CPU CORES
WithAMDhavingskyrocketedbacktothetopofthe
CPUcharts when it comes to overall performance per
pound, it’s easy to assume that running out and buying a
Ryzen 9 3900X is the best way to go for a gaming CPU.
However, the massive multi-core performance of the
latest high-end CPUs isn’t necessarily of that much
benefit for gaming performance. With that in mind, we set
out to find the crossover point in our suite of test games.
In theory, games that involve many players or
characters, such as battle royale games or real-time
strategy games, are more demanding of CPUs, but was
that borne out in our testing? To find out, we took our
3700X and disabled all but two of its cores (you can’t drop
to just one core), then tested our games using the RTX
2060 Super. The RTX 2080 Super is already CPU-limited
in these tests, so the 2060 Super is more likely to show
up meaningful results. We then bumpedtheCPUbackup
to four cores, six cores and finally the fulleightcores.
We were surprised by the drop in performancethatresultedfrom
dropping to only two cores in nearly all ourtestgames.Justthreeor
four years ago, before Ryzen arrived, Intel’sfastdual-coreprocessors
were still a popular choice for budget gamers,butnowit’snota route
we’d recommend.
The only game to remain untouched byourchangestotheCPU
cores was ROTTR, which remained resolutelyboundonlybygraphics
card performance. This is reflective of thefactthisgameisgraphically
very rich, and that it doesn’t tend to have ahugeamountofenemiesor
other characters on screen at the same time.
Elsewhere, though, the drop to two coresmadea bigdifference.
In Dota 2, the average frame rate plummetedfrom179fpstojust
87fps at 1080p, while even at 4K it droppedfrom139fpsto91fps.In
AOTS, it also made a big difference – theonlyfactorinourtesting
that did seem to make a difference in thisgame– withtheframerate
dropping by 29 per cent.
What’s telling is that the largest drops wereat1080p,ratherthan
4K, emphasising the point that CPU and GPUperformanceneedsto
be balanced – the number of CPU cores willonlybethelimitinyour
system if your graphics card isn’t otherwisethebottleneck.
CPU cores (average fps)
1,920 x 1,080 Two c o re s Four cores Six cores Eight cores
Rise of the Tomb Raider 127 123 124 123PUBG 134 163 163 165
Dota 2 87 147 171 179
Ashes of the Singularity 36 49 51 54CS:GO 163 200 220 1973,840 x 2,160 Two c o re s Four cores Six cores Eight cores
Rise of the Tomb Raider 48 48 48 48
PUBG 69 73 71 73
Dota 2 91 136 132 139
Ashes of the Singularity 39 47 51 53CS:GO 131 179 180 195Movinguptofourcoresresultedinbigleapsallround,although
therearestillsomenoticeablegapsinperformancecomparedwith
usingeightcores.AOTSandDota2 takethebiggesthithere,with
24fpsdifferenceseeninthelatterwhenyoumovefromfourtoeight
cores.PUBGwasessentiallybacktofullspeedatjustfourcores
though– havinglargenumberofplayersanda largegameworld
willputstrainontheCPU,butnotenoughtostresseightcores.
Takinganotherstepuptosixcoresseesthegapscloseup.Dota 2
performancetakesanotherleapat1080p,comingtowithin7fpsof
its8-coreperformance.AOTSalsocreepsupeverclosertoits
maximumat1080p.Elsewhere,though,we’vebasicallyalreadyhit
peakperformance.
Wehavetoadmitthatweweresurprisedtoseethesesmallbut
consistentgapsbetweenthe6-coreand8-coreresultsforDota 2
andAOTS.Wefullyexpectedthata 6-coreCPU(inthiscase,it can
dealwithupto 12 threadsata timethankstoSMT),wouldbeenough,
butthere’sa verysmallgamingadvantagetohavingthosefinaltwo
coresinsomeinstances.Ashes of the Singularity puts a major strain on CPU
usage, thanks to all the units being on-screen at onceThe Ryzen range tops out at 16 cores but you don’t
need that cores many for gamingYou’ll want a minimum of a quad-core CPU for consistent gaming performance.
You don’t need more than eight though