Hardware Unboxed - Why Gamers DON’T Need More Cores, 6-Cores Still Works Well!
Posted by Ssamjang@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 377 comments
Posted by Ssamjang@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 377 comments
OGigachaod@reddit
*6 cores works well if you run your PC like HUB does, no background apps running.
sunjay140@reddit
If you watched the video, you'd know today they already addressed this claim.
https://youtu.be/AR9V8RTvVcM?si=V5jz92C8fQyReAHv&t=953
OGigachaod@reddit
LOL, running 2 things in the background is hardly "multitasking".
Morningst4r@reddit
If you're not compiling 3 versions of Linux and running 3 trojan crypto miners 24/7 are you really gaming? Seriously though, beyond a browser, discord, and maybe a few game store apps, what are realistically running in the background?
OGigachaod@reddit
Steam games store, epic games store, my razor RGB software, argus fan control, and park control.
-Gh0st96-@reddit
A browser with probably 5-8 tabs opened at that
AldermanAl@reddit
That's impacting very little.
Niwrats@reddit
"with one of the most demanding scenarios possible.."
yeah, show 'em those grand strategy cpu hogs!!
"..battlefield 6 conquest multiplayer"
oh
-Gh0st96-@reddit
Choosed to show one of the most optimized games right now lol, baffled
septuss@reddit
grand strategy games do not benefit from higher core counts. they benefit from higher clock speeds and most importantly cache a 7600x3d will crush a 7700x in paradox titles and cpu heavy games like factorio
Niwrats@reddit
i can believe most of that. it was not so much about those specific games, just the statement about some multiplayer game being the most demanding scenario a bit funny.
bikingfury@reddit
Completely unrealistic b.s. video. Gamers don't have clean systems to just run some benchmarks. A regular computer with your regular background tasks benefits from many more cores..
Aristotelaras@reddit
Big BS. Normal computers backround tasks don't consume any meaningful CPU resource.
sunjay140@reddit
If you watched the video, you would know that it addresses this argument.
cowoftheuniverse@reddit
He did address it but he is thinking wrong.
He is referencing an old video of his but nowadays with UE5 and other heavy games that don't even use UE5 can take even 8/16 cpus to 100%. You throw some extra load on that 100% and it will eat into the fps. I have seen it myself.
In other words, his old tests were done with games that had plenty of cpu resources left to handle those background processes and apps.
bikingfury@reddit
I don't waste my time on such videos. Whatever the claim is it's wrong. I have huge frame dips without my ecores.
sunjay140@reddit
The person in the video measured the frame stability and 1% lows. They're good.
bikingfury@reddit
How does the person know what I'm running in the background?
sunjay140@reddit
The average person is running discord and maybe Spotify in the background. They may have a browser open. These have marginal performance penalties.
But yes, an 8 core CPU would perform better if you're compiling Firefox, Unreal Engine or the Linux kernel or encoding a 4K HDR video while gaming.
bikingfury@reddit
Just the windows operating system runs thousands of processes at the same time. And they all disturb your cores while gaming to cause micro stutters and such. Having extra cores which take care of that is just common sense.
Pillokun@reddit
the thing is I have an sata os that have never ever been formated, it has been an win7 drive, then updated to win 10 then 11 and it has had like everything from 3770k, r5 1600, 3700x, 5800x3d, several lga 1700 cpus, one am5 platform and now back to an 10th gen platform and it has always been in line perf wise as my clean os installations. very little to it.
And yes I do play almost always with firefox with 2600tabs open end maybe a video stream or audio stream on in the background, cores have not added anything to it at all.
only thing that mattered was when I treid to render stuff/ peg all the cores at the same time as I played a game with, and even then the gaming on the system with more cores was stuttery.
bikingfury@reddit
Then you are not a power user and don't need strong CPUs.
Pillokun@reddit
power user as in I need the fastest cores, not the most cores. If I need the most cores then I have the gpu for rendering tasks and the like. Heck even my pro workloads in CAD applications prefer fast cores over many cores.
godfrey1@reddit
hardware unboxed: 8 GB RAM is absolutely obsolete, fuck Nvidia for releasing 8 GB cards (not AMD though)
also hardware unboxed: buy 6 cores CPUs
LOL
Aristotelaras@reddit
They never said taht 8gb card from Amd are fine, why you lie?
sunjay140@reddit
Hardware Unbox only made an empirical observation. The numbers don't lie.
Different_Lab_813@reddit
When you cherry pick results, they usually don't lie.
sunjay140@reddit
Feel free to post your non-cherry picked results.
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
Name 3 games where 9600x perfs significantly worse than 9700x?
godfrey1@reddit
name 3 reasons I should consider those over 7800x3d
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
Thats what I thought. No one here can actually show significance.
On vcache topic... theres no reason not to get 7800x3d beside prices, resolution & gpu someone is using.
godfrey1@reddit
so you didn't name a single one
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
That question cant be answered without the context of your current system. Theres literally no point of buying 7800x3d over 9600x if you're slower than 4070 or 9070xt & resolution and if you use dlss/fg
Frexxia@reddit
I couldn't imagine buying a 6 core CPU today. Even if they technically work fine in most contexts, how long is that going to be true? The trend is for software to become more and more multi-threaded over time.
AldermanAl@reddit
People were posting this comment on reviews on first gen ryzen to justify 1700x and 1800x purchases. They posted it again to justify 2800x purchases. Again then to justify the new 12 core 3900x and again after that to justify the 5900. 5800x3d and so on and so forth. Here we sit years later and 6/12 still humming along without an issue.
The relevancy of 6/12 will continue to be a long time.
viperabyss@reddit
HBU: ZOMG! Everybody needs 16G VRAM, even for people running 1080p!
Also HBU: You really don't need more than 6 CPU cores.
AldermanAl@reddit
Apples and oranges
harry_lostone@reddit
they PROVE that 6 cpu cores are enough for just gaming/casual use.
they PROVE that 8gb vram is not enough. Check the benchmarks for the last MGS (it will officially release tomorrow). A 4060 struggles to deliver 50fps at 1080p high :D While a 6-core CPU is chilling.
You don't want to believe HUB? Don't. Check the benchmarks. ryzen 7600(x) vs ryzen 7700(x) or ryzen 9600x vs ryzen 9700x, the easiest ones.
You want to do more than gaming? Get 8+ cores. You want to just game and save budget for better GPU? Get 6 cores, they are fine, the amount you will pay for 8 cores wont really translate to performance (for example 30% higher price for 5% better fps).
Sometimes I wonder what are people with this mindset are even doing on such subs/discussions :D you don't even know why you are hater jfc
viperabyss@reddit
They PROVED the 8GB VRAM isn't enough with 6 games, 4 of which are based on Sony PS5 ports which are known to use more VRAM than necessary, and 1 of them showed basically no difference between 8G and 16G.
TPU with its 20+ game suite showed 8GB VRAM is more than sufficient.
Just as plenty of outlets have proved 8GB VRAM is sufficient for vast majority of gaming / casual use at 1080p, on a GPU that's designed for that market.
Probably trying to actually introduce facts and figures from outlets that don't have an agenda to push? But you're right, why do I bother when legitimate data aren't as interesting as sensational, but slanted reporting?
x3nics@reddit
The same TPU that only shows average FPS? Every VRAM related video on HUBs channels shows real time comparisons of the games running so you can see the shitty frame time performance first hand.
harry_lostone@reddit
Can you share with me your data of 8 core CPUs being a necessity over 6 core CPUs in gaming? I'm not talking about x3d chips which are double the price, I'm talking about same gen CPUs (5600x vs 5800x, 7600x vs 7700x, 9600x vs 9700x) where we can have an actual and fair comparison. we can easily compare frames per dollar and have a vfm conclusion, anyway 6 core CPUs wont hold back the performance to "unplayable" or game crashing scenarios, it will be clear if 6 core CPUs are capable or not.
exodus3252@reddit
I have no idea what the point of this comment is, but one has absolutely nothing to do with the other.
viperabyss@reddit
The point of this comment is HUB being hypocrite to heavily advocate (and profit) out of pushing on one issue that is unnecessary, while at the same time taking a relaxed approach on another issue that is arguably more necessary.
exodus3252@reddit
If a game is so heavily VRAM limited that it's completely crashing the game or tanking your performance to single digits, it's a big, big issue.
If a game is utilizing all your available threads/cores, the same thing doesn't happen. You can still get a great gaming experience.
If you have the most fundamental understanding of hardware, you'll notice that one thing is not like the other.
Your insinuation HUB is profiting off of telling gamers not to buy obsolete 8GB GPUs in 2025 is asinine. Do you think they getting a cut of every GPU sold that has more than 8GB of VRAM or something? They've been critical of both AMD and NVDA on this issue.
viperabyss@reddit
And yet people can turn down the settings to reduce VRAM use. By the way, TPU's benchmark suite shows performance difference between 16G and 8G VRAM is about 3%, with 8G being faster.
Or if the game utilizes 8 core, then you'll run into contention.
Or if the game maxed out 6 cores, and Windows is running background process, then you'll run into slow down.
Actually it isn't.
Clicks, son. Clicks.
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
Sounds like a direct response to the criticism I have seen for more than a day now about the value plays between a 14600K vs 7600 since he recommended the 7600 even when shown the $150 combo deals happening right now for that CPU with motherboard and a game.
Especially interesting comment from someone who raged against 8GB GPUs for 5 years now. Befor they even became an issue
HardwareUnboxed@reddit
If would be pretty amazing if we could see into the future like that. You do realize the BF6 Open Beta was 2 weeks ago right? Impressive foresight :P
As for the 8GB of VRAM issue, you're only off by 3 years there, the first video on the subject was published in 2023, feels like so long ago now I know.
I'm not sure what 8GB's of VRAM and games not necessarily needing a certain amount of cores to work has to do with one another. The point of the video being that the 9600X for example is much faster than most higher core count CPUs that came before it, for gaming.
ClearlyAThrowawai@reddit
The issue is he's defending the choice of an AMD 6 core vs an equivalent intel i5 (which has 6 cores + 8 ecores, which handily crushes the AMD competitive equivalents)
HardwareUnboxed@reddit
I would personally rather invest in the AM5 platform in late 2025 than I would LGA1700 and you're out here trying to make that into some big drama. I've made my reasons clear for this on X, it should be obvious though.
I am working under the impression that in terms of gaming performance the 14600K is very similar to the 7600X, only around 5% faster on average. If you think the 14600K is 20-30% faster for gaming like some Intel drones are claiming, then we're on two different pages.
