Are the new 13/14 gen Intel processors and AMD processors overkill for 1080P?

[Iggy Wolf]

I mean, I game mostly at 1080P and only have a 1080P 165 Hz monitor. And I have an i5 10400F. And a 3060 Ti. Feels like the newer gen CPUs are only more useful if you're gaming at 1440P or 4K on a 4080/4090 or 7900 XTX. I rarely am struggling for frames, and even games that are more demanding, only knock frames down into the low 60s but don't actually put it below acceptable frames. I feel like any better GPU (4080 or 5080) would cause a CPU bottleneck, while a better CPU would cause a GPU bottleneck, and both would be overkill for 1080P anyway.

Especially since 1080P itself already bottlenecks the CPU, since the GPU can put out so much more frames at times. I don't know if better CPUs and GPUs are geared more towards 1440P and 4K gaming, and 1080P these days is seen as "low end" (equivalent to how 720P is now perceived vs 1080P). My mobo only supports upgrades up to 11th gen i5, i7, or i9. So I might upgrade to an 11th. But not sure if future games would really "demand" 13/14 or Ryzen 9 for 1080P.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Depends on the game. Something like Cyberpunk 2077 would get real benefit, something else not so much. Overall you are not in a bad spot for 1080p with your current setup.

[_I_]

and which cpu exactly

i3 or pentium g will not be as fast as i5/i7/i9

generally i5 is ok for games
i7 should have more cores and maybe higher turbo clocks

amds number system makes little since anymore
first number is year, 2nd is tier, later are subtiers, x3d has 3d cache

11th gen is fine for a few more years yet
game devs often aim for cpu/gpu a few years old

[Mr White]

At the moment your fine but as consoles evolve and given the majority of PC games are ports . You will need more cores in the same as more video ram. In the past 8GB Video Ram was enough,

[Illusion of Progress]

It depends.

An overkill CPU might actually be less overkill at a lower resolution, at least if you're looking at getting as many frames as possible (namely, chasing higher refresh rate levels of frame rates), or if you want higher minimums, or if you play CPU heavy games. While there's a lot of games that don't care and will happily run on an old quad core (at least up to 60 FPS), there's also a lot that will show nice benefits on faster CPUs. Moving from my 3700X to my 5800X3D, for example, gained me much more than a single generation worth of performance uplift in Java Minecraft at times.

But if you're not after super high frame rates or the highest minimums in CPU heavy stuff, it usually makes more sense to spend up on the GPU first. Well... traditionally this was true. With rising GPU costs, I think this might be changing. It might be an extra ~$100 or a bit more to go from a Core i5 to a Core i7. But going from that RTX 4070 to that RTX 4080? You're almost doubling the price.

But Core i9s and Ryzen 9s for just gaming are pretty unnecessary unless you're already buying nearly the fastest GPU and still have funds to spend.

But enthusiasts definitely tend to overestimate what you need. The sweet spot in performance for price is mostly the Ryzen 5 and Core i5 tiers.

Edit: Right now, if you can find it for ~$150 to $160 it often goes for, the Core i5 12600KF is about the best gaming value. That's hard to touch for anything else right now. The only way you're coming close to that is if you're already on AM4 and have access to the 5x00X3D. But if you're starting from scratch, nothing touches that 12600KF right now. The Core i7 12700KF is behind it if you want 8 p-cores minimum and can find it close to $200.

Sure, the 7800X3D or 13th/14th generations are a bit faster, but they're also much more expensive (and the Raptor Lake CPUs are having degradation/stability issues at the top end). Whether it's worth moving from a 10th generation Core i5 to a 12th generation Core i5 is another matter. I'd say wait for the releases coming later this year if you're not needing to upgrade ASAP.

[Rin]

At 1080p anything past 3600X/8700K is overkill no matter the fps. Meaning you're good with a 4060/7600 or better depending on if you use RT or not or play buggy games.

