8 Core vs 12 Core - Gaming and General Use.

[Joxeon]

I'm condescending? Perhaps you should read your own posts.

I was agreeing with old school gamer that for gaming use the 8 core will be the "better" choice. I would also have agreed with the sentiment of the last line of your last post that if you are keeping a CPU for a long time the 12 core would be a better buy than an 8. The two views are not mutually exclusive, they are talking about different use cases. The rest of your post is back to that passive aggressive immaturity so evident in teenagers these days. As soon as I figure out how ill be adding you to my ignore list for this site.

Are 8 cores better though? when even AMD was saying the 5900X is the best gaming GPU and since you're getting 50% more cores for 23% more money it makes the 12 core an even more attractive propersition especially for the average user who is looking to keep the CPU for 5 years.

Passive aggressive immaturity is a bit rich coming from a person who calls other jealous as they don't have 6 PCs or buy 3 CPUs every year.

 

[jcarruthers]

@beany_bot the really sensible answer to this is ... open up Task Manager whilst doing everything you want (flight sim, discord, streaming) and see how many cores are currently being used and to what extent...

All these posts about whatever is better - why not see how well your current system is coping?

 

[DeathStorm]

All these posts about whatever is better - why not see how well your current system is coping?

Most people struggle to properly understand their needs (I may or may not be just talking about computers).

 

[Jamin280672]

Question for the 12 core owners. How often do your 12 cores come in handy (outside of professional rendering and such).

Im considering the 5900x, primarily for gaming, and I hear you saying, "you dont need 12 cores for gaming". However my "gaming" is usually much more than just gaming, If I may paint a reasonably typical picture.
I run a triple monitor setup and often have say Microsoft Flight sim running, Discord open, connected to voice, streaming Flight Sim to discord & watching a friends stream, chrome open many tabs AND playing something light like GZDoom or Among Us all at once. I mean would this scenario have benfit of 12 cores over 8 cores or is 12 still overkill?

I downgraded my 12 core 3900XT to a 3800XT because it simply wasnt worth it, I play the new m$ flight sim at 1440p and CPU usage on the 3900XT was 3% with a Radeon VII lol, easy to monitor for me, I just opened the Radeon overrlay in the graphics card driver, dont forget, in gaming........the higher the resolution, the more your graphics card takes control of everything, thats why gaming benchmarks to show you how a CPU performs are done at low resolution, to give the CPU something to do.

 

[Stu]

I Really do not care about how many PCs you have and I'm certainly not jealous but it seems when anyone disagrees with you they're met with a condescending attitude.

The point I was making was if your going to be keeping a CPU for any length of time then a 12 core is always going to be better than 8.

However, the details of multiple PCs and passing down hardware indicates that @MrPils does consider longevity too, because a CPU will stay in the house for a longer period if not in the same PC.

 

[beany_bot]

I think the main thing I am learning is not to bother upgrade this gen.

 

[Stu]

How long you keep a CPU is probably the main factor for most when considering which processor to get. The 5900x is arguably good value based on cost per core; but this is wasted money is you are not going to use the extra cores... I'm coming from an X58 platform that is very old, and I anticipate keeping this CPU/mobo for a long time... I don't expect to utilise all 12 cores for a couple of years, but I think I will eventually, so spending an extra 90 quid now is acceptable to me. For those keeping their CPU for a shorter period, the better question might be 6 core vs 8 or 12 core. Also, most people in this thread will be gaming at 1440p or higher, in which case CPU is not going to make a significant impact on gaming when comparing the 5000 series CPUs.

 

[Stu]

I think the main thing I am learning is not to bother upgrade this gen.

Personally, I can't understand why so many people want to upgrade from a 3000 series to a 5000 series! Is your 3000 series CPU really holding you back?

 

[MrPils]

Personally, I can't understand why so many people want to upgrade from a 3000 series to a 5000 series! Is your 3000 series CPU really holding you back?

