts traffic. Initial comments can be found here: https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...ted-many-hardware-combos-to-find-out.3847626/

 

[thestryker]

As always these are invaluable for comparisons and figuring out what to upgrade when. Hoping for at least some 7900 XT/XTX on 8700K results in the future!

Just to help anyone who might have different hardware with some rough analogs (just for gaming):
8700K is a little bit faster than AMD's Zen 2 X SKUs, but close enough for comparison

11900K is a little faster than 12100 and a little slower than 12400 for Intel and right around the 5600/X for AMD

(not going to compare AMD to NV GPUs as more can go into this than raw performance)

RTX 3080 is generally faster than the 4070, but slower than 4070 Super (it's enough faster than anything 20 series nothing matches here)

RTX 2080 is about the performance of the RTX 4060

RTX 3050 is a little faster than the 1660 Ti/Super and a little slower than 2060 6GB and about the same as the GTX 1080

 

[Unolocogringo]

Thanks for the effort you put into this type of article.
This is information that is asked for a lot in the forums.

 

[Mattzun]

I was looking for this article to see if any of the complaints about the gaming performance of the 9700X even matter on anything other than a 4090.

I found the article very valuable - it just doesn't matter if a 9700X is 5 percent or 25 percent faster than a 7700X when a much slower Intel 11th gen is close to maxing out a 4080 at 4k

Its too bad that there are far more people viewing and commenting on the completely irrelevant poor performance of a 9700X at 1080P/low when they are gaming on a 4070 or 4080 at 1440P or 4K with DLSS.

If articles like this aren't feasible due to viewership, could you add a page to GPU reviews that shows how one game that scales with CPU (i.e. Watch Dogs) works at several resolutions with a couple of CPUs.
It would be helpful for deciding if a GPU upgrade would be helpful for someone who doesn't want to upgrade their entire system.

Alternately, an article like how much CPU do you need for a 3080 would be useful for whatever the next mid-high end cards come out.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I was looking for this article to see if any of the complaints about the gaming performance of the 9700X even matter on anything other than a 4090.

I found the article very valuable - it just doesn't matter if a 9700X is 5 percent or 25 percent faster than a 7700X when a much slower Intel 11th gen is close to maxing out a 4080 at 4k

Its too bad that there are far more people viewing and commenting on the completely irrelevant poor performance of a 9700X at 1080P/low when they are gaming on a 4070 or 4080 at 1440P or 4K with DLSS.

If articles like this aren't feasible due to viewership, could you add a page to GPU reviews that shows how one game that scales with CPU (i.e. Watch Dogs) works at several resolutions with a couple of CPUs.
It would be helpful for deciding if a GPU upgrade would be helpful for someone who doesn't want to upgrade their entire system.

Alternately, an article like how much CPU do you need for a 3080 would be useful for whatever the next mid-high end cards come out.

Yeah, I find the 1080p testing results on CPUs to only be moderately useful. But if you look at my GPU benchmarks, what you'd discover is that CPU bottlenecks really only matter with the top two or three current GPUs at lower settings. 4K ultra, you probably would see a 2-3 percent difference between i9-14900K and i5-14600K, or Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Ryzen 5 7600X, even with cards like the 4090.