6 Core vs 8 Core in gaming?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I genuinely hope you're right, I just don't think it's economically viable to fully optimise for more than 6C/12T, if the game devs have to also develop the engine to run well on old gen consoles. What they are theorising at present, is they will use those extra cores for things like in-game physics. You'll essentially have added features in next gen consoles and PC that can't be enabled on the previous gen. But the game engine itself, will still be optimised mainly to run well on its 6C/12T baby brothers. Having previous gen in the picture will always diminish any tangible benefits we're going to see from having more than 6 cores.

I do agree though, you should definitely get a 5800X over a 5600X if you can afford it. However, there is an echo chamber in here with people trying to convince themselves that getting an 8 core CPU will guarantee you are future proofing yourself in 1-3 years time. This is misguided until the game devs can prove they are willing to step up, and there's no evidence of that happening yet.

I think the problem here is Zen3 pricing is a bit worse than we expected,and the jump between 6C/12T to 8C and 12C is massive. So if there was a cheaper Ryzen 7 5700X at around £320~£350 then its not a massive premium over a Ryzen 7 5600X. For example with Zen2,the Ryzen 5 3600 is £160~£180,the Ryzen 5 3600X is around £200~£220,the Ryzen 7 3700X is £250~£280,and you can get the Ryzen 9 3900 non-X for around £325. So the premium isn't so bad. Providing we don't get hammered with additional costs next year,maybe Rocketlake and Alderlake will help push down prices of the 8C and maybe 12C models down a bit. It's why even though I can get a Ryzen 5 5600X I am not that happy with the pricing as I thought even the cheaper Core i5 10600K was not that greatly priced either.

I just hope we have cheaper priced models next year,and I don't really care if it they are clocked 10% lower,etc and can't run 4000MHZ RAM,etc.

 

[UK_SPAWN]

I think you need to be a bit more specific when you say better, better for who and what exactly? For example, there is no difference between a 3600 and a 10900k when gaming at ultrawide or 4k as you are mostly GPU bound in those situations.

for 1 example i play some star citizen and it uses all 6/12 threads of my 2600x to a good degree of utilisation and they are working on making it utilise more cores / threads so therfore in that specific use case it would be better to have 8/16 or even more.

Now that CPUs with more cores are becoming common even in consoles it stands to reason that developers (especially of game engines) will take advantage of those cores...

 

[Sweeet]

I think the problem here is Zen3 pricing is a bit worse than we expected,and the jump between 6C/12T to 8C and 12C is massive. So if there was a cheaper Ryzen 7 5700X at around £320~£350 then its not a massive premium over a Ryzen 7 5600X. For example with Zen2,the Ryzen 5 3600 is £160~£180,the Ryzen 5 3600X is around £200~£220,the Ryzen 7 3700X is £250~£280,and you can get the Ryzen 9 3900 non-X for around £325. So the premium isn't so bad. Providing we don't get hammered with additional costs next year,maybe Rocketlake and Alderlake will help push down prices of the 8C and maybe 12C models down a bit.

That's also a consideration for why games are currently only being optimised mainly for 6C/12T. Higher count CPU's aren't mainstream enough yet. Hopefully when prices come down and 8C starts to become more prolific, game devs will finally think it's worth going the extra mile in fully supporting them.

 

[UK_SPAWN]

Im not a game dev but i think the "extra work to optimise for XYZ cores" is overstated.

I think if the engine is properly multithreaded then it can scale for more or less cores without any real work needed. its just most engines are not really multithreaded in a true sense. they still have a main thread and that spawns other workers to do stuff. IMO that will change with next gen engines due to the consoles having more cores available to utilise and it makes sense in the long run to do it properly. an engine that can have more or less equaly important threads and multi-threaded rendering would benefit all platforms.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That's also a consideration for why games are currently only being optimised mainly for 6C/12T. Higher count CPU's aren't mainstream enough yet. Hopefully when prices come down and 8C starts to become more prolific, game devs will finally think it's worth going the extra mile in fully supporting them.