ClearlyAThrowawai@reddit
I mean, you own numbers showed the 14600k as closer to 10% faster in gaming alone, and 50% faster if the workload in multicore. I take issue with choosing the objectively slower part solely because you can theoretically put in a newer, faster processor down the line. People making these part choices aren't buying 9950X3Ds or whatever the next gen equivalent is later - they just want the best overall bang for buck full stop. Otherwise you'd just go for a less constrained processor to begin with (though I see now the AMD 8-core picks are pretty awful value as well unless you get something with special sauce like an X3D, which is in a completely different price range altogether).
To me, it just seems like you'd be better off picking an Intel i5 or i7 in the 300-500aud price range right now because they both perform about as fast as the AMD parts in gaming but perform 1.5-2x in multi threaded workloads, and that is a situation that is occasionally relevant game wise too (though I agree not common).
The only justifiable upgrade paths for the AM pick relative to intel is to an X3D or the 16 core parts, really. Obviously the X3D can give a fair bit extra headline fps, but I'm of the view that doesn't really matter since it only shows up in situations where you don't need the extra performance anyway. Both cost more than the CPU+MB combo you started with, which is a hard pill to swallow the a budget builder looking at this stuff to begin with.
TLDR I don't think sacrificing 10-50% performance upfront (ST/MT) is worth the potential upgrade paths to a much more expensive processor down the line. The applies at any price point where you're not getting a 12+core and/or X3D AMD processor to begin with.
HardwareUnboxed@reddit
There are a number of reasons why I have this opinion.
A big part does have to do with the upgrade path, you almost certainly have the option of upgrading to what could be a much faster and more efficient Zen 6 part in the future, certainly doesn't have to be an X3D CPU. Will be very funny if Zen 7 somehow ends up on AM5 like the current rumors are suggesting, I can't see it, but the LGA1700 option is going to look so bad if it happens.
The AM5 platform will see proper support for much longer than LGA1700.
I don't even know if the degradation issues with LGA1700 CPUs has been solved. (stock performance is certainly worse now)
If you paid the 14600K with DDR5, which you should, it costs more than the 7600 option, so it's really not cheaper.
The AM5 platform is much more power efficient, not a big draw card for me, but it is a thing.
This entire discussion was for gaming, gaming only. If you want multi-core performance for productivity then I have to re-evaluate all the options.
I will enjoy revisiting this little drama in a few years time to see how the options played out.
ClearlyAThrowawai@reddit
https://youtu.be/0oALfgsyOg4?t=1117
I guess we have different priorities and views. I bought an AM4 platform PC with a 2600x a few years ago with a view towards upgrading it. What actually ended up happening is I gave the PC to a younger cousin and bought a new platform (which ended up being Alder Lake + DDR4 because DDR5 prices were bonkers at the time).
The other issue with upgrade paths is all you're really doing is saving money on the motherboard. By the time you're considering a much faster processor, the motherboard cost becomes less significant, so it's less of a barrier to buy a new motherboard anyway. You're losing some performance now to save 100-200$ in the future.
Perhaps I would have upgraded if not for my unique circumstances. I do think that specifically for prebuilts it makes little sense to consider upgradeability because people who will actually bother probably aren't buying prebuilt, but I shouldn't assume that. Better to give the user the best available product at the time even if the upgrade path is worse.
why_is_this_username@reddit
I will say if you don’t mind me adding to the discussion, there are a lot of people who do get a entry motherboard and upgrade every few generations, while yes it saves them maybe $200, spending $600 on a cpu seems a lot more reasonable than spending $800 when you’re only seeing a generational uplift in power efficiency and technology. I also want to note that amd cores are different than Intels, specifically in multi threading. Amd multi threading is like putting more cores in your core with the downside of they have to be moving at the same speed (and shares cache), while intel has it so that if a task is talking to long to receive information it’ll swap to a second task. That’s why Intel just has more cores per the price point of amd‘s competition because they have inferior multi threading. The i5 you mentioned has 14 cores while a ryzen 5 only has 12 (because every core has 2 cores). That’s why multi threading performance is better on intel because it is more cores with less core downsides (outside of efficiency cores).
But I will say for prebuilt and machines that most likely won’t be upgraded (as I mentioned before a $600 upgrade looks and feels a lot better than a $800 for the same upgraded performance) like office machines, the socket doesn’t matter between intel and amd, use what fits your workload. If you need a lot of cores for gaming and editing/rendering and want to upgrade it later without having to buy a new motherboard amd is most likely the best option, if all you care about is multi core performance and stuff like power usage and later upgrades are of no concern Intel is better because they just put more cores into their chips, for them it’s quantity over quality (especially with the rumored 52 core cpu, I’m exited to see that thing but I already know it’s not for me)
ClearlyAThrowawai@reddit
Hyperthreading is just attempting to use unused core resources at the same time.
A true e core is better than a hyperthreaded in general, which is why the i5 crushes the 7600 in multithreaded (+50-60%). Intel hyperthreading seemed similar to AMD, but they didn't have it on the i5s I guess (idk if that still applied at this gen)
HardwareUnboxed@reddit
That's very old outdated data that doesn't account for the performance gains Ryzen has received with the Windows 24H2. Look at the Core Ultra reviews, we have all the CPUs in those.
ClearlyAThrowawai@reddit
Yeah, feel like he had an idea and is now stuck defending it.
The 6 core AMD parts vs Intel is particularly egregious since literally the only advantage of the AMD part is the upgrade path (which, IMO, almost no one ends up actually using...)
why_is_this_username@reddit
I will like to say that amd cores aren’t like intel cores, Intel multi threading is like having a second hand, you can use it when the first one is stuck, amd multi threading is putting a second core in the core. The only downside to that is that they have to be on the same clock cycle (if not then the slower task can be wasting time by receiving the required information in the middle of a tick if that makes sense) and shared cache. Intel usually still wins in multi core due to just having more cores, a i5 still has like 2 or 4 more cores than amd (cause there’s two cores per core). It’s weird but amd is a better multi threading solution while Intels is more efficient.
Fortzon@reddit
Are you crazy? Every single AM4 user I know who either bought Ryzen 1000, 2000 or 3000 series CPU as their first AM4 CPU eventually upgraded to Ryzen 5000 series CPU.
ClearlyAThrowawai@reddit
I suppose it depends.
I find that I end up just upgrading the whole platform and giving away the old computer.
why_is_this_username@reddit
I can say when I built my first pc I did go straight to am5 off of am4, but most of that is because my very first was a outdated prebuilt, and my second was about the best am4 system you can get, but I do plan on upgrading my cpu at least once on am5, I’m probably gonna go with the next x3d chip tho depending on how much more cores are I might go with that. But I do acknowledge people who get the best early and basically builds a new pc every few years. With the state of am5 right now and the lower power draw of future chips (due to being on a smaller node) you feasibly could go from zen5 to zen8 on the same motherboard which would make upgrading seem better because you’re not spending $200 on top for a new motherboard. A $600 upgrade looks better than a $800. there’s also those who get a entry level cpu with the intent of upgrading later when they have a better build. There are reasons and consumer advantages to having a long lifespan of a socket. Now that may not apply to you but it certainly is something I appreciate.
SupremeChancellor@reddit
Your average gamer will have 15 things running underneath their game which is why I generally recommend higher core counts.
If you are in the habit of closing everything and keeping your tabs under control, im sure this is fine.
why_is_this_username@reddit
Truthfully CPU’s are so heavily optimized that unless you have like a vm and the game running 3 times whatever you’re running in the background shouldn’t make a insane difference in performance, it’s more of a ram problem than a cpu problem. Not saying that it doesn’t help to have less background tasks but there’s more areas that are so heavily optimized to where those backgrounds are extremely minor. This is especially the case when you are using a os that’s made to use as little resources as possible.
nepnep1111@reddit
That's why I'm extremely hesitant on recommending any of the AMD 6c parts other than a 7500f. Having 12-16E on Intel or even a second CCD on AMD for that matter made me just completely forget about my background applications unless I am intentionally trying to get that last 1% performance.
Morningst4r@reddit
Well the 7500f is also within like 10% of the 9600X for a lot less (unless you're doing a lot of AVX512 or something else very Zen5 friendly). So it's a good recommendation anyway.
bobloadmire@reddit
This was literally addressed in the video. Non issue. Reddit sucks
SupremeChancellor@reddit
and my reply to the same reply you had was addressed in my comments
i hate reddit too buddy
scielliht987@reddit
Of course tasks are "spread across CPU cores". That's what operating system schedulers do. Unless something overrides that behaviour.
Mateorabi@reddit
It’s not so much “overriding” as the primary application you want performance from was written as a single threaded application. Because multithreading is hard of the algorithm doesn’t lend itself to it.
In those cases fewer larger cores are better. More, but weaker, cores are better when you have available parallel work for them to be doing. Idling 3/4 of your chip is less bad than idling 7/8 of it.
scielliht987@reddit
I mean, he says the game is spreading the workload, but that's just the default behaviour of Windows. You spin up a thread, and the scheduler will migrate it across the CPU. At least by what I've seen.
why_is_this_username@reddit
It doesn’t just spin up a thread, I looked into that for my own game but doing that is extremely costly in terms of resources. For example let’s say adding a task to a pool of constantly running threads who are constantly looking for a task takes about 10 microseconds, spinning up a new thread for each task will cost about 50 microseconds, that time will add up, not to mention that before drawing you have to ensure that the thread is finished by either joining it back into the main thread or by cutting it off. Which again both or somewhat time consuming compared to just having a constant while loop on the threads. Now that’s not to say that the kernel and scheduler doesn’t increase performance but it’s not because of organizing the data being processed, that’s all the programs doing.
webjunk1e@reddit
Your understanding is flawed here. Windows or the OS, in general, does not distribute load. It merely responds with allocation as requested. The game or application determines how the work will be parallelized and the scheduler simply gives the allocation accordingly.
scielliht987@reddit
The OS does distribute load. That's what OS schedulers do. Well, maybe not actively distributing if it's a dumb scheduler, but in the basic form, each core runs in an infinite loop picking threads from a queue. And that has the effect of distributing load.
alvenestthol@reddit
It can only do that if the game decides to create new threads for the OS to distribute, there's nothing the OS can do if the game has 1 big thread that bottlenecks everything.
