[SOLVED] Will I ever use more than 8 cores for gaming?

raknarius

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Aug 2, 2006
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I'm going to build a pc soon on the new amd chipset, looks like the sweet spot for value is the 8 core pros coming in july, I can afford a better cpu but for mostly gaming will I ever use more than 8?
 
Solution
Depends on the game. Some games like Civ 8 & Chess (AI Tournament rounds) will use every logical core offered to them to evaluate moves.

Today there aren't that many games. However developers are taking notice of the common increased core counts. Two years back everyone would say a solid 4 Physical Cores (i5 +) would be more than enough for games. Now a lot of DX12 games do better with 8 logical cores (Either 8 physical, or 4 physical/8 logical). So who knows tomorrow?

Plus if you ever want to multi task (ie: Do downloads while playing games, or recompress movies for streaming, or stream while gaming) then those extra cores will do you good.

Am I saying it's a must have? No. But if you are going to invest in like a Radeon VII...
I don't know of any games that currently use MORE than 8 cores, however, if you are a heavy multitasker and like to stream, record, encode, browse with many tabs, play music, etc., any or all of the above, simultaneously, WHILE gaming, or even just a couple of different processes at the same time, then you could easily see some benefit from 8 or more cores.

If you don't do any heavy multitasking, then an 8 core CPU with an additional 8 hyperthreads is plenty for pretty much anything currently out there that is not strictly scientific or advanced video encoding. Maybe also some professional CAD and graphics applications.

I'd say you'd be perfectly fine with a 3000 series 8 core CPU for gaming, regardless of what graphics card you choose to go with.
 
Eventually, yes, games are bound to use more than 8 cores. Now, i dont know of any game that will need more than 8 cores.
It used to be a 4c4t Intel Core i5 was all you needed for gaming and the i7 wasnt really needed. Now with powerfull graphics cards at budget prices and games utilizing more than 4 threads, an I5 will get massively outperformed by the 4c8t Core i7s of the day.
8 cores and 16 threads will be great for gaming while multitasking, largely because the cores underutilized by the game can be used for background tasks.
 
Depends on the game. Some games like Civ 8 & Chess (AI Tournament rounds) will use every logical core offered to them to evaluate moves.

Today there aren't that many games. However developers are taking notice of the common increased core counts. Two years back everyone would say a solid 4 Physical Cores (i5 +) would be more than enough for games. Now a lot of DX12 games do better with 8 logical cores (Either 8 physical, or 4 physical/8 logical). So who knows tomorrow?

Plus if you ever want to multi task (ie: Do downloads while playing games, or recompress movies for streaming, or stream while gaming) then those extra cores will do you good.

Am I saying it's a must have? No. But if you are going to invest in like a Radeon VII or a NVIDIA RTX, I would set some cash aside for a better 12+ logical core CPU any way (Ryzen 5 2600). At the very least I would get 8 physical cores like the 9700k has. And until Intel gets their @#$@## together with side channel attacks, I wouldn't get a Hyper threaded intel model like the 9900k.
 
Solution

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Awesome, thanks all for your advice, im going with 12 cores.

It's important to note that while future games will tend to use more cores, you may actually get worse gaming performance overall with a 12-core CPU. For example, a Threadripper would not be a smart purchase if you don't have significant non-gaming needs for a CPU like that.

When we get far enough into the future in which 12 cores vs. 8 cores is meaningful in gaming, it'll be the 12 core CPUs of the future that give you the gains, not so much the present day 12 core CPUs. Now, don't get me wrong, the Ryzens are way better than the AM3+ CPUs were, but there were a lot of people that claimed that the FX-8350 would age better in the far future because games would use more cores in the far future, but while it's true that in 2019 games do use more cores, the benefit is in modern CPUs with large core counts, not large core count CPUs on a 2011 platform.

This is why the advice given is to get the best CPU for your needs right now, not buying based on some mystery necessity a decade down the road.
 
If the 12 core has a 5ghz turbo, i doubt gaming performance is going to be bad.
I think if amd announces a sub $200 6 or 8 core (with smt) cpu that can overclock to 5ghz a stock/inexpensive cooler, it would sell well.

It also would drop the prices on cpus like the r5 1600 1700 and 2600.
 
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DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
If the 12 core has a 5ghz turbo, i doubt gaming performance is going to be bad.
I think if amd announces a sub $175 6c12t cpu that can overclock to 5ghz a stock/inexpensive cooler, id buy it.

True, but he hasn't announced which 12-core CPU he's getting! Unless I missed it in reading.

[Oops, I did miss it in reading - I missed "new chipset" at the top -DS]
 
I can dream lol. Im sure that will happen in the next few years due to the way we are progressing.
I guess if the i7 8700k was cheaper and actually stuck to ite tdp it would fit the bill.

As if the 2700X overclocked to all core 4.1-4.3 GHz and under load is not also pulling 130-145 watts? :)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOOohlyJem0


You can notice at 18:33 in the video, the 2700X system is drawing a few more watts from the wall than even the 8700K is....