[Illusion of Progress]

Rin původně napsal:

At 1080p anything past 3600X/8700K is overkill no matter the fps. Meaning you're good with a 4060/7600 or better depending on if you use RT or not or play buggy games.

That's subjective, and I'm going to disagree based on seeing some substantial uplifts from a 3700X to a 5800X3D, which isn't even quite the fastest level of performance that exists (and more is coming later this year).

Objectively speaking, newer and faster processors do have quite a bit more performance than five or seven year old stuff. CPUs aren't piddling along at sub-10% generational gains anymore. It's not the early 2010s anymore.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-14900k/17.html

The fastest stuff today is now nearly about twice as fast as the level of performance you're referencing. And before "but 720p", the entire point is to show the CPU difference because it reflects the difference you might see for those games and situations that are CPU limited.

While you might think that's the break point where more performance is pointless, there are certainly people or use cases where more would be welcome.

I personally think that level of performance is more the baseline, but my opinion is certainly heavily shaped by playing some CPU demanding games. Minecraft Java under certain conditions doesn't know what this "too much CPU" phrase means. Windows 11 even calls for about that point as a baseline. And have fun bypassing it when more and more applications start requiring TPM under Windows 11 and older CPUs won't work. It's already happening. For just getting good enough averages in most games, yeah, that level of performance is typically more than fine. But that's a difference thing than "more is never necessary".

I get it, not everyone needs the latest and greatest (I often say that same thing myself). But it goes the other way too. Not everyone is going to agree that stuff in the half a decade to decade old age range is "always more than good enough no matter the conditions".

[Crashed]

Processors are not all that relevant as long as they have enough processing power to run the CPU side of a game and submit commands to the graphics card. You'll have the same CPU performance running 1080P as you would running 4K unless the game does retro console style stuff like downloading VRAM back to system RAM and manipulating it in software, but shaders have made that totally obsolete.

In addition, it's possible for "F" type CPUs to use more GPU for the desktop because there is no integrated GPU in the processor for Windows to offload "Low power" workloads to.

[A&A]

The differences between i5 13600K and i9 13900K are not that big in most games.

I can't agree that you need a high end processor for 4K/1440P, as you said yourself, processors are already struggling at 1080p. Example If the CPU can compute things for 100FPS and the GPU can render 150FPS at 1080P, what happens if we go to 1440P? The load becomes more even between the two.

The same case here. A Ryzen 5 7600 paired with an RTX 4090 running at 4K without any upscalers or frame generation, you'll still get 70fps because the GPU is the bottleneck in this case, while the CPU can throw 150fps without issue.

My laptop with Ryzen 5 5500U paired iGPU is obviously GPU limited so in games like the old CSGO dropping the resolution to 640x480 I could get 220-250FPS while at 1080P around 60FPS.

In general, it always comes down to how balanced the load is.

[Iggy Wolf]

I mean, I really learned the meaning of "CPU bottleneck" when I decided to stick a 3070 Ti (I got it from a coworker for only $300, as a possible replacement/backup for my 3060 Ti in the future) into my old PC, that still has an i5 6400. It's an office desktop PC with an OEM motherboard, so it's upgrade potential is also only limited to an i5 7th gen.

While games that were "demanding" as far as GPU is concerned (and demanding at the time of release) saw performance gains, any games that even moderately used the CPU saw a noticeable performance drop because the CPU would be struggling to keep up with the GPU. CPU usage would be 80-90%, while GPU usage was a mere 45-50%, so low that the GPU might as well be idling.

I don't intend on upgrading the old PC since it's really dated and limited to a 4c/4t processor, and I only keep it around for some of the older games that still use a disk drive. Due to TPM, it's obviously not compatible with Windows 11 anyway. My current PC with the 10400 and 3060 Ti, I might eventually upgrade the CPU to an 11th gen i5 if only because the 10400 prevents me from using the 2nd M.2 slot for another NVMe SSD. And maybe the PSU at that point as well.