The act of creating threads and synchronizing them is also quite costly, so the game's programming has to decide how to split its work into a reasonable number of threads, instead of just spewing out threads indefinitely and hoping the OS can schedule appropriately - especially since that if you have more threads than cores, the OS ends up context-switching, which tanks performance.
webjunk1e@reddit
That's not what we're talking about here, and it's not technically distributing the load, it's just allocating resources, which is all it does for everything. If an application is single threaded, for example, in that it doesn't not parallelize any work in its own code. The OS can do nothing but give it a single thread. It can't make that work happen on multiple cores.
work-school-account@reddit
The sense I got was that he meant Battlefield 6 in particular is well-parallelized in that the computations required for each frame can be split up into multiple parallel subtasks that can be completed independently. Which is actually pretty hard to implement for games beyond a handful of threads.
0xdeadbeef64@reddit
That's my take as well as what he meant.
Multi-threading for applications that scales with number of threads can be very hard to implement efficiently, and often darn near impossible. Some computationally problems are embarrassingly parallel, but games like we talk about here in general are not (ignoring GPU here).
Mateorabi@reddit
But games aren’t “overriding” it normally so much as being written as single thread applications. They aren’t going to the effort of writing multi-thread apps then node locking them to one core via an “override”.
scielliht987@reddit
By overrides, I also mean when the OS considers the topology of the CPU, like keeping a thread on cores with X3D cache, then the software thread won't touch as many cores.
Or maybe the game explicitly sets thread affinity.
glitchvid@reddit
Games typically also have a task system that worker threads get fed from, since it's easier to introspect performance if you just pin the threads and keep like data nearer in memory locality.
noiserr@reddit
OS Schedulers do task migrations on heavy processes to take advantage of higher frequency due to thermals.
So having more cores can be advantageous beyond just being able to multitask.
why_is_this_username@reddit
It can also be advantageous if a program is using a thread pool and filling it up. The os isn’t always doing it on for example low level languages, it can also be when a thread gets to a task first. Not to mention the difference in threads. Intel threads are way different than amd threads. Intel is like having a second hand, it can do stuff while your first is waiting, while amd is like having a second guy but they both must work at the same time.
trparky@reddit
Is that a shot across some company's bow?
ThePresident44@reddit
Nah I love having 22/24 fucking cores idling in older games and no AVX512 for developers :)
Mojomckeeks@reddit
Haha right? Ask intel how that’s going
BlueGoliath@reddit
Depends on how you define tasks. Multi-threading is neither free or easy in most cases.
taz-nz@reddit
Video accurate for two more weeks, then Borderlands 4 launches.
It might only be the first but there will likely be many more soon.
_therealERNESTO_@reddit
Game requirements are inaccurate most of the times. I'm sure there's plenty of games that require an 8 core bur work fine on 6 core
Also those CPUs are very slow, a modern 6 core will run circles around them even in multi-threaded tasks.
Hayden247@reddit
Yeah a Ryzen 7600X will absolutely smoke a 2700X which is listed... proves Steve's point that processing power matters more than just core count. Less cores that are faster will beat more slower cores anyday in gaming just because games are a workload that love per core performance the most.
Besides the consoles are literally effectively 6 cores anyway. Yeah thet used 8 core Zen 2 CPUs that are underclocked, but two cores on the PS5 are locked away exclusively for the OS so games are stuck with what's basically an underclocked Ryzen 3600. Consoles are what the baseline are, that's why in this current generation it's 6 cores being the sweet spot for gaming and that won't change until the PS6 comes with more cores, if it does.
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
Comparing a cross gens doesn't help argument about whether 6 core is fine or not
dexteritycomponents@reddit
There is not a single scenario where a 9700 or a 2700x is faster than a modern 6 core.
Has it not yet occurred to you that the people making those recommended spec sheets are absolutely clueless?
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
No shit. But sceneries where 2700X falls behind much more than it should vs a different CPU of the same Gen is what you should test. The whole point of the video is whether 6 cores affects longevity
dexteritycomponents@reddit
The 2600 and 2700x are going to fall behind equally.
RealThanny@reddit
That's not at all how any of this works. A 6-core Zen 3 processor will outperform the 8-core 2700X in virtually all workloads, and literally all games.
It's about total compute capacity, not core count.
Keulapaska@reddit
i7-9700 doesn't have hyper threading and 2700X is kinda slow by modern standards so any modern 6 core will run circles around it, hell I'd bet a 12100 will be faster, maybe even at stock, tuned definitely will be.
FinalBase7@reddit
The 2700X has such slow cores, prepare to watch the 6 core 7600X and even the 5600X completely demolish it in reviews, even in 1% lows, I'm almost certain, hell there's a high chance even the 3600X will have better performance.
BlueGoliath@reddit
2700X has IF issues. I doubt those 2 extra cores are going to be better than a better memory system.
maybeyouwant@reddit
Doom The Dark Ages works on 6 Core CPU while having the same "Requires 8 CPU Cores" requirement listed. Borderlands 4 will probably be the same. If not, I can't wait for the shitstorm.
Lakku-82@reddit
Because most 6 cores have hyper threading as of right now and technically meet the 8 thread/cpu requirement.
maybeyouwant@reddit
In case of Doom they specifically "required" 8 cores and 16 threads
tugrul_ddr@reddit
SSD storage required: design flaw. Just implement a caching method in RAM to load frequently used data from RAM instead of SSD everytime. Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 had this caching layer.
shawnkfox@reddit
Brother it is 2025. Demanding a developer makes their game work with a hdd is like demanding a dedicated lane on the highway for your horse.
tugrul_ddr@reddit
then you can say same for ai generated frames. instead of generating with ai, just render them normally, its a dedicatdd lane for rendering.
error521@reddit
I...I don't even know where to begin with this.
Jeep-Eep@reddit
Yeah, the post-8th gen grace period is nearly over.
SoTOP@reddit
This requirement will almost certainly be proven wrong, devs probably are mistaking cores for threads . i7 9700 is 8 thread CPU, a simple 6C/12T 7500F will look like 12 core CPU for the game and will easily outperform both 9700 and 2700X.
Pumciusz@reddit
It's probably going to be bad anyway, who cares.
ClerkProfessional803@reddit
If you can recommend an AMD 6 core, you can recommend a 13600k/14600k which comes with the same gaming performance and better multitasking, for a similar price.
ClearlyAThrowawai@reddit
Better gaming performance by 10%, actually (per his own numbers) and +50% multicore...
It's not particularly close.
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
He still recommends 7600X
harry_lostone@reddit
yeah, their potential explosion or their dead upgrade path are great vfm arguments too!
Jeep-Eep@reddit
Yeah, there's basically zero good argument for intel CPU in the vast majority of home builds ATM, arguably since finalgen AM4.
ClearlyAThrowawai@reddit
Ignoring the fact that the i5 is cheaper, faster in both gaming and productivity?
The only reason to take the Ryzen is "upgrade", in which case you should just buy the better part now, not bank on some upgrade down the track.
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
Show me an exploding i5
dexteritycomponents@reddit
A 7600x still has better efficiency/heat output.
Has a better platform to be on if they want to upgrade later down the line.
The whole “more cores = better for multitasking” is just a broad statement. It’s gotten people to think you need more than 6 cores to play a game and have discord open, which isn’t true. HUB just had a video about that but it’s no longer ghere—so keep an eye out for it.
nepnep1111@reddit
The 13/14600K only has higher multicore power draw from the extra threads. You can always set a power PL2 if you really care.
ClerkProfessional803@reddit
Pushing all of these caveats with outdated hardware is silly. Either a 6 core is still ok, or it's not ok, or it's only ok if it has this much power draw, but its also ok if it doesn't have this capability. Or it's bad because it has more capacity than a literal 6 core. Blah blah blah.
HUB doesn't have consistent messaging when it comes to making these kinds of suggestions, and neither does the enthusiasts community at large. Most of you guys just pick which goal post feels most satisfying, which is annoying for people actually trying to make an informed buying decision.
Jeep-Eep@reddit
Yeah, between ease of upgrade/replacement and being able to get away with a more modest cooling solution... even with the similar intel perf, no reason to give their model the time of day.
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
Game gets 170fps to 200fps how is it a demanding game on either CPU or GPU? It gets 100fps on an entry level 3 generation old CPU....75fps on a 7 year old 5 generation old CPU....its not demanding lol. Everyone is confusing "Scales well" with "Demanding"
Morningst4r@reddit
It's dropping under 50 fps on Zen+ there. It's not super demanding all the time but when a lot is going on, the CPU is almost always the bottleneck. It's also about the desired frame rate for an FPS like BF, you want 100+ minimum, so that's a lot less impressive as an average.
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
Desired frame rate doesn't change the status of the game to demanding.
The game is easy to run at over 60fps on 1440p on very old CPU's and 200fps on entry level current gen CPU's its simply not demanding at all.
Words don't have any meaning at all now if we call this game demanding.
Pillokun@reddit
I dont understand how any of these cpus can pnly deiiver at 16x ish fps with an 5090 at 1008p low even. Even with a nvidia card like 5090. I mean my 12700k(tuned but still) with an 9070xt gets like 200-270fps. avg is like 240ish. This is just too poor perf results when 5800x3d and even zen 4/5 vanilla should be just a tiny bit faster but still faster tan lga1700 cpus according to hub. Something is not really right here.
RealThanny@reddit
You're not running the same test for one thing. You're using an AMD card for another, which doesn't have the same high driver overhead.
Pillokun@reddit
I was running the same test, the same map several times over and over again. After a while see what your hw perf, and even if 5090 has higher cpu/driver overhead than the "mid tier" 9070xt it should be faster according to several tech review outlests like Techyesity ie Bryan. where the 5090 actually was the fastest at 1080p low regardless of the cpu/driver overhead issue compared to the amd card.
I even ran tests according to the videos we got to see from the the earlier videos and my fps was higher even when it got more action filled.
RealThanny@reddit
You can see in his video that the 5090 rarely even reaches 50% utilization. It's not twice as fast as a 9070 XT, so it's not only possible but likely that the 9070 XT will be faster with those processors he tested.
Pillokun@reddit
so does not matter, 9070xt showed a small load as well, it has been like that since ampere/rdna2 at 1080p low in many mp fps games.
9070xt showed 64% gpu load and a power draw of max 26x W.
We all know that nvidia has the cpu/driver overhead, that is why I went with amd for my gaming preference, even sold my last remaining 4090 to get another 9070xt for that :P
Whirblewind@reddit
I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that this video title was intended to be ironic.
