CPU Cores for Gaming: How many do you need? - Q1 2015 Update
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,592 words · ~7 min read
0:00
we always want faster and more powerful components and these days people are
0:03
starting to focus on other things as well like power consumption and thermal
0:07
output but what about the age-old how many cores do I need for modern gaming
0:12
question has the landscape changed or is it still quad cores for life like it was
0:17
for pretty much a long time what about the Pentium g3258 dual core that made a
0:22
big splash a while back is that processor blazing fast overclock speeds
0:26
and affordable price point viable in today's market stay tuned to find out
0:30
and stay subscribed for lonus Tech tips for more awesome technology
0:42
videos The Cooler Master Nova touch tkl utilizes genuine toer hybrid capacitive
0:47
switches and is now available at a more affordable price click now to learn more
0:52
the test bench we used to get our numbers is rocking an Intel 5960x
0:56
overclocked just a bit to 3.2 GHz with 32 gigs of ddr4 RAM running at 3,000 MHz
1:02
it's also sporting a windforce GTX 980 from Gigabyte running at stock and we
1:07
went a little bit crazy and started disabling cores and hyperthreading and
1:10
to simulate various CPUs that are available for purchase today for testing
1:15
we chose to use a dual core without hyperthreading dual core with hyperthreading quad core without
1:19
hyperthreading quad core with hyperthreading hex core with hyperthreading and octacore with
1:23
hyperthreading to round out our test Suite all right now for the meat and
1:27
potatoes we chose a few new games from for our test so we'll start with those
1:31
ones first and first on the chopping block is cities skylines to Benchmark
1:35
cities we downloaded the Los Santos map from GTA 5 made by groeller on the Steam
1:40
Workshop and we chose a section of the town called South Los Santos with mixed
1:44
traffic and building density to push uh the test pinch quite a bit we maxed out
1:49
the graphics and zoomed in almost all the way and then started to record
1:53
City's skylines likes its CPU cores but only to a certain point dual cores seem
1:57
to struggle a bit more than the rest them at least which wasn't too
2:01
surprising but where it got interesting was at the 8 core level cities ran a lot
2:06
more poorly than actually lower levels
2:09
and had very noticeable stuttering throughout all of our testing a reminder
2:13
however is we did run our test shortly after the game came out so optimizations
2:16
might be not be made yet and might be made in the future and could very
2:21
drastically change things over time next up we have Dying Light we decided to run
2:25
it at both 1080P and 4K after we saw the 1080p results to see if we could
2:29
separate the numbers a bit more as the only outlier was really the Dual Corp
2:33
how we ran the Benchmark for Dying Light was relatively straightforward in the
2:37
main town close to the tower there's a really long overpass near the start of
2:42
that is a bus which is near the opening to the tunnel anyways just run down the
2:48
overpass and loot back around while zigzagging through burning cars and the
2:53
undead we ran our test after the developers have released several patches
2:57
in optimizations and even at Absolute absolutely cranked settings not much of
3:01
a difference really occurs at the higher end configurations with only the dual
3:05
core and dual core with hyperthreading configurations suffering a bit of a
3:09
performance hit our last newcomer to the game suite but not our last Benchmark is
3:14
Total War Atilla for this game we set the appropriate graphic settings which I
3:17
decided was apparently freaking all of them and then selected the suon
3:22
historical battle swz SW so I don't know
3:25
and Clash the armies together in one giant ball without speeding it up we
3:29
ended up running The Benchmark at every quality preset as you just saw to see if
3:33
we could churn different results out of the game and it turns out Total War
3:37
atella is quite the PowerHouse throwing more cores at it does indeed give a bit
3:40
more of a performance jump over a dual core setup however the amount is oddly
3:45
very negligible at lower presets I will note that this game isn't the constant
3:50
FPS of the game these numbers are only from intense combat sections so it would
3:54
run way better when not staring directly into combat where the twist comes in is
3:59
