For the near term future (through 2017) I would stick with Intel's higher IPC CPUs with only 4 cores rather than AMD's lower IPC CPUs with 6 or 8 cores when it comes to games. Long term future (2017+) it is difficult to say. The gaming industry has really only just begun to take advantage of 4 cores in a CPU, however, I don't believe the usage is efficient yet. For example, I have not seen any indication of any games capable of 90%+ usage for every core in a quad core CPU. It is typically lower than that; much lower especially when looking at the 3rd and 4th core.
As for designing games capable of using 8 cores, it will take time. The easy part (all things considering) is to design a game to use all 8 cores. The much harder part is to design them to make use of them efficiently. In a very simplistic example, what is the difference between an AMD 4.0GHz CPU running 100% loads on 4 cores and 0% with the other 4 cores compared to the same CPU with 50% load on all 8 cores? In terms of total IPC the two scenarios are basically the same. Of course you can say 50% load on all 8 cores is better because more threads can be prioritized, but just sticking with total IPC, the two should the same. It will take some time for developers to design games to efficiently use all (or most) of the cores in a 8 core CPU. By then, whatever CPU you buy now may no longer suit your needs and you want a new CPU for more performance. I am guessing that most gamers who buys a CPU now will want to upgrade to a new CPU in 2017 which is probably when games will finally start to be designed to somewhat efficiently use all 8 cores in an AMD CPU.
Battlefield 3 is a popular multiplayer game based on the Frostbite 3.0 engine; Battlefield 4 will use the same engine, but I am sure it will be tweaked a little bit. In multiplayer mode the game can definitely use more 4 cores and it is an example of an exception in current games, not the norm. Despite being capable of using more than 4 cores, the 8 core FX-8350 does not provide better performance than Intel's quad core i5 and i7 CPUs. The below chart shows the performance in BF3 with multiplayer which shows that the FX-8350 lagging behind Intel's quad core Ivy Bridge CPUs. This is a case where higher IPC trumps more physical cores (every 2 cores sharing the same FPU).
Note that this is a CPU performance comparison which is why the resolution is only 1280x720. Using higher resolution means the GPU's performance masks the CPU's actual performance. When comparing the FX-8350 vs the i5-3570k, the i5-3570k provides about 17FPS better performance. That's with a 4 core and 500MHz disadvantage.
When comparing the FX-4300 / FX-6300 / FX-8320 / FX-8350 performances you can see that there is an increase in performance so having more cores can help. The biggest jump is going from the quad core FX-4300 to the 6 core FX-6300 which is a 6FPS increase in performance. However, FX-4300 is running at 3.8GHz, not 3.5GHz that FX-6300 runs at. That means if both of those CPUs were running at the same clockspeed, the increase in performance due to the 2 extra core would be higher. But look at the FX-8320 which is an 8 core CPU and runs at the same speed as the 6 core FX-6300; there is virtually no difference in performance. That means BF3 (i.e. the Frostbite 3.0 engine) cannot make use of more than 6 cores. The 8 core FX-8350 provides better performance than the FX-8250 and FX-6300 only because of the additional 500MHz.
Source: http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Battlefield-3-PC-221396/Specials/Battlefield-3-Multiplayer-Tipps-CPU-Benchmark-1039293/
Looking back at the comparison of the FX-4300 and FX-6300, the FX-6300 represents an increase of 50% in the number of cores; 4 cores --> 6 cores. However, the difference is only about a 11% increase in performance. That means the 5th and 6th cores are not being utilized very efficiently. I will note that since the FX-4300 is clocked 300MHz higher than the FX-6300, the increase in performance should be a little better than 11%, but not much.
Let's switch focus and look at the Intel CPUs specifically the 4 core i7-3770k (Ivy Bridge) and 6 core i7-3930k (Sandy Bridge). The i7-3930k provides better performance than the i7-3770k so clearly having more core for Intel CPUs provides better performance. What's interesting is that despite the fact that the i7-3930k is running 300MHz slower than the i7-3770k and the fact that it is an older architecture; the i7-3930k provides close to a 14% increase in performance. If they both had the same clockspeed and were based on the same CPU architecture, the increase in performance would be a bit higher than 14%. This means that CPU scaling favors Intel CPUs rather than AMD CPUs; at least in Battlefield 3. However,the average gamer is not about to spend around $575 for a CPU (i7-3930k).
The take away from this post is that despite the fact that AMD's CPU have more cores, Intel's increased IPC trumps more (MOAR) cores. I would expect Intel's current Haswell generation CPUs to provide slightly higher performance than the Ivy Bridge generation of CPUs. But the article was written back in Oct 2011. For the time being I would prefer Intel's higher IPC to AMD's greater number of cores. In 2017, when I think developers will really start to take advantage more cores, the advantage in games may finally flip to AMD's favor, or at least both AMD and Intel will offer very similar performance.
If you have the money, buy Intel now for better overall performance (pre-2017). If you prefer not to spend the additional money on Intel, then just buy an AMD FX-6300 / FX-6350 / FX-8250 / FX-8350, and accept a little less performance compared to Intel CPUs.
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