Well TBF previous 8C Zen and current generation 8C Intel CPUs are cheaper than Zen3,so I think AMD is just taking advantage of a gap in the market. I think in 2022 onwards,we might start to see both companies push more cores to the market.

 

[Things change I've changed]

I think a good 6 core 12 threaded chip specifically for gaming with be more than fine for the duration of the new next gen consoles life time, say 5 years, I think it's pointless paying a premium for extra cores when they are not being utilised, people say "buy 8/16 chip it will future proof you", but then they will upgrade in a couple of years anyway due to new chip releases with IPC improvements, it's like they are upgrading a 'future proof' system all the time, imo it's almost a genuine form of insecurity, I think it's a lot more cost effective to purchase a chip that will be fully utilised now and within the next couple of years, and pocket the money saved for your next upgrade.

Think about this for a second, people that originally bought a chip like the Ryzen 2600, 6 core 12 thread, at the time you think "I'm future proofed with these cores", well you wasn't was you because you've already upgraded to a faster chip, and in retrospect did you really take advantage of those extra cores at the time? I think there's a lot of psychology involved in upgrading, partly influenced by marketing and also feeling the need to 'keep up with the jones'.

 

[SpudMaster]

People saying you need 8 cores minium as the new consoles are 8 core are wrong imo. Overal cpu performance is more important than core count. Console are lower clocked and Zen 2. If a 5600x is beating a 3700x in games currently I would worry too much about it having less cores as in future when more cores are being utilised it will probably be on par at worst.

 

[Kirby Wurm]

A friend of mine has asked me for advice on this as he's upgrading from a Ryzen 1400. He wants a CPU to last another three years while having an overall upgrade budget of £800 to include a new gfx card too. I'm leaning towards a 5600X (or depending when he wants to do it maybe a non-X SKU if they appear by then) as the extra money on an 8 core CPU doesn't seem worth it for the £100 it will take out of the GPU budget. He's using a 1070 on a 60hz screen. High refresh/FPS isn't an issue and I think 6c/12t will be fine for a few years before it starts affecting minimums, especially as he's been happy using a low end CPU for some time.

 

[jigger]

I think a good 6 core 12 threaded chip specifically for gaming with be more than fine for the duration of the new next gen consoles life time, say 5 years, I think it's pointless paying a premium for extra cores when they are not being utilised, people say "buy 8/16 chip it will future proof you", but then they will upgrade anyway in a couple of years anyway due to new chip releases with IPC improvements, it's like they are upgrading a 'future proof' system all the time, imo it's almost a genuine form of insecurity, I think it's a lot more cost effective to purchase a chip that will be fully utilised now and within the next couple of years, and pocket the money saved for your next upgrade.

Think about this for a second, people that originally bought a chip like the Ryzen 2600, 6 core 12 thread, at the time you think "I'm future proofed with these cores", well you wasn't was you because you've already upgraded to a faster chip, and in retrospect did you really take advantage of those extra cores at the time? I think there's a lot of psychology involved in upgrading, partly influenced by marketing and also feeling the need to 'keep up with the jones'.

5 years is a very long time. You could at this stage say we are approaching the limit of dual channel DDR4 and going past 16 cores 32 threads will leave a lot of tasks somewhat memory starved. But DDR5 will open up another tier of performance and AMD will move to 16 cores clusters and possibly 32 in that time. Game engine development will be aware of this.

 

[SpudMaster]

5 years is a very long time. You could at this stage say we are approaching the limit of dual channel DDR4 and going past 16 cores 32 threads will leave a lot of tasks somewhat memory starved. But DDR5 will open up another tier of performance and AMD will move to 16 cores clusters and possibly 32 in that time. Game engine development will be aware of this.

You are thinking far too ahead for gaming. We have dual and quad core cpus for years before games took advantage of the additional core. Seen as the consoles are 8 core I dont see game devs using any more than that for the duration of their life cycle

 

[jigger]

You are thinking far too ahead for gaming. We have dual and quad core cpus for years before games took advantage of the additional core. Seen as the consoles are 8 core I dont see game devs using any more than that for the duration of their life cycle

But we have seen just that over the previous years. Console ports already scale past 8 core today...