The current one, a Thermaltake SMART Series 700W 80+ Gold, is actually crappy quality, and is only serviceable because it's rated 80+ Gold. Obviously, the brand is usually really low end for any serious gaming, and because it was a prebuilt, that was one of its weakest points. I don't really play CPU demanding games that much. But I do also try to avoid having too much of a disparity between CPU and GPU. And honestly, Nvidia's treatment of the "lower end" cards makes me hesitant to upgrade the GPU as well.

They cut down the 60 and 70 cards so much, just to make the 80 and 90 series look like a better buy, but as mentioned in this thread, are more power than I really need. I always liked Nvidia's midrange tier because it offered me the right balance of value and performance. I hate that they seemed to have set a precedent with the 40xx series cards, that makes it pointless even to upgrade to higher tier CPUs if the GPU isn't going to be pushed. Knowing them, they're gonna probably add ANOTHER proprietary technology to the 50xx series cards, as they did with DLSS Frame Generation for 40xx cards, just to get people to buy the newer cards.

[AmaiAmai]

I don't know why anyone would consider a 13/14th gen CPU when they have so many issues with game engines esp. Unreal Engine. I made a general patcher to fix those issues, but why should I have to do that and not the creator of the CPU Intel? Why did I have to waste 2 weeks to make such a program to make the CPU usable for my applications?

Last I checked, I am not on Intel's payroll, I'm not an employee, and I don't work for free.

When consumers have to wipe the butt of a billion dollar company AT ANY POINT, that company is one I will avoid.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

AmaiAmai původně napsal:

I don't know why anyone would consider a 13/14th gen CPU when they have so many issues with game engines esp. Unreal Engine. I made a general patcher to fix those issues, but why should I have to do that and not the creator of the CPU Intel? Why did I have to waste 2 weeks to make such a program to make the CPU usable for my applications?

Last I checked, I am not on Intel's payroll, I'm not an employee, and I don't work for free.

When consumers have to wipe the butt of a billion dollar company AT ANY POINT, that company is one I will avoid.

Yeah Intel has some issues with 13th and 14th gen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrxhOziVOuI

[AmaiAmai]

Rumpelcrutchskin původně napsal:

Yeah Intel has some issues with 13th and 14th gen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrxhOziVOuI

From last year in Starfield forums, people didn't believe me and and accused me of being an NV & Intel hater when I had already reported the issue to the big guys during Jedi Survivor work:

AmaiAmai původně napsal:

sno0ks původně napsal:

What an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Uh he's right about that...the latest NV drivers have been abysmal. And it is IN FACT listed in their patch notes. There's also an issue with that CPU he is using assigning the driver to low powered (and powered off) cores that will cause rendering issues and stuttering.

But hey, Nvidia can do no wrong according to some people. "God mode" drivers...

Really there is zero excuse that a year later the problem still persists, I would have refunded a long time ago if I spent 1000s on a build and was disappointed.

[A&A]

AmaiAmai původně napsal:

I don't know why anyone would consider a 13/14th gen CPU when they have so many issues with game engines esp. Unreal Engine. I made a general patcher to fix those issues, but why should I have to do that and not the creator of the CPU Intel? Why did I have to waste 2 weeks to make such a program to make the CPU usable for my applications?

Last I checked, I am not on Intel's payroll, I'm not an employee, and I don't work for free.

When consumers have to wipe the butt of a billion dollar company AT ANY POINT, that company is one I will avoid.

It doesn't seem like a software problem, but a hardware problem? This also happens outside of Unreal Engine too?

[andreasaspenberg575]

intel having issues is not a new thing. the i7 8700k frequently crashes when running starcraft 2. that only happens in starcraft 2.

[_I_]

andreasaspenberg575 původně napsal:

intel having issues is not a new thing. the i7 8700k frequently crashes when running starcraft 2. that only happens in starcraft 2.

there is nothing wrong with the 8700k, and starcraft
if it crashes for you, then it an unstable oc, poor mobo, or incorrect drivers
maybe cooling if its throttling too low during the game