i5 4690k vs amd fx 9590k for newer games such as The Witcher 3.

[DavidT1]

Hi, I'm building a brand new gaming pc. I have never built or bought a pc for gaming or for any other purpose. I'm stuck between picking the i5 4690k or the fx 9590k, I know most games don't utilize more than two cores let alone 4, but with all the new demanding games coming out for the pc (witcher 3) (GTA 5) I'm starting to think that more than 4 cores will help me run these games faster. What do you guys think?

p.s I will be using a r9 290 alongside the cpu.

 

[-Lone-]

More than 4 core is actually pretty unnecessary still, 6 and 8 is more for like photo/video editing. But I'd go for Intel if you want lower power usage and lower temperature since the 9590 has a TDP of 220w.

Edit: But for some games such as BF4, the extra cores would help, so sometimes it depends on the game.

 

[mdocod]

When clocked the same, the i5-4690K and FX-9590 have about the same execution throughput. Having that execution throughput consolidated onto 4 cores is more versatile for real-time workloads than spread out onto 8 cores.

To help put things into perspective...

What's better for gaming? A Intel 2.4ghz 8 core Xeon E5-2630 v3, or an i7-970 overclocked to 4ghz, or an i5-4690K overclocked to 4.7GHZ?

The FX-9590 actually performs about the same in gaming as the overclocked i7-970 or E3-2630V3. The overclocked i5 will run games better than any of these alternatives because real-time workloads scale better with core performance than core count.

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Now, if we leave the i5-4690K at stock clocks, then the FX-9590 will actually trade blows with the i5 in gaming workloads... General rule of thumb is that an i5-4460 offers about +/-20% of the performance of an FX-9370 in gaming, while the i5-4690 offers about +/-20% of the performance of the FX-9590 in gaming. In either case, the i5 is the better value as it can be successfully implemented for a whole lot less money (less motherboard, less heatsink, less PSU).

 

[Sam_212]

Listen...If you are a gamer don't even touch that fx 9590k, because I can show you benchmarks of current gen games like AC:unity or black flag where that 9590k is on par with i3 fourth gen from Intel... get the I5 and have some peace of mind

 

[mdocod]

When we run a compute performance comparison with 1 thread on a haswell core, vs 1 thread on a pile-driver module, the piledriver module has to be clocked in the neighborhood of 6 ghz to match a "stock" clocked haswell at ~3.5ghz.

When we adjust the comparison to 2 threads per non-hyperthreaded haswell core, vs 2 threads per piledriver module, they perform about the same.

When we adjust the comparison to 2 threads per hyperthreaded haswell core, vs 2 threads per piledriver module, piledriver needs to be clocked to ~4.4ghz to match haswell at ~3.5ghz.

In games that only achieve high execution resources saturation on 1 or 2 threads, an i3-4150 can indeed outperform an FX-9590.

 

[slyu9213]

If you're thinking of all games in general the i5 should/will have the better performance. With the constant hope that games will stop saturating resources into 1-2 and even just 4 threads there is the tiny chance that the 6+ cores will age well but it's a fool's dream. Maybe Witcher 3 will be the turning point for AMD's 'More Cores' ideal with the help of the current gen consoles and their 8-core/threads.