Nope, completely sincere. And he closes out the video (wherein he used one game for his benchmarking) with an indignant little rant about how he recommended Intel when he got flak for it, as if he knows he's missing the point.
Which, of course, he is.
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
Theres like hundreds of cpu reviews with 6v8 core. This isnt new.
https://youtu.be/3n537Z7pJug?si=qKCmqz4dxowCAtUe&t=1377
ClearlyAThrowawai@reddit
Because it's a lot of work, costs money and we don't make money from doing so?
We expect reviewers to inform and guide us, not the other way round. This is a controversial take that many people disagree with for a reason, so perhaps he should examine his own biases and clearly lay out the tradeoffs involved - particularly since he's so down on Intel in an era where you get 50-100% more performance from them at the same price point as AMD
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
Because he already looked at 6c vs 8
Because you can look at nearly every review and you can see theres no signifant difference between 9600x & 9700x. If there was people here would've used their own system or used a different benchmark than hub. Everyone is wrong Im right with benchmarks
ClearlyAThrowawai@reddit
I don't think the real comparison is with the 8core AMD parts. I think the real comparison is vs the Intel competition which has twice as many cores (not really, because e cores are slower, but call it +50% in reality).
The 8 core AMD parts are indeed overpriced for what they offer, when you can get an Intel equivalent which is often 50-100% faster when it comes to a multicore workload but just as fast in ST/Gaming.
It's a weird world where the rolls are reversed and we have to justify picking intel because it's got many more cores. At least Intel's ST perf is basically on par with AMD, so you aren't really giving up anything.
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
Gaming perf is similar: https://youtu.be/e80Gqhe2Kt8?si=Ayn-6AZgp0pFZsRY&t=514
14600k is better for shader compilation & other things
9600x gives you upgradability option
ClearlyAThrowawai@reddit
Basically. Also much, much faster MT perf.
I question how many people end up upgrading computers built down to a price with stuff like this, but that's definitely an advantage of going the AM5 platform. Whether that's worth the performance sacrifices up front is up to the buyer, really.
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
Youtubers are generally out of touch with the average consumer. Not many people arent going to be jumping to 10800x3d from 7600, its probably 10600x or 10700x in 4-5 years.
They'll be on 1440p+ use dlss/fg and probably wont see a big perf difference.
I havd both ryzen 7 1700 & 9600k, its nice I can upgrade the ryzen to 5800x or 5700x but cant with 9600k.
Since 5700x is $90 right now just upgrade the system & give it to my younger siblings.
As for me I started working so I need the higher perf with Intel just for ease of work.
Pillokun@reddit
I was a bit miffed when amd did not let us upgrade to zen3 cpus on the older am4 board until the end life span of the am4 platform, but, every time I upgraded to a new am4 cpu I wanted to test out a new mobo as well. so I had 4 different am4 cpus with 4 different mobos and maybe 6 different ram kits. but I did unnecessary upgrade route that many would not do, and like u say my friend usually just buy an entire new system 4-5 years later when it is time to upgrade.
sunjay140@reddit
Hardware Unbox has been making these videos where they test 6 vs 8 cores across 15 - 20 games for about 5 years now.
If you take issue with the result, you need to point out where the numbers are wrong.
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
I noticed anyone who says 8 cores makes a difference hasnt shown any evidence from their own system or any system? Strange
nukleabomb@reddit
6 cores still works well just like 8GB being fine for 1080p. Both are borderline and will feel restrictive sooner rather than later.
celloh234@reddit
Ironically HUB declares 8gb gpus as dead on arrival
Jeep-Eep@reddit
And he's right to do so. A 6 core will struggle with heavy indiejank and GSG workloads among other things, but will generally manage it, if suboptimally. 8 gigs causes a painful effects and fidelity ceiling for a smaller premium to avoid then going up a CPU tier.
Jeep-Eep@reddit
I'd say 6 cores is likely to be less painful then 8 GB VRAM and not quite the same tier of booby prize for new builds, but yeah, avoid if you can.
KARMAAACS@reddit
Hey random off-topic question but did you ever play the WarZ or Infestation: Survivor Stories?
nukleabomb@reddit
Yeah
The VRAM overflow "cliff" is far more hampering to gameplay than a strict (6 core) CPU bottleneck.
New_Nebula9842@reddit
Does the core count really matter as much as the performance of the cores? Is there a situation where the 5700 Beats out the 5600x3d?
Vushivushi@reddit
If only the 6 core X3D chips were more widely available, but they're not and you have to wait or buy last gen which is a compromise.
Whatever Zen 6 turns out to be, AMD needs a $300-$350 X3D to be part of the global launch lineup.
Intel's i5 K CPUs launched in this price range and were often well within 10% of the i7/i9 K CPUs in perf.
New_Nebula9842@reddit
Maybe a better comparison would be 9600 vs 5700
Saneless@reddit
Right. As usual the "nuh uh" people don't know much beyond counting basic numbers. I'm guessing these people at the time thought the FX 8350 was the best thing ever
nukleabomb@reddit
An X3d is almost always going to be faster than a non x3d cpu
EndlessZone123@reddit
Pricing wise you were always trading gaming perf for multi core performance. There is a likelihood you will see a 5900x outperform a 5700x3d in the near future if games scale more in multiform usage.
Village666@reddit
Does not change the fact that 8C/16T and 32GB RAM is sweet spot.
Performance is left on the table with 6C/12T and 16GB.
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
9700x is 5% faster than 9600x at 1080p. Imagine higher resolutions
https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/prozessoren/amd-ryzen-9-9900x3d-test.91949/seite-2
1440p: 9700x vs 9600x
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-5-9600x/19.html
Village666@reddit
Pointless to look at GPU bound gaming for compairing CPUs in gaming.
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
What does vcache have to do anything with 6vs 8c? Nobody is saying 9800x3d isn't fast, heck the 9900x3d when isolated to 6c isn't far behind 9800x3d.
I
Village666@reddit
You miss the point hahah. Gamers that need a fast CPU, don't run their game in a GPU bound scenario.
get-innocuous@reddit
I bought a 6600k based on this kind of thought process back in the day, and buy did I regret it.
UsernameAvaylable@reddit
I mean a 6600k was SO long ago that by the time games used more than 4 cores it was already outdated per core base anyways.
jforce321@reddit
Hardly true. Even back then digital foundry was showing that an r5 1600 was losing in averages, but absolutely dumpstered the 6600k in 1% low performance which lead to a way better overall experience.
JonWood007@reddit
Not really. It was reaching its limits by 2018-2019 with battlefield 5 and mw19. 6700k was viable through 2023 mostly.
DaBombDiggidy@reddit
Yeah I held onto mind for 3 years before getting a 6700k for a buddy which lasted another 2-3.
FinalBase7@reddit
What even were your other options back then? Ryzen wasn't a thing yet and AMD CPUs were so shit having 20 more cores wouldn't save them.
get-innocuous@reddit
A better intel CPU was the other option. I was actually coming from an i7 920 which had comfortably lasted me 7 years, the 6600k was struggling by year 3-4 because it only had 4 physical cores.
H3LLGHa5T@reddit
I was worried about that and got the 6700k and a buddy of mine got a 6600k, boy was the a huge difference the coming years...
Kiwsi@reddit
I have i5 8600k now OC to 5gHz it works quite well for me as i don’t play new Triple A games but starfield worked quiet well in High atleast
Wonderful-Lack3846@reddit
If 6 cores works well, I want 8 cores minimum
Mateorabi@reddit
Except it’s always a tradeoff. Per area of silicon (roughly ~ price). A core that uses 1/6 of the chip will outperform a core using 1/8 the area for single core performance. If the OS can only find up to 5 other worthwhile tasks to do in parallel it will be better.
“But I’m not subdividing more, I’m buying more silicon—a 33% larger chip for those 2 cores.” But then AMD could have just made the 6 cores larger/more performant for that increase.
awayish@reddit
that's not how it works in practice. 6 core chips are usually just 8 core CCDs but with 2 disabled cores due to manufacturing defect.
Morningst4r@reddit
Most of them probably have 0 defects tbh. Generally there is way more demand for value SKUs than there is defective silicon.
Jeep-Eep@reddit
Eh, the margins are better on designs using the full 8 cores; wasting fully functional chiplets is probably a thing of the past.
Morningst4r@reddit
Of course margins are better on more expensive products. They still want to hit lower price points
conquer4@reddit
There is a limit to size/performance. Since with x86, (in general), speed=performance and the larger the chip the harder it is to run faster. GPUs (large multi-core chips) still haven't caught up to frequencies from the Pentium 4 era.
Considering a modern computer runs hundreds of processes and thousands of threads, it is probably best to aim for the some of fastest cores possible, with enough cores to not drag them down from all the other processes running in the background.
Jeep-Eep@reddit
Try to match the console core count IMO.
Mateorabi@reddit
Oh for sure performance of a core is asymptotic. A 33% larger core might only get 10% more performance, say. IF YOU HAVE THE WORKLOAD more, smaller cores will be better. The problem is if you only have up to 6 useful things to compute, even a 5% performance boost per core is still something, better than idling 2/8 of the chip. Those 8 cores are more efficient, but two of them are being quite efficient at doing nothing in that case.
There’s a reason we moved away from 1 core. There’s also a reason we aren’t pushing 64 cores for home use. Tradeoffs and balances.
UnlikelyPotato@reddit
Those 8 cores still exist on the same chip, two of them are disabled. You can't just magically make cores more performance just with extra space. It's a massive engineering effort. Otherwise Intel wouldn't be losing vs AMD in gaming.
Mateorabi@reddit
Usually you aren’t paying for the silicon on the disabled cores. Those chips are cheaper for a reason. So “per unit of USEABLE silicon” to be pedantic.
Usually there’s a defect in fab. But they can disable it and sell a smaller device rather than toss the whole thing. Yield on wafers is never 100%.
LividLife5541@reddit
"A core that uses 1/6 of the chip will outperform a core using 1/8 the area for single core performance." This makes literally no sense.
--Signed, someone who has a master's degree in EE.
Mateorabi@reddit
You do realize 1/6 > 1/8? Or are you one if the reasons the 1/3 lb hamburger failed?
More silicon area means more gates which means you have more ability to speed up performance: bigger caches, more sophisticated BPU, more pipelining, etc etc. It doesn’t scale linearly but it does go up as you throw more gates at it. Diminishing returns are still returns.
A larger single cpu will have better single thread performance. At the cost of power and size. You would then per unit area of silicon have fewer cores so multithreaded performance will suffer. But not all algorithms can fill all the cores. Hence my caveat.