A lot of people play Valorant, cs:go, Apex and Overwatch where the single core boost is worthwhile if you use competitive graphics settings. PUBG and Tarkov should also get a really strong boost in performance, particularly 0.1% and 1% lows. Really does depend on the game you play and resolution and detail settings you use

 

[Joxeon]

Personally, I can't understand why so many people want to upgrade from a 3000 series to a 5000 series! Is your 3000 series CPU really holding you back?

I think a lot of people brought into the 2000 and 3000 series with a cheap quad or 6 core for the short term with the intention of making a long term upgrade to a higher core count CPU when zen 3 released as these will be the final and most powerful CPUs available on the platform.

Also with AM5 and DDR5 coming next there will most likely be teething issues and high costs especially with the ram so sitting on a strong zen 3 chip for a few years till the new platform settles down isn't a bad idea.

 

[Jamin280672]

I think the main thing I am learning is not to bother upgrade this gen.

Well look at it this way, Zen 2 had about a 13% IPC gain over Zen+ 12nm, did you really notice that much of a difference in the real world ?

Zen 3 has a 19% IPC gain over Zen 2, real world, you're not going to notice any difference.

As ive told many other people in many other places, a noticeable performance increase of you PC is a lot more than just a CPU upgrade, the biggest and fastest upgrade anyone can make to their PC right now would be moving to something like an nvme drive from a mechanical and even some of the older SSDs, then you'll see big and noticeable speed increases.

 

[KentMan]

I have a 3800X and 5700XT on X570 with c16 3600mhz Ram and 3 nvme drives, im waiting to see if AMD do any combo deals on 5900X and 6800XT if not i will buy separately next year when both are on special offers.

Mostly desperate for the gpu upgrade as im on 3440x1440 but i really want zen3 12 cores as its probably the last zen on my motherboard. But im happy to wait a while, will give my eldest the 3800X and give his 2600x into a new PC for the youngest.

Everyone wins

 

[Vince]

Outside of "proper work" I dont think my 16/32 has ever seen more than about 20% usage.

 

[Stu]

A lot of people play Valorant, cs:go, Apex and Overwatch where the single core boost is worthwhile if you use competitive graphics settings. PUBG and Tarkov should also get a really strong boost in performance, particularly 0.1% and 1% lows. Really does depend on the game you play and resolution and detail settings you use

Overwatch is my main game, and my x5650 with a GTX 1070 can hold 120fps using a 1440p UW monitor... I'm sure any modern CPU supports high fps in these types of games.

 

[Stu]

I think a lot of people brought into the 2000 and 3000 series with a cheap quad or 6 core for the short term with the intention of making a long term upgrade to a higher core count CPU when zen 3 released as these will be the final and most powerful CPUs available on the platform.

Also with AM5 and DDR5 coming next there will most likely be teething issues and high costs especially with the ram so sitting on a strong zen 3 chip for a few years till the new platform settles down isn't a bad idea.

Has anyone got an eye on Warhol next year, which looks like an AM4 refresh of Zen 3?

 

[Jamin280672]

Has anyone got an eye on Warhol next year, which looks like an AM4 refresh of Zen 3?

Yup I think we will get a refresh next year too, they'll wait to see what Intel brings to the table and try and beat it again with a refresh, XT versions again, we are not going to see AM5 and Zen4 with DDR5 until the end of next year at the earliest, maybe even as long as Q1 2022.

 

[MrPils]

Overwatch is my main game, and my x5650 with a GTX 1070 can hold 120fps using a 1440p UW monitor... I'm sure any modern CPU supports high fps in these types of games.

If you're "serious" about those type of games you want way more than 120fps . I'm old enough to now be "bad" instead though, my twitch shooter abilities are far below what my pc is capable of lol

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you're "serious" about those type of games you want way more than 120fps . I'm old enough to now be "bad" instead though, my twitch shooter abilities are far below what my pc is capable of lol

 

[golden751]

Given your use case I would personally go for 12 cores

 

[Joxeon]

Has anyone got an eye on Warhol next year, which looks like an AM4 refresh of Zen 3?

It would be nice if the I/O die got updated to 7nm