at the maxim performance preset the numbers are just ridiculous for this
4:03
test and make no sense but average frame rates are super high and there is no
4:08
drastic stuttering so if you're worried about if your machine can run this game
4:12
put it on maximum performance settings and it should be extremely easy for you
4:15
to do even with some older slower
4:19
processors now that all the new games are done let's take a break for some
4:22
oldies but goodies the first being Tomb Raider I know this game dates back all
4:26
the way to 2013 but it's a very reliable benchmark Mark in terms of GPU scaling
4:31
so we decided to include it as it's in lots of our test Suites like Dying Light
4:36
we ran Tomb Raider in both 1080P and 4K and the results were pretty funny to be
4:42
honest it doesn't seem to matter what arrangement of course you have the game
4:45
will run perfectly equal like freakishly
4:49
equal even at 4K I think in the future
4:52
we will leave this game for GPU tests only our final game is Far Cry 4 this
4:57
game is a bit of a [ __ ] show and and that's why we saved it for last
5:01
performance is essentially the same across four six and eight core settings
5:04
regardless of hyperthreading but as soon as you drop down to dual cores
5:08
hyperthreading or not the game flat out refuses to boot at all this is because
5:13
Ubisoft locked out all users that have dual course from launching the freaking
5:17
game there is a fixed floating round that could potentially get it running
5:21
but it's a hassle and most mention of it has been pulled down by Ubisoft anyways
5:25
those of you with older dual cores or the Pentium g3258 first edition but
5:30
whereas this could be a pretty big issue for you honestly the most disappointing
5:34
thing about this issue is that from the looks of it it's easier to fix for
5:39
pirates than it is for Real paying users
5:42
which is highly disappointing yet not at
5:45
all surprising all right I guess that brings us tidally to the conclusion of
5:50
this video which is having more cores is nice and may help with some things like
5:54
video rendering or game streaming or whatever else but you don't need more
5:58
than a quad core or for modern gaming and you would be mostly fine with a
6:04
quick dual core even but what's your sweet spot let me know in the comments
6:08
down below or on the Forum I know I like my higher core count processors because
6:12
I tend to be doing a billion things at once on my computer including running
6:16
virtual machines streaming games and more would you guys be interested in a
6:21
course for gaming Style video where we rerun these tests while doing other
6:25
things on the computer as well like possibly streaming or just a whole bunch
6:29
of TS in a browser let me know speaking of performance our friends over at chiro
6:34
have an awesome high-capacity battery bank that they want us to show off today
6:37
it's their power plus 3 13,400 mAh
6:41
battery bank which features a nice rounded design and a slightly sticky
6:45
texture which allows you to maintain a solid grip on it despite the rounded
6:50
edges like other churo products all of the battery cells used inside are made
6:54
by Panasonic in Japan so you can count on their high quality durability and saf
6:59
sa and of course that also facilitates the great capacity in such a compact
7:04
size this battery bank is currently available for
7:08
$39.99 on Amazon and if you purchase one of the first 3,000 units you will
7:14
actually receive a 60 cm version of chiro's uh lightning and micro USB dual
7:19
connector cable so if you're interested in a high-capacity battery bank with a
7:23
very manageable form factor you should definitely check out the chiro Power
7:27
Plus 3 13,400 Milah power in the link in
7:30
the video description down below all right guys while you're here watching
7:33
this video like dislike favorite subscribe share comment do anything else
7:39
that has a button around here somewhere that's probably not a bad idea and then
7:43
jump over to the Forum but before you jump over the Forum check the link in
7:46
the video description below to buy a cool shirt like this one yes I did it
7:51
once you're over on the Forum click the support us link that'll show you how to
7:54
do stuff like change your Amazon affiliate code to ours so we get a small
7:57
Kickback and you can become contributor on the Forum to get that awesome cool
8:01
bronze silver or gold badge and maybe some other stuff anyways thank you guys
8:06
for watching I'll see you next time