Hamilfton@reddit
So where does the larger area that you were talking about in the original comment come in?
UnlikelyPotato@reddit
You missed the point that they can't make the other cores more performant. They taped out 8 cores.
Mateorabi@reddit
We’re talking design time though.
You can at initial design time. Which is when the 6 vs 8 decision is made by the chip makers who look at performance vs price data and market demand. (And take yield into account knowing for a given die size how much of a mix they’re getting if selling both #s)
AMD certainly knows the market trade off of only doing 6 cores that are 33% larger for that die size (or making the die larger for slightly more performant 8 core chips with slightly worse yield but higher price). And has made what they feel is a balanced decision for their target market.
UnlikelyPotato@reddit
Yep. I agree. 8 cores are the standard now. We aren't going to get 6 cores with more area dedicated for performance.
JonWood007@reddit
Smart.
Jeep-Eep@reddit
Yeah, that's my view. If possible, you should have the same logical and physical core count as the current console gen and, well, I like indiejank and GSG - high midrange at most GPU and hot-rod CPU is a build that suits my needs very well.
EnthusiasmOnly22@reddit
No, I got stuck holding the bag with quads, I’ll always go one step up from the most common count now
heepofsheep@reddit
Yeah I remember it wasn’t too long ago people were insisting the 4790k was still a viable CPU well past its shelf life.
Soytaco@reddit
Not sure exactly when you mean by "wasn't too long ago", but those people were right... Haswell held up for ages.
Leo1_ac@reddit
4790K/1080 here on an ASUS Maximus VI Hero Z87.
I am posting this just b/c it makes ppl like the guy you replied to drop on the deck frothing.
The combo is like holy water to a vampire for some ppl.
Flaimbot@reddit
i've been sitting on a 2600k@4.6ghz until i eventually swapped to an amd 3800x. the stagnation was MASSIVE
cowoftheuniverse@reddit
Maybe but that isn't haswell and at least couple videos I've seen confirned that 4th gen aged better than the 2600k.
2nd gen intel had stutters in games where 4th didn't despite both having relatively low fps, the 4th was more steady. Back in the day when haswell came out it did feel from the reviews to be only a very mild upgrade (and clocked a bit lower) but there was a bit more to it.
42LSx@reddit
Sandy Bridge is sadly lacking a lot of newer instructions that Haswell brings natively on board.
EasyRhino75@reddit
You had the legendary 1080ti of cpus
Flaimbot@reddit
with the 1080ti of gpus: the 1080ti :P
kingwhocares@reddit
By 2018 I could feel my i5 6500 wasn't good enough for modern games. It was already seen as not satisfactory by then.
Arthur-Wintersight@reddit
It really depends on the game - some games will have the CPU at near idle while the GPU is running at 100% all the time, and those games tend to work well on older CPUs. 4790k with a semi-modern GPU can play a surprising range of games...
fauxdragoon@reddit
I’m still using a 2600K and it’s fine for most game I play.
nolongermakingtime@reddit
I switched from a 2600k to a 5600x3d and the difference was night and day.
You get used to all the stuttering and you don't notice how bad you had it till you upgrade. It was great with my 1660ti but when I went to a rx6700xt it showed it's age.
IsoLasti@reddit
What might those games be
I felt my 3570k was obselete a looong time ago
fauxdragoon@reddit
Overwatch, Chivalry 2, CS2.
I was playing Robocop Rogue City recently and it was solid.
Flimsy_Swordfish_415@reddit
no fucking way rogue city was "solid" on 2600k
fauxdragoon@reddit
Well I’m telling you it was. I have an RTX 2060 Super. I don’t know the exact fps but it didn’t bad or sluggish to play at 1080p
someonesshadow@reddit
It's basically an ignorance is bliss scenario. Not saying it as a bad thing but if you had an fps counter in sure you'd realize the performance was pretty bad, which then would cause you to notice more hitches and stutters.
Of course I assume you're also on an older and slower monitor to match the hardware, so again you won't notice when you aren't used to other, let's say esports titles, running 120-240hz.
It's the downside of upgrading, especially going high end, you will always be able to notice and feel when the hardware isn't keeping up or if you switch to more low spec machines like a laptop for travel.
fauxdragoon@reddit
Actually, I’m on a 144 Hz 1080p monitor that supports variable refresh rate so I find that as long my frames are in the sweet spot for G-sync (the monitor is unofficially g-sync compatible) I don’t really get any visual issues most of the time. When I played Overwatch I’d usually float between 90 and 144 fps depending on settings and what was going on.
I plan upgrade soon-ish but home ownership is the great vacuum of funds and I mostly game on Steam Deck these days anyway ¯\(ツ)/¯
Kernoriordan@reddit
HT made a big difference for frame times in the end
rxc13@reddit
My 6700k didn't get the memo about that.
WJMazepas@reddit
Fine for most games you play is doing a heavy lifting here
ThankGodImBipolar@reddit
No shit? PC gaming isn’t a competition for who plays the most demanding games.
WJMazepas@reddit
Yes? I never stated that someone needs the latest CPU and needs to play the latest AAA games
If someone is happy with their current PC, all power to them
I just meant that a 2600k is fine for the games they played because it really depends on their type of game. My brother has a 2500k, and he is fine with that because the game he most plays to this day is TF2.
But if he ever wanted to play BF6, I wouldn't even know if it is possible to run with that CPU.
And this topic is about using a modern 6 core CPU for modern games. We are talking about running modern heavy games here
StarskyNHutch862@reddit
Bro my 8700k felt old like 2 years ago.
Gunuku@reddit
I'm still rocking one, OC'ed to 5GHz with a 3080. It's been a trooper but I can feel it being the bottleneck in newer games.
raydialseeker@reddit
The 4690k was rock solid till the R5 2600 and 3600 came around. You're talking about these CPUs like they didn't deliver good performance for nearly a decade
heepofsheep@reddit
I ditched mine for a 5600x over 4 years ago and I had people telling me at the time that 4790k was still perfectly fine for AAA titles… i saw a significant boost in performance that almost felt like getting a new GPU (was on a GTX 1080 at the time so wasn’t a bottleneck situation).
I probably held onto that 4790k for a couple years too long.
raydialseeker@reddit
4 years ago is 2021. The 4790k came out in 2014. That's 7 YEARS.
heepofsheep@reddit
Yeah and I should have upgraded it once it was 5 years old. Most of what was stopping me was moving to a whole new platform and doing a rebuild.
raydialseeker@reddit
Whole rebuild ?
1> Remove all cables from motherboard
2> Remove gpu, nvme drives and cpu cooler
3> remove motherboards
4> same 3 steps in reverse with new platform.
heepofsheep@reddit
That’s basically rebuilding your machine? I guess you don’t need remove the PSU, but it’s almost worse than building one from scratch since you have to take it about and put it back together again.
bobloadmire@reddit
That's was correct for about a decade
JonWood007@reddit
I mean it was....
heepofsheep@reddit
Until it wasn’t and everyone was in denial.
JonWood007@reddit
Not saying anyone should buy one now but if you had one that was pretty much an 8-10 year processor....
0xdeadbeef64@reddit
I used an 4770K for over 11 years before I built a new PC using Ryzen 9700X, so that had a very long run for me. :-)
greggm2000@reddit
I went from a 3570K to a 12700K. PoE 1 is what finally put me over the edge.. and it worked, it went from "not playable" to "smooth as butter", at the time in 2021.
teutorix_aleria@reddit
It was. I only abandoned mine 2 and half years ago because i was finally running into hard CPU bottlenecks. It's still chugging along in my second PC running all the games my GF plays without a problem. 12 years and counting is pretty crazy for a CPU to be viable. Imagine trying to run windows 7 on a Pentium 3, let alone play games on it.
Kernoriordan@reddit
I was using an i7-4790K OC’d to 4.8Ghz until I finally upgraded it to a 10700K during the pandemic. It was fine for Warzone paired with a GTX 1080 (~90FPS at 1440p) but I got a RTX 3080 and it would have bottlenecked so swapped it out.
ExoMonk@reddit
Same with RAM. 16gb has been the standard for like a decade but now it's starting to be not enough. Windows, browsers and games have been hoovering up RAM like it's crack. 32gb is generally accepted to be the standard now; my next rig is going to have double that.
Larcya@reddit
Im planning on building a new rig in September. I will absolutely have at least 32GB if ram. Probably 64GBs if im being honest.
die_andere@reddit
Why does everybody skip 48 gigs? I went with 48 since I could get a good price for a kit.
Larcya@reddit
Honestly I completely forgot about 48GB.
Probably since I would be using 16GB sticks so it's either 32 or 64.
StarbeamII@reddit
Don’t do 4x16GB. High chance it won’t run at XMP speeds, and you might even have to downclock it below 4800.
Jeep-Eep@reddit
Why? It's slower and probably less good bang for buck.
EasyRhino75@reddit
24gb kits still not as common
Jeep-Eep@reddit
Also ain't it harder to get the ones that can be tinkered for good timings in that sizing?
Keulapaska@reddit
Yea that's normally not the case even 2x32 is almost the same price, well when comparing hynix based 24Gb vs 16Gb kits that is. Micron 24Gb is pretty cheap per GB and if you just need more than 32GB for whatever thing, it's "fine" as it does at least clock to 6000 even if timings are gonna be, well idk what they are gonna be, don't think I've seen any1 manually tune micron 24Gb, but probably not great considering what the xmp profiles start at.
Beautiful-Musk-Ox@reddit
48gb is a good middle ground, easier to get high performance 48gb than 64gb
greggm2000@reddit
You might as well, RAM is cheap. I bought 64GB of DDR4 back in 2021 for my 12700K build, and, no regrets, even if it did end up being overkill.
Jeep-Eep@reddit
Yeah, one bigger regret on the last build was not getting that RGB 32 gig GSKILL kit.
greggm2000@reddit
The current rumors suggest AM6 will be with Zen 8 in 2029/2030. Idk what your last build was, but do you really think you could have waited that long, especially with the next consoles likely being Zen 6 + RDNA5 based?
My current plan is to do a new build in early 2027 with Zen 6.
Jeep-Eep@reddit
Maybe... or at least until Zen 6 and CAMM2 was available...
Jeep-Eep@reddit
It was already not enough - 32 is the floor for a new build, 64 if at all feasible.
