clock speed doesn't seem to do that much in RTS. look at the 4ghz vs 3 ghz i5 are negligibly different.
The big gaps are in going from architecture to architecture. Wide CPUs with great prefetching are at the top and skinny CPUs with poor prefetching are at the bottom.
There you have it. Intel does make a difference in select few games(skyrim,starcraft) but overall you pay much more for average of 23% more performance and 30W less power draw. FX4170 looks even better than both chips since it costs the fraction of 3770K and is ~24% slower across all gaming benchmarks.Conclusion
As you can see from those results, the processor doesn't matter at all when it comes to graphics card limited games/benchmarks. But then when the graphics card is not the bottleneck we notice big differences. A closer look at the synthetic benchmarks shows that there is only one processor benchmark where the CPUs performance comes into the game. In fact it is 3DMark Vantage where you can see a huge difference between the Core i7-3770K and the FX-4170/FX-8150. Thread count didn't matter as both processors have a total of eight, so either Intel's processor is well optimized or 3DMark Vantage is an Intel Benchmark. Otherwise there is almost no difference at all, for 3DMark11 the score was 0.7 % different, under Unigine Heaven the difference was 0.5 % for the FX-8150 over the Intel processor.
Shifting the focus to games there is also a noticeable increase in performance in some cases and nothing at all - or very little - in other cases. In our performance rating we saw that the Core i7-3770K was almost 23 percent faster than the FX-8150 on average. With 0.73 percent there is almost no advantage for the Intel CPU in Alien vs Predator. In Crysis 2 you can see that the FX-8150 is about 2 percent behind. Then comes BattleField 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Dragon Age II where Intel is leading by 6 percent for the first two and 8 percent for the last one. But now there are the big numbers with games such as Batman: Arkham City, DIRT 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, StarCraft II and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that seems to be well optimised for Intel. Both processors having the same thread count and the same working frequency will all cores under load then this big difference is explained by a very efficient processor architecture or a well optimized game for it. Going to the results now you can see a gap of 17.6 % between the two processors under Batman, 15 % under DIRT 2, 30 % for Call of Duty, 60 % for Skyrim and finally a huge 84 % under StarCraft II (such strategy game benefits more from a processor upgrade than a very high end graphics card).
Not much to say regarding the power consumption where the i7 3770K was 15 Watts more efficient in idle and 30 Watts under GPU load (only one processor thread is being used at 100 %). Now if we take a look at the performance/price ratio it is interesting to see that for a processor that brings only 1.23 times the performance of the FX-8150 under games you will have to pay 1.62 times as much. Due to very few optimized games for more than two/four threads (which means games will scale more with the processor frequency and not the amount of cores/threads) the difference in performance between the FX-8150 and the FX-4170 is 0.7 %. Is it worth 1.42x the price? We don't think so! Therefore the performance/price of the FX-8150 is very bad and very good for the FX-4170. Intel's i7 3770K's performance/price stays the worse at the moment.
Actually, Sandy Bridge Celerons match AMD chips in performance, for a fraction of the cost, as shown in previous benchmarks.Wow, the op just asked if a 960T would be the bottleneck for a AMD 7850OC graphics card for certian games. The contesting fanboys come out to debate.
OP
A 960T combined with a 7850OC should have no problems playing those games. A 960t can be o/c and unlocked with a bit of luck so for the money, I say go for it.
I personally am getting tired of folks getting personal and bitter about how great Intel is.
Yes WE KNOW INTEL IS A GREAT CHIP IF YOU HAVE THE BUDGET!!!
If you are on a tight budget, for a gamer, it is far better to put the most money on GPU and balance it out with a m/b and cpu that can overclock. It is no good to get a budget cpu and m/b with a high end gpu and try to game like the high enders.
It seems like certain people are of the belief that AMD is as bad as the old Intel Celerons.
I use the old Intel Celerons at work and let me state categorically that my home computer can do stuff so much faster and smoother and it is definately not a high end gaming monster machine.
Why can't you imagine this? I already showed a chart of AMD chips bottlenecking a 5870.If the OP overclocks the 960t then it will do just fine. I can't imagine it bottlenecking a 7850 once overclocked. Maybe a GTX680 or a 7970.
They did overclock the NB and AMD chips still get crushed by Intel.Also keep in mind, that Starcraft II will show a big improvement on AMD processors when you overclock the CPU-NB.
