Question: CPU Comparison

[Daniel Johnson]

Which of the following CPUs would give the highest performance just for gaming at stock speeds?

Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz 4-Core 88W
Intel Core i7-4960X Extreme Edition 3.6GHz 6-Core 130W
Intel Core i7-5960X 3.0GHz 8-Core 140W
Intel Core i7-3970X Extreme Edition 3.5GHz 6-Core 150W
AMD FX-9590 4.7GHz 8-Core 220W

 

[Woody1999]

The 4790K would be your best bet. The other three i7 chips are extreme edition models, which are aimed towards high-intensity video editing rigs, and the FX-9590 is just ridiculous.

Woody

 

[synphul]

Purely gaming without overclocking, the i7 4790k. It's the fastest clocked out of the box with plenty of threads and the additional cores/threads of the 6 and 8 core cpu's don't make any difference. Intel has much higher ipc or core performance than amd, even an i5 will outperform a 9590 in gaming. Amd doesn't have a desktop chip that competes with i7's, even quad cores.

 

[RockyPlays]

5960x is highest performance. 4790k is best buy for the money. 4960x and 3970x are both the same price as 5960x and older so not worth it. 9590 loses to core i5 processors. If you have the money buy the 5960x if not the 4790k is your best option.

 

[Daniel Johnson]

would this still be true if I plan to use triple 4K monitors? (yes I know it's kind of unstable) but wouldn't the 5960X create less of a bottleneck than the others, or not, assuming there will be Titan X 12GB Superclocked (4-Way SLI)?

 

[RockyPlays]

It really just depends on your budget, if you think that you will be doing very intensive tasks and need the extra power than get the 5960x, if you wont be doing anything too extreme get the 4790k or even 4690k.

 

[Woody1999]

would this still be true if I plan to use triple 4K monitors? (yes I know it's kind of unstable) but wouldn't the 5960X create less of a bottleneck than the others, or not, assuming there will be Titan X 12GB Superclocked (4-Way SLI)?

You have far too much spare money

The 5960X would be the best bet for quad-SLI Titan X builds, because of it's 40 PCIe lanes rather than the 16 of the other chips.

Woody

 

[Daniel Johnson]

would this still be true if I plan to use triple 4K monitors? (yes I know it's kind of unstable) but wouldn't the 5960X create less of a bottleneck than the others, or not, assuming there will be Titan X 12GB Superclocked (4-Way SLI)?

You have far too much spare money

The 5960X would be the best bet for quad-SLI Titan X builds, because of it's 40 PCIe lanes rather than the 16 of the other chips.

Woody

Awesome, that's what I thouhgt too, but wanted to double check.
And there aren't any other CPUs that could trump this, as of June 2015, are there?

 

[RockyPlays]

nothing unless you want to spend a fortune on a Intel Xeon with more than 8 cores.

 

[Daniel Johnson]

nothing unless you want to spend a fortune on a Intel Xeon with more than 8 cores.

I actually heard that even an 18-Core Xeon would be of equal performance to an i7-5960X, because modern games can only utilize 4 cores, 6 cores if your lucky. This is where we are at the mercy of the programmer unfortunately...

 

[synphul]

The only real reason to go with x99/2011v3 with an extreme cpu like that for gaming is for the increased pcie lanes. Sli needs x8 to run, so you can run x16/x8 or x8/x8 (on current 1150 motherboard with 16 pcie lanes), where crossfire can run x8/x4/x4. At 40 pcie lanes with a cpu that supports it and a motherboard that supports it (2011v3), you can run sli x16/x8/x8 , x16/x16/x8 or quad x16/x8/x8/x8 I believe. An i7 5930k 6 core/12 thread will also support 40 lanes, the cheaper 5820k only support 28 lanes.

 

[Daniel Johnson]

The only real reason to go with x99/2011v3 with an extreme cpu like that for gaming is for the increased pcie lanes. Sli needs x8 to run, so you can run x16/x8 or x8/x8 (on current 1150 motherboard with 16 pcie lanes), where crossfire can run x8/x4/x4. At 40 pcie lanes with a cpu that supports it and a motherboard that supports it (2011v3), you can run sli x16/x8/x8 , x16/x16/x8 or quad x16/x8/x8/x8 I believe. An i7 5930k 6 core/12 thread will also support 40 lanes, the cheaper 5820k only support 28 lanes.

Isn't there some kind of multiplier for the lanes though? I cant remember exactly but someone mentioned it on here to me in another older thread

 

[synphul]

I think you're referring to certain boards which make use of a plx chip to increase pcie lanes. I believe they allow for 3-4 way sli on a z97 board typically limited to 2 way sli, though I'm not positive of all the details in how it achieves this. If it actually adds physical pcie lanes or uses some hardware/software to make it possible. Typically the 1150 cpu's have 16 pcie lanes provided by the on die controller on the chip and the boards also have another chip which offers a few more pcie lanes used for things like storage (m.2, sata express) and possibly for things like sound cards which don't take away from the 16 cpu controlled lanes used by the graphics cards. Perhaps it's those extra lanes that the plx chip taps into. Hopefully someone with more in depth experience using plx can answer.

 

[Daniel Johnson]

I think you're referring to certain boards which make use of a plx chip to increase pcie lanes. I believe they allow for 3-4 way sli on a z97 board typically limited to 2 way sli, though I'm not positive of all the details in how it achieves this. If it actually adds physical pcie lanes or uses some hardware/software to make it possible. Typically the 1150 cpu's have 16 pcie lanes provided by the on die controller on the chip and the boards also have another chip which offers a few more pcie lanes used for things like storage (m.2, sata express) and possibly for things like sound cards which don't take away from the 16 cpu controlled lanes used by the graphics cards. Perhaps it's those extra lanes that the plx chip taps into. Hopefully someone with more in depth experience using plx can answer.

yes the plx chip, and ok that makes sense. thanks