Burgergold@reddit
I went with 32gb mid 2019 and end 2024. No regrets
2019 was.a 6 cores, 2024 8 cores
ExoMonk@reddit
Yep, and I will continue to get the largest core count per single CCD possible. Right now that's 8 cores and in the future whatever AMD does with core counts, whichever one will be a single CCD. I've heard issues with the 12 and 16 core CPUs and gaming because it tries to use cores across multiple CCDs which adds latency and stuttering. Not sure if that's fixed, but would rather not deal with the headaches.
Left-Instruction3885@reddit
You a Krogan?
Morningst4r@reddit
He's a Sega Saturn
f1rstx@reddit
release Genophage
greggm2000@reddit
Adding more doesn't work.. we know that from the game lore :D
jenesuispasbavard@reddit
Next you'll tell me he's a quint and craps dark matter.
SirActionhaHAA@reddit
You probably should go for 8 if possible but in intel's case they were stuck with both slow core count increase and underwhelming per core perf improvement gen over gen
Parallelization in gaming is tough, i just don't see it requiring more than 8 or 10 in the foreseeable future given the per core improvement we're seein now (20% per gen)
wintrmt3@reddit
It's not that it's tough, most problems in games are nearly embarrassingly parallel, the problem is that the optimization target for most games is an 8 core ps5.
Lucie-Goosey@reddit
Not unless there's some breakthrough in AI coding 5+ years from now where you can ask it to go through an entire game's code and have it 'parallelize' everything. I have no idea what I'm talking about, but telling me it's impossible within our lifetimes seems off.
Darkknight1939@reddit
The per core performance increases didn't matter as much because it took until Zen 2 for AMD to beat them in general IPC/match in gaming.
HardwareUnboxed@reddit
The problem with the quad-cores is performance didn't change all that much from one get to the next. It was actual core stagnation.
EnthusiasmOnly22@reddit
Agreed, but the experience of having a quad core from the launch of Ryzen through Ryzen 5000 was so miserable that I'd rather just spend a bit more and avoid the risk personally, just in case another leap happens like that
Framed-Photo@reddit
That's not a problem with your core count, you just had an old CPU at a time when CPUs got a lot faster lol.
If you had bought an 8 core from that same gen as your 4 core it would have been equally as shit by the time you got through the ryzen gen.
Mojomckeeks@reddit
Ya cries in bulldozer
Framed-Photo@reddit
Literally lol.
All the talk when the 8350 came out was about how it would age better due to having more cores like the PS4 did at the time.
Turns out it didn't mean shit.
Mojomckeeks@reddit
Ya I remember going from a 2 core i3 to a 6 core fx 6300 and saw no difference at all in gaming. Man AMD had come a long way
SirActionhaHAA@reddit
Yep intel was putting out 5% per core perf improvement gen over gen during those times. Quad cores ain't great but they can still run games today, steamdeck is a great example
JonWood007@reddit
Good move. Even if 6 is good today, we've seen this with 4....and 2....and 6 without ht....
EasyRhino75@reddit
I actually had a bag of quads one time. Got it from a guy at a ewaste recycler
Blueberryburntpie@reddit
I was bagholding with a dual core Haswell. Thought it was enough for web browsing and office work.
Some CPU security mitigations, Windows 10’s bloat, websites also being a bloat, and it’s painful to use.
kingwhocares@reddit
Or just go Intel i5 (Core or Ultra whatever) which has 10 cores nowadays.
0xdeadbeef64@reddit
My wife says she loves my quads before she hauls me into the bedroom!
Sorry, I could not resist. :-)
SirHaxalot@reddit
I used to do this as well, me spending extra on a 5820k made it last for at least 2-3 gens more than the top of the line quad core of the time. I repeated it with a 5900X, since it was like 20% higher cost for 50% extra cores, but now with the X3D CPUs I don’t think it’s worth going for the higher cores counts because the extra cache is more important anyway.
nshire@reddit
My dual-core laptop taught me this lesson. That's why I've been rocking a 12-core ryzen 5900x for my desktop for years, I expect I'll get another 3 or more years out of it
F9-0021@reddit
As long as you don't play the games that are starting to be designed with 6 cores in mind as a minimum (with 8 being intended for OS and background task headroom) you'll be fine.
I would not recommend a 6 core chip for anything more than a budget tier rig. It's going to age poorly.
Fortzon@reddit
Yeah, when Ryzen 1000 series released, we thought the games would utilize all the cores within couple generations but in reality it took years, until like Ryzen 3000 series?, for game devs of mainstream games to even utilize more than 1 core let alone 4 cores or more.
reddanit@reddit
I don't think we are anywhere near the point where 6 cores becomes some kind of default assumption that can slip by as a hard-coded limit into games. Even when transition from 2 to 4 cores was happening, this was incredibly rare. And even when it happened it was usually a result of dumb programming practices rather than some actual technical reason.
It's not that the games will eventually be made with 6 core as minimum - it's that only CPUs with sufficient total performance across all of their cores will at some point inevitably have at least 6 cores.
Mojomckeeks@reddit
Nailed it
Schmigolo@reddit
It's not too bad. By the time something like the 7600x bottlenecks mid tier GPUs you'll be able to buy a mid tier CPU that vastly outperforms that GPU and it'll probably still be AM5.
GreenFigsAndJam@reddit
It's not surprising that most games are fine with 6 cores when consoles basically allocate 1.5 cores of the 8 for the system so games can only use 6.5.
Although I personally would recommend getting PC hardware that targets specs above what the consoles have access to, whether it's core counts, VRAM, etc.
uzuziy@reddit
That also depends on the cpu tbh, between 7600x3d and something like 7700x I see no reason to pick 7700x just for the core count.
JonWood007@reddit
Well yeah 8c vs 6c is +33% performance. X3D is also like 20-30% performance. So they come out about the same.
JonWood007@reddit
Yep. This is why when I upgraded I focused on the 7700x and 12900k minimum (12900k was same price as the 7700x).
SirActionhaHAA@reddit
Cpu perf and relevance shouldn't be judged on core count. A 6 core today is much faster than a 6 core 2 gens ago.
webjunk1e@reddit
It's not just about speed, but pipelines. It's like having more checkout lines versus faster checkers. There's all kinds of things that can slow down a single register, even though the checker is better/faster at their job, and having more lanes still allows throughput if something takes longer.
lintstah1337@reddit
Then why does 7900x3d performs poorly in games relative to 7800x3d?
tinny123@reddit
Why DOES it perform worse than 7800x3d? Ive actually wondered. Noob here
Morningst4r@reddit
If it's a bigger difference than in this video then it's scheduling issues
Imaginary-Falcon-713@reddit
Been really struggling to find a reason to upgrade my 5609x tbh; could have bought x3d flavors but 5600x does fine in everything I play with min 90fps
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
Which gpu? because you probably wont get any significant uplift with x3d vs 5600x
Imaginary-Falcon-713@reddit
Not really in most of the games I play I'm GPU bound anyway, 3080ti
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
Give more detail:
Cpu
Games
What resolution
Dlss/fg?
Makeitquick666@reddit
Prolly game/settings/scenario dependant, but I just wish games are more optimised
Big-Rip2640@reddit
Recently played Detroit Become Human on my Ryzen 7 7800x3d. I saw a max 50% CPU Util in 1440p.
Not the greatest example i know, but i would prefer buying a Ryzen 7 7700 than a Ryzen 5 9600x tbh.
Morningst4r@reddit
CPU utilisation is basically worthless as a stat (unless it's 100%). 50% might be hard CPU limited
From-UoM@reddit
8 GB useless.
6 Core perfectly fine.
FinalBase7@reddit
You cannot run out of CPU cores like you can run out of memory, it won't have catastrophic consequences, so long as your cores are fast and modern 6 cores are blazing fast, the game can scale to these 6 fast cores and run well, even if in theory it can benefit from more cores, but if the game can't fit crucial assets into memory you're kinda screwed no matter how fast your memory is.
From-UoM@reddit
You can reduce quality to get perf back easily.
If you are cpu bound though there is almost nothing you can do. Not to mention the increased uneven frame pacing it causes.
FinalBase7@reddit
As I said you can't run out of CPU cores, no game has a set amount of required cores and if you don't meet it the game starts stuttering, that just doesn't happen, the game will throw what it has at your CPU and if you have a few very fast cores they can finish the work faster than 20 slow cores this achieving higher framerate and even 1% lows. the amount of cores you have doesn't dictate whether will you be CPU bound or not, it depends on how fast your cores are, a 7600X is gonna be so much less CPU bound than a 16 core 3950X in practically every game.
Memory is straightforward, game needs a set amount for certain settings, you don't have that amount you're fucked, also while you technically can lower the settings, you need to lower texture quality which is among the most crucial settings and one that doesn't have a performance impact if you have enough memory so it sucks really bad having to turn it doen, and 8GB even at low settings nowadays is still on the very edge and enabling even just frame generation may push it over the edge, moment you cross over that edge it's a nightmare, but there's no such edge with CPU core counts.
sunjay140@reddit
That isn't determined solely by core count.
vanebader-2048@reddit
Talking out of your ass. You can also lower graphics settings (especially those related to amount of draw calls, like LODs or object density, or related to NPC density) to lower the burden on the CPU. That is exactly why CPU testing is done at low resolutions but at high settings, settings absolutely do affect CPU load.
And again, you are entirely missing the point of the video. What determines whether you're CPU-bound or not is not number of cores. Modern 6-core CPUs like the 7600 and 9600X will not be CPU bound in situations where older CPUs with more cores will be. And so will future 6-core CPUs outperform today's 9700X/9900X in gaming. Core IPC is vastly more impactful for gaming performance than number of cores is. That is literally the point demonstrated on the video that you are commenting under, and obviously didn't even watch. You can see the 6-core Ryzen 7600 averages around 135 FPS with 105 FPS 1% lows, while the 8-core Ryzen 5800X averages 100 FPS with 75 FPS 1% lows (both at 1080p ultra).
So while you're here whining that 6 cores are "not enough" and that you need an 8-core 9700X or higher for games, a next-gen 6-core CPU will come out again, will outperform all (non-X3D) Ryzen 9000 CPUs in games again, and will prove you wrong again.
HardwareUnboxed@reddit
Pretending as if CPU cores and VRAM are the same thing is a true r/hardware moment. Good stuff.
Kamishini_No_Yari_@reddit
Who said they were the same? He was pointing out that neither are ideal. Go learn how to comprehend what you read.
constantlymat@reddit
Neither are ideal, but the performance consequences of one can be completely debilitating gaming performance with constant stuttering and hitching while for the other you have to go onto an investigation looking for GPU utilization with magnifying glasses and CapFrameX while your game plays perfectly fine.