Almost every chart misses this. so even if you look at performance of a faster AMD CPU to try to guesstimate how a slower AMD CPU would perform is overclocked, you are still missing the subtlety that it would do even better if you also overclock the CPU-NB.
So Starcraft II, perhaps the app that paints the worst possible picture for AMD CPUs, is not as bad as it seems when you factor for CPU-NB overclocks that all the review sites missed, even when doing overclocks.
According to this review the FX-8150 is a better buy than the i7-3770K. That's a joke. Not to mention the lack of i3 and i5s for comparisons. They have a 80% difference in SCII and they claim this. I'll stick with Anand's, Tom's, TPU, etc. Keep digging up these .ch review sites or personal fanboy blogs.Pretty good review of FX8150/FX4170/3770K performance in games. Their conclusion is spot on:
There you have it. Intel does make a difference in select few games(skyrim,starcraft) but overall you pay much more for average of 23% more performance and 30W less power draw. FX4170 looks even better than both chips since it costs the fraction of 3770K and is ~24% slower across all gaming benchmarks.
OP...your cpu will baraly matters on 1920x1080...
it's your gpu, while it's good for 60 fps, it don't have the horse power for 120
I think the importance of a fast CPU is magnified when you have a GPU with the horsepower to do 120 Hz and a display to show off that 120 Hz.
Of course it matters. The required CPU horsepower is the same in every resolution, it's just that the GPU becomes the more limiting factor. But that's not the case in A LOT of games nowadays that are console ports (like 80% of available games?) or optimised for low end (Diablo 3).
I had also the impression that AMD vs Intel CPUs made little difference in gaming but after going from Phenom -> i5 2500 I'd say that the difference is not as small as AMD fanboys are trying to convince us.
And most certainly if I had a 120 hz screen like the op, Sandy Bridge / Ivy bridge is the only path I'd look.
I already showed AMD chips bottlenecking a single HD 5870. The bottleneck exists in CPU-dependent games even with a single mid-ranged card.
He already has a bottleneck in CPU-dependent games and will always have a bottleneck with AMD chips regardless of overclock. Sorry fanboys, deal with the facts.
Time for the dead horse:
No matter what the OP does with that chip, it's inferior to an i3. If he's going to spend money overclocking it such as getting a new cooler or motherboard as suggested by AMD fanboys, he's better off going Intel.
Basically, i3 > anything from AMD overclocked or otherwise. It'll cost less too.
Ok we get it.
You have made your point Amd = bottleneck do not use!
Instead of repeating that over and over can you contribute anything else?
Wow, the op just asked if a 960T would be the bottleneck for a AMD 7850OC graphics card for certian games. The contesting fanboys come out to debate.
OP
A 960T combined with a 7850OC should have no problems playing those games. A 960t can be o/c and unlocked with a bit of luck so for the money, I say go for it.
I personally am getting tired of folks getting personal and bitter about how great Intel is.
Yes WE KNOW INTEL IS A GREAT CHIP IF YOU HAVE THE BUDGET!!!
If you are on a tight budget, for a gamer, it is far better to put the most money on GPU and balance it out with a m/b and cpu that can overclock. It is no good to get a budget cpu and m/b with a high end gpu and try to game like the high enders.
It seems like certain people are of the belief that AMD is as bad as the old Intel Celerons.
I use the old Intel Celerons at work and let me state categorically that my home computer can do stuff so much faster and smoother and it is definately not a high end gaming monster machine.
I already showed AMD chips bottlenecking a single HD 5870. The bottleneck exists in CPU-dependent games even with a single mid-ranged card.
In the previous bench of WoW from Tom's I posted the SB has a 33% increase in FPS compared to FX-8150 and Phenom II X4 980 at 1920x1080 with 8x AA. That was average FPS and minimum FPS where Intel has an even bigger advantage.yes, spend 250 bucks on a cpu to get 10-20% fps more
buy a second 7850 and you frames double *at many games*
your idea is gonna do wonders for the OP
In the previous bench of WoW from Tom's I posted the SB has a 33% increase in FPS compared to FX-8150 and Phenom II X4 980 at 1920x1080 with 8x AA. That was average FPS and minimum FPS where Intel has an even bigger advantage.
In SCII, a highly CPU-dependent game, the i5-2400 is 64% faster in minimum fps than either the 980 or 1090. Adding a second would do nothing in these cases. It's laughable that AMD fanboys are now suggesting getting 7850s in crossfire on a AMD chip.
AMD fanboys: "but but but nobody plays Blizzard games!" or "they must be poorly coded console ports."