Gaming CPU for the future (5 years)

[Ryan28]

My goal is to buy a CPU and be happy with its gaming performance for at least five years, so get out your crystal balls and help me out!

While I realize that Intel CPUs are, at the high end, better than AMD ones currently, I am wondering whether this gap may shrink given that clock speeds have been increasing more slowly than in the past and that Microsoft and Sony have embraced CPUs with low clock speeds and lots and lots of cores for their consoles. It seems the course has been set for games to use more cores than they do now. But is this still somewhat far from mainstream gaming or is it likely to go mainstream within the next couple of years?

To keep this question from being too, too theoretical, which of the following CPUs do you guess will be better for games in 5 years?

AMD FX-9590 Vishera 8-Core 4.7GHz
Intel Core i7-4790K Haswell Quad-Core 4.0GHz

And for curiosity's sake, I notice that in gaming benchmarks, an AMD CPU with a higher clock speed and more cores gets beaten by a number of Intel CPUs with fewer cores and slower clock speeds. If not clock speed and core count, what is it that makes the Intel CPUs better?

 

[hallohoegaathet]

My goal is to buy a CPU and be happy with its gaming performance for at least five years, so get out your crystal balls and help me out!

While I realize that Intel CPUs are, at the high end, better than AMD ones currently, I am wondering whether this gap may shrink given that clock speeds have been increasing more slowly than in the past and that Microsoft and Sony have embraced CPUs with low clock speeds and lots and lots of cores for their consoles. It seems the course has been set for games to use more cores than they do now. But is this still somewhat far from mainstream gaming or is it likely to go mainstream within the next couple of years?

To keep this question from being too, too theoretical, which of the following CPUs do you guess will be better for games in 5 years?

AMD FX-9590 Vishera 8-Core 4.7GHz
Intel Core i7-4790K Haswell Quad-Core 4.0GHz

And for curiosity's sake, I notice that in gaming benchmarks, an AMD CPU with a higher clock speed and more cores gets beaten by a number of Intel CPUs with fewer cores and slower clock speeds. If not clock speed and core count, what is it that makes the Intel CPUs better?

Well, the single core performance on the intel cpu's are higher (generally)
Most games cannot use all the 8 cores the amd cpu has to offer, and that's why the intel pulls away. They are just a bit more efficient.
If you are going to futureproof, I recommend getting an Intel cpu. Go with the X99 platform or a good Z97 mobo (with future support for Broadwell). The amd platform haven't released a new socket in a few years, and I think one is coming in the next one or two years, so the Intel is the better choice now.