Who's the daddy? Cores > IPC & Frequency ?

[geordiejc]

This article claims that in many games (list below) the number of cores > frequency however when you look at the 7700k vs 4770k its clear that IPC & frequency wins.

The 6900k (8/16) vs 7700k /(4/8) is only 7% faster (3.2hgz 8/16) vs 4.2 (4/8)

Can anyone do the math to show correlation of frequency & cores vs fps? e.g. if you had 6900k @ 4.2hgz and 7700k @ 4.2hgz - i suspect that the gains would not be vast.

I'm not looking for a value for money comparison, that segways into another subject.

https://videocardz.com/66354/core-count-vs-frequency-what-matters-for-gaming

 

[geordiejc]

@Techen

I've posted the results of 14 games and a range of CPU's, with relative questions. Why post a chart showing core performance variance in 1 game as it doesn't answer the question in the thread (Frequency vs volume of cores)

 

[geordiejc]

@hornetstinger - Agreed.

@Techen - I don't think you understand the question, but i know you trying to be helpful (im not upset fella) so i'll try to explain as the 2nd chart you've posted shows frequency vs fps on 4 core 8 thread cpu's.

I'm looking to understand the performance difference of a skylake or kaby lake (same IPC) clock for clock 8 core 16 thread vs 4 core 8 thread for a range of games. Hope that makes sense?

@SiDeards73 - yeah i know they are all stock clocks, hence the question of frequency (clock for clock e.g. both @ 4.2hgz & 4/8 & 8/16)

 

[geordiejc]

Been weighing this up myself recently, with Ryzen's launching soon, I'm wondering what's going to be the CPU of choice for future proofing for gaming, I get jealous of seeing people with 2600k's and 2700k's in there sigs paired with 1070 and 1080's! My fx8350 was a bad investment (lasted me along time though to be fair) and I don't want to make the same mistake

Hopefully someone can shed light on the matter.

The Hypothesis : Ryzen/Skylake/Kabylake have within the range or error identical IPC. I'm trying to cut through the 'noise' of the ryzen launch and understand the performance gain in of popular current gaming titles of a 4.2ghz 4c/8t CPU vs a 8c/16t cpu with idential IPC. This will help me decide to order a new CPU or not.....

Cheers.

 

[geordiejc]

Tested at 1920x1080, Hardly pushing it.

The point is to show CPU performance, therefore removing the bottleneck of GPU performance.

 

[geordiejc]

On a range of games they are very similar.

If you play a particular game that needs a strong single core 7700k is better.
If you play a particular game that's mulithreaded a x99 chip is better.

Fundamentally they are all going to be ok.
Then it's down to cost / performance.

X99 really shows its advantage in other uses, if your encoding video or doing anything that scales with cores x99 will be better.

I would wait for ryzen reviews, it may be a good balance of cost cores and performance.

Agreed, x99 is better for encoding and other HT tasks as physical cores > logical cores but idk about gaming. 99.9% of people won't buy a CPU for a single game and with the Ryzen 8 cores to the masses strategy, i'm not convinced there's a gaming market to be had, hence why i want to understand across a range of popular titles if there's any significant benefit to be had of adding extra cores at the same frequency & IPC.

Bliddy tough subject to crack this one due to the variance being the software.

 

[geordiejc]

What we need is an OC'd 7700k vs 6900k to the same frequency minus the IPC of broadwell/kaby to get a true reflection across those games tested, therefore comparing apples with apples.

It is my hypothesis is that the gains had of an 8c vs 4c @ same IPC/Frequency is minimal due to current game coding/engine practices when it comes to multi-core. I'm not sold on the Ryzen 8 core 16 thread CPU to the masses for gaming as i believe game engine/software optimisation for 4+ cores isn't mainstream enough to warrant an 8c CPU.

 

[geordiejc]

Well didn't do the calculations, but I put in the 1080P overall figures into a spreadsheet and uploaded it to ethercalc.org
https://ethercalc.org/ybhaa42m8n
Ethercalc is not to great but unlike googlesheets it doesn't need registration.
Put in the columns for all the individual games but didn't enter the data.
Anyway, put in a rough FPS per GHz calculation but with base and turbo even that's a bit hard to calculate. On the other hand the Broadwell-E scores do come up fairly similar per GHz of Turbo.
Thing is, unlike PCGH or gamegpu.ru they don't actually show CPU loads (although to be meaningful those would have be a timegraph).
From the article, it looks like they intend to use this review for the Ryzen results so look forward to that. Their also promising frametimes then so maybe CPU utilisation graphs too.
Their article is already at 679 comments, so I might have a look later if anyone has asked for that.

Brill i hope they supply the data! thanks for the efforts so far!

 

[geordiejc]

+1

If something offers 80% of the performance for 50% of the cost then I'll take the 50% cheaper product any time

Guess you both missed this ;

"I'm not looking for a value for money comparison, that segways into another subject"

 

[geordiejc]

A test which will settle this debate is getting a 7700k and a 6900k at the same frequency (overclock) and testing 15 or so popular 2016/17 titles for average FPS. I believe more cores for gaming, curretly makes little difference i.e. 2-7 fps but if the frequency & IPC of each CPU is equal this could show some substantial fps gains e.g. 4.5ghz.

If OCUK would simply send me 1 x x99 motherboard & 6900k and 1x z270 & 7700k cpu i can get to work...

 

[geordiejc]

I don't see how hard it is to read the OP - all those 6C and 8C CPUs have lower IPC and much lower core clockspeed than a Core i7 7700K.

Thats the issue - those 6C and 8C HEDT CPUs will not be boosting that high. The problem is that a Core i7 7700K overclocked to 5GHZ is only 10% higher than its maximum boost clockspeed. A Core i7 6800k which is overclocked to 4.3GHZ will be running at 20% higher than its maximum boost clockspeed.

Hey, mind if ask you to clarify what you mean ? I'm not following. i'm suggesting if the 6900k and 7700k's frequency was the same, what would be the performance gain in a range of games due to the extra cores of the 6900k? (as broadwell vs kaby IPC gives ~1 fps)

 

[geordiejc]

@CAT-THE-FIFTH & @humbug

Would an 8c/16t BW-E CPU with the same clock speeds as an 4c/8t KBL provide only a few more fps due to the increased core availability? - if so, why is AMD pushing 8c/16t as if the 8c gaming era is here and now?

Thanks for your input so far i'm just trying to get to the bottom of this as i'm considering going to an 8c now but only if i'm going to benefit over the next year or so in terms of games using all 8 cores. Otherwise i'll make do with my haswell and upgrade to 8c when its beneficial for gaming in a mainstream sense.

 

[geordiejc]

I think you're right about the 6 core. Looking at the average FPS the 6850k 6 core is within 1.6 fps of the 6900k, as it stands the additional 2 cores over the 6 core CPU aren't worth having.

EDIT How much is the r5 1600x rumoured to cost? i know the 6850k is £620, but that price is different from a lot of other online retailers. A 8c Ryzen is still the better buy @ £320 even though it doesn't add more fps over the intel 6c (at present)

my heads mashed thinking about this tbh