AFlawedFraud@reddit
Thank you for putting up with us
HardwareUnboxed@reddit
haha some of you are awesome :)
Ok_Pineapple_5700@reddit
They never said it was useless. They said it has its use cases but it's starting / going to be irrelevant soon
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
They called it planned obsolescence
nukleabomb@reddit
tbf they do call it "E-Waste", "Dead and Buried" and "damaging PC gaming" in their thumbnails. But then again that's more often for Nvidia cards in general.
vanebader-2048@reddit
I don't know what kind of point you think you're making here.
There are already several examples of games where 8 GB GPUs are forced to make ugly sacrifices in LOD and texture quality in order for it to run.
On the other hand, there is no game in existance today where a modern 6-core CPU can't run it very well. Quite the opposite, as the video shows, CPUs like the 7600 and 9600X comfortably outperform previous gen CPUs with more cores.
Jeep-Eep@reddit
I mean not entirely wrong this gen, we're still not recovered from the jaguar powered 8th console gen, but with a new one on the horizon I wouldn't get one new.
fallsdarkness@reddit
Go to BG3 Act3 and post 1% lows on a 6-core CPU :)
Reddi-Valle@reddit
This seems to be the last time they tested BG3, in Lower City.
Frequencies are not matched for this one, so higher core count SKUs have an advantage as they also come with higher clocks. That's particularly true for intel, and hey also have a larger L3 cache, but that can be consider as part of the difference between 2 different core configurations.
Zen 5 and Zen 4 show about a 7% difference 5600X vs 5800X is 4% slower, 6.7% in avg FPS 12600K vs 12900K is a 18% difference, also thanks to a 6% max clock and 50% L3 cache increase 14600K vs 14900K is 13.6%, with 13% max clock and 50% L3 difference.
battler624@reddit
Pretty good.
WarEagleGo@reddit
wow, I did not expect such diverse opinions
BrotherAmazing6655@reddit
"The human eye can't see more than 6 cores"
sunjay140@reddit
He didn't say "the human eye", he did actual benchmarks.
kaisersolo@reddit
I recently bought a Ryzen 5 9600 (non x) on a whim for cheap from AliExpress, its fast as f**k. No complaints in any game.
sunjay140@reddit
More than 3 times as many comments as upvotes. People really don't like this.
SupremeChancellor@reddit
Your average gamer will have 15 things running underneath their game which is why I generally recommend higher core counts.
If you are in the habit of closing everything and keeping your tabs under control, im sure this is fine.
glizzygobbler247@reddit
Yeah im running a 6 core cpu, if im playing a non demanding game i just keep whatever bullshit open, but a very cpu demanding game i close everything down
Vegetable-Intern2313@reddit
HUB has addressed this directly:
https://youtu.be/Nd9-OtzzFxs
Most programs that are just idling in the background, not actively doing anything (like say, a browser tab that's just open and not actively playing a video) are not going to be using hardly any CPU and won't impact you barely at all.
BlueGoliath@reddit
Until Windows decides it's going to do a Defender scan or update in the background.
But game developers can't specifically mark a CPU core just for OS usage AFAIK anyway, so even if a game did only use N-1 cores for that reason, Windows might not use the spare core anyway.
Vegetable-Intern2313@reddit
In all my years of PC gaming I don't remember a single time I noticed performance tanking because of an OS update or virus scan happening in the background. And I'm pretty sensitive to frame rate fluctuations so if I notice my frame rate wobbling I immediately check my hardware to see what's going on.
In general people vastly overstate the level of hardware/amount of CPU needed to handle basic tasks and keep up with background processes.
GreenFigsAndJam@reddit
I sometimes notice it and it's when I've stopped using my PC for a while and hear the fans spin up slightly
Mojomckeeks@reddit
Who needs antivirus
greggm2000@reddit
I have. There's been times in the past I've had to kill the anti-malware service executable bc otherwise things slowed to a crawl.
SupremeChancellor@reddit
Along with other replies - until you want to use them and need to tab out and back quickly. Also I fully disagree with their assessment as people will have active browsers with 40 tabs, discord, and then twitch streams, tab out and open an entirely new browser instance.
Real life users are extremely hard on their computers and more cores is almost always better.
Vegetable-Intern2313@reddit
Can you show me an actual test of this where a user actually records tracks their gaming performance while doing all this stuff?
Because all I'm hearing is anecdotes, no proof.
SupremeChancellor@reddit
No I do not dude, this is just my opinion.
What I do have is real life experience, spent 5 years working in a small business computer store, spent 7 working as a network engineer, now I work as a consultant and tech lead as a contractor.
Hardware unboxed are journalists. They fix the pcs of their friends and thats probably it.
I have fixed thousands of computers dude, dealt with thousands of users.
Who do you think knows end users better - these journalists or me.
just get more cores dude its always a better choice, theres no need to have an internet argument about it
Mojomckeeks@reddit
I don’t think that extrapolates directly to gamers. But I get what you’re saying
railven@reddit
Are they? If true, woof!
I assumed they were like most of the YT'ers, got in the game early and grew an audience. Where GN is quality work with questionable ethics, HUB is down right trash.
I'm still waiting for AMD dGPU to outsell Nvidia dGPU. I mean, these "journalists" said it would happen based on their on the ground research. Their hubris is going to be their downfall.
Someone needs to explain to them how Windows Works.
greggm2000@reddit
It's not that HUB may or may not have the same level of experience as you, it's that the context is different. They have clean systems when they test, bc ofc they are trying to benchmark a particular thing under controlled circumstances. When you are dealing with the general public, you have a huge range of possible setups and software, some of which may be very demanding, intentional by the user or not. I'm sure Steve would not deny that it is absolutely possible to run demanding things at the same time as game that would make a 16-core CPU practically mandatory.. but that's self-evident I think, and not what he was testing now, or in the past.
SupremeChancellor@reddit
yeah ultimately it comes down to each circumstance as i said originally if you have serious budgetary contraints (i would save for more cores), you are semi tech literate, take care of your tabs you could live with a smaller core count.
but in my general opinion, you shouldn't.
If I were to try and make a test like this more accurate, I would consider:
stock windows 11, no privacy features disabled, like 100% ad full windows 11, not on the latest update and usually months behind.
Has not changed their power plan.
Has all vendor bloatware running, not up to date.
Has the default windows drivers for everything but GPU. So chipset drivers? whats a chipset. Everything now basically forces you to update gpu drivers at the very minimum.
Stock bios, not up to date.
I would consider adding game recording / streaming to the range of tests (on top of the same load, 10 tabs 1 twitch still running/youtube, spotify.)
3 day uptime after constant usage - users do not turn off or reboot their machines. This is not a meme.
If you are thinking all this is ridiculous, remember who and where you are. You are a pc nerd reading pc nerd discussions on reddit. This makes you part of a small minority of the overall PC user population. The majority would never read this because they simply do not care, which is fine.
People treat pcs like washing machines. They dont clean them or service them, they are simply an appliance.
greggm2000@reddit
Fair.
That's not really HUB's wheelhouse, but I bet someone could make a living at a Youtube channel that investigates such things... heck, it wouldn't surprise me if some people do this already; I haven't looked.
No, no I don't. I worked computer retail in the 1990s, I still remember :)
harry_lostone@reddit
ryzen 7600 user here, 2x16 6000c30 rams, 3 monitor setup. (pbo on, co-20, 75c max with pa120).
for the past year my pc is 24/7 on, most of the time, multiple tabs (10+) on Brave with one of them being either an active stream or a youtube/spotify playlist, with discord always on (on call while gaming) or chatting through socials, plus random irrelevant apps (notepad, fraps etc). btw im alt-tabbing an annoying amount of times (adhd)
no stutters or notable performance loss on these titles so far: csgo, dota2, cp77, rdr2, fifa, throne&liberty, +some trashy indies. Cpu has never really surpassed 70-80% with such tasks.
That's your average casual use. my next upgrade will be 8c/16t, but rn 7600 feels extremely powerful for the price (164eur), i cant believe that any casual user will have some kind of bottleneck soon, unlike 8gb gpus for example.
just my two cents
amdcoc@reddit
the video that will age like pure milk. Almost like 4 core was enough during the i7 7700 era xD
Flynny123@reddit
Looks likely that next gen 6 core variants will be gone, or be only at the X400 level and below
vegetable__lasagne@reddit
Would be a good thing if it's priced like a lower end part, but with how things are going the Ryzen 10400 is probably going to be priced close to the 9600.
ThankGodImBipolar@reddit
Assuming that a x4xx SKU will even be released is a pretty big ask. AMD did manage to put out the 7400F for Zen 4, but that was only in January of this year….
theholylancer@reddit
i mean... AMD don't make 2 SKUs of the chiplets anymore
all the x4xx stuff are stuff that failed validation for higher end skus, so they likely stockpile them and release it as a discount later on in the cycle of the year
in order for earlier release of that, you have to pray that TSMC or AMD fucked up and there is more than normal failed dies for full fat 8c chiplets and thus x4xx comes earlier.
its the benefit and drawback of chiplet, they can scale up and down as much as they can, but they wont cripple a perfectly chip for no reason unless it just wont sell as 8c and the consumers hold out for much cheaper 6c and the demand FAR outstrip supply, but I dont think that happens.
simo402@reddit
As it should be
UnlikelyPotato@reddit
He played one game for most of the benchmark to show cherry picked BF6 doesn't utilize more than 6 cores. While other games are starting to do so.
Then he showed that counterstrike, a very thread limited game isn't impacted by other processes....because counterstrike + discord isn't enough to max out even a quad core CPU. Source engine games are THE WORST example for this test. I would like to see BF6 or doom dark ages + discord and other apps. I genuinely don't know what the results would be, but for a new video we should use modern games and situations. Not a 20+ game engine that doesn't really benefit from more than 2 cores.
2700x was also a better choice because of long term socket support. Can put in a 5700x3d into b450 or better boards and you'll have pretty good gaming experience. 8700k is a dead socket. I upgraded an "old" PCI from 1600x to 5700x (non-3d) and it'll be viable for 5+ years.
drt0@reddit
Does his result conflict with reviews at the time or are there new games that have a wider margin between zen 6 and 8 core CPUs since then?
KARMAAACS@reddit
I don't think there's a correct answer here. But considering you're not really at a disadvantage getting the extra cores other than spending a little more, why wouldn't you?
