Stumbled across the following article that I thought might be of interest:

http://www.hardwareunboxed.com/gtx-1060-vs-rx-480-in-6-year-old-amd-and-intel-computers/

They run a few games with RX480 and GTX 1060 and older CPUs. Specifically they compare an i7 6700k, an i5 750 and a Phenom II x4 955.

interesting for me - anyway as my Phenom FX5200 and 970 probably isn't that far off the PII 955 / GTX 1060 system. I'd heard nVIDIA GPUs pair better with older CPUs because of the driver overhead and that bears out - kinda.

Of course the days of being able to use a Phenom II for newer games are numbered but they are still just about sufficient to provide a playable framerate in many newer titles (but yes - effectively they are quite a bottleneck these days).

Shock horror as a overclocked 4.5Ghz modern cpu is faster than stock clocked older cpu's. What a crap article. Let's take one of the newest most expensive mainstream cpu's, overclock it and compare it to a couple of older cpu's at their stock clocks to make the newer one look even better. I know for a fact that most i5 750's will hit 4Ghz with a bit of tweaking. It's doesn't fare that badly against the overclocked 6700k at it's stock 2.67Ghz in their "tests" so with a 1.33Ghz overclock will put on a much better display.

Yeah that video is really dumb.

The more interesting conclusions I think are these.

1. If you just want playable (30 FPS) then even a 7 year old CPU at stock clocks will do in most games. Only Ashes contradicts this.

2. In 8/9 of those tests, the FPS with a 7 year old CPU and a brand new one sit in the 30-60 FPS range. Only in one case (Arma 3) does the CPU get over the 60 FPS mark where an i5-750 can't.

pastymuncher said:

Shock horror as a overclocked 4.5Ghz modern cpu is faster than stock clocked older cpu's. What a crap article. Let's take one of the newest most expensive mainstream cpu's, overclock it and compare it to a couple of older cpu's at their stock clocks to make the newer one look even better.

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Even so the gap is surprisingly small IMO.

joeyjojo said:

Even so the gap is surprisingly small IMO.

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I did refer to that at the end of my post.

pastymuncher said:

It doesn't fare that badly against the overclocked 6700k at it's stock 2.67Ghz in their "tests" so with a 1.33Ghz overclock will put on a much better display.

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joeyjojo said:

The more interesting conclusions I think are these.

1. If you just want playable (30 FPS) then even a 7 year old CPU at stock clocks will do in most games. Only Ashes contradicts this.

2. In 8/9 of those tests, the FPS with a 7 year old CPU and a brand new one sit in the 30-60 FPS range. Only in one case (Arma 3) does the CPU get over the 60 FPS mark where an i5-750 can't.



Even so the gap is surprisingly small IMO.

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I think that's what I took from it. Yes it's obvious that a faster CPU will improve things. This kind of comparison allows us to quantify how much.

In most hardware reviews you don't get to see old hardware paired with newer stuff. As someone that might be considering a platform upgrade at some point to get past my CPU bottleneck this is exactly the information that I need and that most review sites don't provide.

But if people have any of those older cpu's and they are overclocked (like the majority of people will have done on here) they will still have no idea if upgrading will be worth it. It's all very well comparing older cpu's against a newer one but at least make it fair and accurate by overclocking them all. The older cpu's overclock much more than these newer ones so have more to gain from overclocking.

That may be the case with the i5 750.

Architectural limits with the Phenom II limit the improvements that can be had with overclocking in some games. Also - as it happens - I've got an ultra low end CPU, unlocked to quad and overclocked but unfortunately platform limited to something performing around a stock 955 to 965 (ish). I suppose that's an unusual situation but it means I'm very well matched with the test system.

The article also perhaps casts some light on tomshardware's CPU hierarchy chart (which unfortunately they seem to have got very slack with updating) http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/cpu-hierarchy,review-33355.html . TH claim that the top five tiers of their chart remain viable for gaming and those looking for an upgrade should aim to go at least 2 tiers up (recent Pentiums are a bit of a discrepancy - I gather they were all removed from the top 5 tiers because of the issues a handful of games have when running on CPUs with less than 4 threads). Discrepancies aside I'd say the top five tier mark has been set about right.

People are missing the point of the video. Its not to show that a newer cpu beats an older one - that's a given.

Its to show that a 480 struggles more than a 1060 when paired with a weaker cpu. Very reason why I cancelled my 480 pre order and got a 1060 as AMD architecture needs a powerful CPU to get the most from it.

It shows to me some games are coded much better than others. Possibly because devs don't bother optimising for CPU's older than Sandybridge.

I'm running a GTX 1060 6GB with a stock i7 2600, performance has been excellent so far. A five year old PC transformed into a competent gaming PC at 1920x1200 again.

Brazo said:

People are missing the point of the video. Its not to show that a newer cpu beats an older one - that's a given.

Its to show that a 480 struggles more than a 1060 when paired with a weaker cpu. Very reason why I cancelled my 480 pre order and got a 1060 as AMD architecture needs a powerful CPU to get the most from it.

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Excactly why I also went with nVIDIA for my current GPU. However, the decision had been based somewhat on hearsay. It's interesting to see some evidence to back it up. However - nVIDIA GPUs are still held back by an outdated CPU, just not as much as AMD.

Uriel said:

Excactly why I also went with nVIDIA for my current GPU. However, the decision had been based somewhat on hearsay. It's interesting to see some evidence to back it up. However - nVIDIA GPUs are still held back by an outdated CPU, just not as much as AMD.

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Absolutely I have no doubt the i3 4370 is a bottleneck in my system rather than the 1060 but the 60hz TV that system is hooked up to is an even bigger bottleneck!

Was surprised to find out my little i3 gives 90-100 fps in GTA V (very high settings) so I just whacked it to 1.25 X over sampling to reduce my fps

I've been playing games like GTA V, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite and Wolfenstein quite happily on a i5 760 at 1080p 30fps with a GTX580 (and then a 7970)

Also I knew my i7 860 was better than my mates Phenom II x4BE, but he wasn't having any of it at the time!

I dont feel like my i7 3770k (overclocked to 4.2GHz) has held back my RX 480 at all. Intrigued to see how they handle the new Forza Horizon though.

senorgrande said:

I dont feel like my i7 3770k (overclocked to 4.2GHz) has held back my RX 480 at all. Intrigued to see how they handle the new Forza Horizon though.

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It won't hold it back, that's still a very fast CPU.

Obviously with higher end GPU's (1070's, 1080's etc) the gap would further increase. Those 7 year old CPU's would be completely annihilated.

Brazo said:

It won't hold it back, that's still a very fast CPU.

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+1

Brazo said:

It won't hold it back, that's still a very fast CPU.

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Awesome.

Dave2150 said:

Obviously with higher end GPU's (1070's, 1080's etc) the gap would further increase. Those 7 year old CPU's would be completely annihilated.

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I would have thought that in some games those GPUs might enable a user with an old CPU to enable more eye candy or run a a higher resolution.

It's just that in situations that are CPU limited having a higher grade GPU isn't going to improve the framerate much, if at all.