 

[djonslaught]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ukz8WUdW4 - Check out the final thoughts

Edit: I don't know enough about this to make a meaningful contribution but thought I'd post for info for you guys.

 

[zirebnd]

so the safest way is to go in 5800x or 5950 x/? for gaming?>?

Right now 6 / 12 (with hyperthreading) cores is sufficient; 8 / 16 cores if you stream. Next year you're looking at 8 /16 cores because games will be optimised for the 8 / 16 core consoles. Add another 2 cores if you're streaming.

y said that next year to buy 8 /16 cores because games will be optimised for the 8 / 16 core consoles...

the ps5 uses all the 8 cores for gaming??

also can the developers to optimize the games for 8 cores which ps5 uses??
because i read that ps5 uses only the 6 cores for gaming and the rest 2 for os and etc

i am saying if ps5 is using 6 cores for gamimg what kind of cpu do i have to buy?? 8 cores or 12 cores???

do you believe that Any Zen 3 CPU with 6 cores or more will be plenty for gaming for the next 3-5 years. ???

do you believe that next year the games will be optimised for the 8 / 16 core consoles. ??

 

[Sweeet]

do you believe that Any Zen 3 CPU with 6 cores or more will be plenty for gaming for the next 3-5 years. ???

do you believe that next year the games will be optimised for the 8 / 16 core consoles. ??

All of your questions have been answered about a dozen times in this thread already.

The short answer is, no the PS5 will not use all 8 cores, as 1 is reserved for the OS. No this is not the same as a Windows PC, Windows 10 does not reserve an entire core for the OS. Yes 6 cores will likely be fine for the next 3-5 years... But lets be serious, most people are going to upgrade to a newer CPU long before then.

 

[SpudMaster]

All of your questions have been answered about a dozen times in this thread already.

The short answer is, no the PS5 will not use all 8 cores, as 1 is reserved for the OS. No this is not the same as a Windows PC, Windows 10 does not reserve an entire core for the OS. Yes 6 cores will likely be fine for the next 3-5 years... But lets be serious, most people are going to upgrade to a newer CPU long before then.

At this point I'm starting to think he is just trolling for some reason cos he has just pretty much the same question in every post he has made despite it being answered multiple times

 

[The Old School Gamer]

so the safest way is to go in 5800x or 5950 x/? for gaming?>?

y said that next year to buy 8 /16 cores because games will be optimised for the 8 / 16 core consoles...

the ps5 uses all the 8 cores for gaming??

also can the developers to optimize the games for 8 cores which ps5 uses??
because i read that ps5 uses only the 6 cores for gaming and the rest 2 for os and etc

The 5600X makes the most sense financially (if you are looking to upgrade that is).
6c / 12t is perfectly acceptable for gaming right now and probably going forward.

Do some games perform better with 8c / 16t (or more)... yes they do.
But not to the point where the average PC gamer is really going to notice the difference.

Queue one of my favourite meme's... how fast is fast enough?

Steve does cover a lot of ground in this review and answers some of your questions above like optimisation etc.
Serious Sam 4 is a good example where the 5600X trips up a little, but it's still far from not being playable.

 

[zirebnd]

are there games in the industry that uses and perform better with 8c / 16t or 12 cores?

 

[Quartz]

are there games in the industry that uses and perform better with 8c / 16t or 12 cores?

I can't test it myself yet but IIRC games based on the Optima engine like more cores. Brad Wardell has a private version (because he's the boss) of Ashes of the Singularity compiled to take advantage of more than 6 cores. And then there's streaming.

 

[Nickl245]

are there games in the industry that uses and perform better with 8c / 16t or 12 cores?

I think star citizen is one of them, but its also poorly optimized from what I hear.

 

[The Old School Gamer]

are there games in the industry that uses and perform better with 8c / 16t or 12 cores?

Some of the benchmarks in the video above do show that some games will utilise / scale higher than 8 cores (Death Stranding is a good example of this).
But once again higher the res up from 1080p to 2k, 2k UW and 4k and you become far more GPU bound where you top out and hit a ceiling.