You can find a 7500F for around 160 Euros on AliExpress or you can jump to the 7700 for around 205 Euros. For 45 Euros you're getting 33% more cores for only 28% more money and an iGPU, as well as better clocks speeds and more future headroom for higher tier GPUs. It does bring some benefits even for gaming, like shader compilation being faster and generally better gaming performance on the whole, multi-tasking etc.
I just think if the jump to extra cores is lower than a linear increase in price for those extra cores, then you're better off doing it than not. You have basically found the sweet spot then on the curve.
As for what u/UnlikelyPotato was pointing out, I agree with him, I dunno why HUB even made the conclusion they made in the video. He did a cherrypicked game, rather than a suite of modern games to come to the conclusion. Not to mention, in BF6 it shows a clear gap between 6 and 8 core CPUs, especially with the 2700X vs the 2600X in BF6, but even with the 9600X and the 9700X there is a clear evident gap in performance, you can even see the CPU utilization is high on the 9600X in BF6 with 85%, compared to 64% on the 9700X, it's pretty clear and evident that games in future will target more cores and they will use them if available too.
I also find it amusing HUB did not use their favorite game to trash NVIDIA GPUs with which is The Last of Us because of the 8GB of VRAM thing. But it's also a super CPU intensive game, you can see it here where the 7700 and 7600X have high CPU utilization around 80-90% (much higher utilization btw on the 6 core CPUs), the utilization on the GPU also dips to the low 60s on the 7600X because the CPU is holding back the GPU therefore upgrading to a better GPU won't net you the full performance uplift, you require a faster CPU to get it. Also look at the frametime graphs and the 1% lows, you can just see which one has more spikes in it and which one is smoother to play.
This might be the worst video HUB has made. Yes, 6 cores are still useable, you can play games with it, just like 4 cores were years ago, but the trend is clear, games utilize and are trending towards using more cores and having less will age poorly (especially in the era of poor optimisation from devs and heavy Unreal Engine usage), even if those 6 cores they're fast now. It's why i7-7700K owners are kicking themselves for buying it when you could have waited a little longer for the i7-8700K and had better longevity and performance in games today because they got 50% more cores.
jm0112358@reddit
In addition to testing across more games than just BF6, I would've liked to see them test an 8 core CPU to the performance with the same CPU with 2 of the cores disabled. I think that would've created a more apples-to-apples testing scenario that would better test the performance impact of 6 vs 8 cores.
He mentioned at the end of the video how he did use disabling CPU cores in the past to test CPU performance. However, at the time, he was testing an Intel CPU to an AMD CPU, both with 2 cores disabled, rather than comparing the same CPU to itself with 2 cores disabled.
UnlikelyPotato@reddit
I'll just say I don't know. That's the point of reviews...to review and research stuff. One game to prove a point is silly. If he had picked one game that does prove 8 cores are better than 6 for gaming, that'd also be bad. This review is only helpful if you only plan on playing BF6 and/or worry that discord might slow down counterstrike. It does nothing about the number of cores needed for gaming as a whole, or where the industry is going.
X-lem@reddit
Pffffff, naaaawwww, I'll stick with my 16 cores ;)
Thengol@reddit
Recap by Krisp.ai with conclusion:
In conclusion, the video summarizes that while there are advantages to higher core counts, the actual performance gains in gaming are often minimal.
The speaker expresses surprise at how well older CPUs handle demanding games like Battlefield 6, despite lower frame rates.
Formal-Caregiver8327@reddit
Comments are wild ya’ll get video saying 6 cores is good then still find arguments of why it’s not. Amateurs.
cowoftheuniverse@reddit
Does that game allow 9600x to fully max out if you tune the memory on it? It is almost 90% already. I remember them showing that even buildzoids easy timings did a lot for the 7000x series. I have managed to get some games to 100% util in some parts with a 11700k.
Oakthos@reddit
I was all in on 16 core Ryzen, but when I went to a 8 Core 9800X3D, I forgot until this headline that I had even lost the 8 cores.
No_Guarantee7841@reddit
More like you forgot how much time it takes for shader compilation to finish on 16 core compared to 8 core.
zephyrinthesky28@reddit
Dumb question - are e-cores still considered "cores" in the context of this topic?
steve09089@reddit
50/50, they don’t count for the game, but they do count for the background tasks.
railven@reddit
Another HUB video, another tally on my waiting for GamerNexus to make their expose video on them.
Gamers, if you only play this one game, and don't do any multi-tasking while gaming, you're all set!
JonWood007@reddit
This is how it always is.
The e8400 was faster than the q6600 until it wasnt. Battlefield is historically one of the franchises that pushes games core wise. I remember in bc2, e8400 owners were only getting 30 fps while q6600 owners did better.
The same happened with bf3. While playable on dual cores quad cores were needed to run them well. By the time we got to 2013 the e8400 couldn't run games at all while the q6600 was still viable.
The next debate was the 2600k vs the 2500k. This debate continued well to the 7600k vs the 7700k. People kept repeating the mantra that games didn't use more than 4 cores. But then they did. I recalled 2500k owners mentioning they were struggling in bf1 while 2600k owners weren't. I bought a 7700k.
I am avoiding early ryzen and bulldozer comparisons because let's face it the reason those cpus never took off was they kinda sucked. Bulldozer was a solid 30-40% behind intel in single core performance and by then you need to utilize the 8 cores well just to catch up. Same thing happened with the 1700 vs the 7700k.
However, I will say the 7600k vs 1600x was another comparison and in the long term the 1600x was a far better processor. Hwunboxed's own footage demonstrates that in bf5 in previous videos.
Bf5 was the turning point for non ht quad cores. I tried disabling hyperthreading and had a bad time. Had ht on and had a good time. Also bf5 was the first game we saw 6c/12t cpus like the 8700k thrashing the 7700k too. But both were sufficient mostly.
Mw19 also was really bad with ht off on quad cores. Ht on was fine.
Bf2042 was the first game that really pushed my 7700k and guess what? The 8700k ran it better. It was unplayable on 4 thread processors.
Here we are debating 6 vs 8 cores. This video shows if you go old enough yeah a 2700x will outperform a 2600x. Both are quite dated but it's happening.
Hwunboxed is right that overall processing power matters more but what is overall processing power? Power per core x number of cores. Yes a newer 6 core will blow away an old 8 core. But that doesn't mean 8 cores isn't better than 6.
Bf6 is actually kinda weird. It's not pushing like previous bf games did to some extent. Normally bf games eat cores for breakfast but after the disaster that was 2042 it seems like they're trying to play it safe. So 6 cores is good, 8 is better, but you really only need 6.
I would've liked to have done core scaling on my 12900k during the beta weekends but had no way to efficiently and consistently test so I didn't bother. But I did test a few other games when I got my 12900k. Mw3 scales all the way to 24 threads although 16 is sufficient to get most performance. 6c/12t got 80% of 16c/24t's performance and actually did better than 8c/8t like on a 9700k. Cyberpunk seemed to so better with ecores off. Rainbow six siege also hates ecores. So there are issues with scaling on intel due to ecores costing performance if anything but some games like mw3 still utilize them.
Bf6 seems to use up to 20 threads from what I can see. But yeah you can still do well with 12. If I were buying now I'd buy an 8 core minimum UNLESS you are getting a 7600x3d. The extra cores will come handy in the future. Heck I think eventually 20-24t processors will be useful. I could see my 12900k destroying say a 7600x eventually. Might take a bit but i wouldn't buy a 6 core processor in 2025 unless on a budget. Just saying. Might be like buying a 9600k over a 3600x, or a 7600k over a 1600x, ya know?
surf_greatriver_v4@reddit
Personally I cannot wait until 6core is gone from AMDs DIY lineup and everything shifts a tier. It's starting to feel like intel 4 cores
It was enough for gamers, until suddenly it wasn't. Those intel 7000 series owners weren't happy
greggm2000@reddit
I'm guessing we'll see that with Zen 6, what with 12-core CCDs. So, only a year and a half from now, probably.
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
Its been 8 years. It has beeen equally long as the 4 core issue
constantlymat@reddit
Except you can get 33% more cores for 50 bucks more while it cost you $500 back in the Intel days if you include platform cost.
Kionera@reddit
I had a i5-6600K and experienced frequent stuttering whenever I played BF1 with apps open in the background. By the time AMD dropped the Ryzen 5 1600 I immediately jumped ship, thankfully it cost me nothing as I was able to sell the Intel combo for around the same price as the Ryzen combo.
LittlebitsDK@reddit
but the 3300X was amazing...
MrDunkingDeutschman@reddit
It's only a problem in markets without easy access to tray CPUs for consumers.
A Ryzen 7700 tray costs 40€ more than the base Ryzen 6core model the 7600.
Comparing that to the Intel Quad Core era imo leaves does not properly take into context how punitively expensive it was to acquire two more cores.
supercakefish@reddit
I recently got the 7600X3D for this reason. Big performance boost over my prior i9-9900K, despite the lesser core count. Will be keeping a close eye on Zen 6 3D though.
OftenSarcastic@reddit
Meanwhile I'm over here with my 8 core 5800X3D playing Cities Skylines 2.
At 270K population there's no more hitting 4x sim speed. Whenever I turn sim speed up it tops out around 3.6x, the CPU is running 100% load on all cores trying to keep up, and frame rate drops to 25-30 FPS (from 45-60).
EasyRhino75@reddit
9950x3d for you my friend
Jeep-Eep@reddit
Yeah and I like the genres that make the CPU labour, so yeah, full fat 8 cores default for me, only Q would be if I get the 3d model or not.
Framed-Photo@reddit
So many people in this thread refusing to accept the results of the testing lol.
New chips are faster than old chips guys, your 10 year old quad core or a 10 year old 8 core would have both aged equally as bad.
A 9700x isn't going to magically get significantly better at gaming than a 9600x. Gamers have been hyping up core counts since the fx8350 or before, it has NEVER panned out.
Save your money.
Relaxybara@reddit
Not for gaming, but 6 cores at a conservative power budget will get you higher sustained multicore clocks than 8 at the same power level which is great for certain workloads.
This is also probably a big part of why the steam deck is a quad core. Leaves more power budget for the on board graphics as well.
Jmich96@reddit
Unless you're gaming at 1080p with a 5090, the 7600x still keeps up just as well as a 7700x.
FinalBase7@reddit
Bro even at 1080p with a 5090 the 7600X keeps up with the 9950X lmao, games really aren't putting these cores to use. Only X3D or faster single core can meaningfully improve performance over 7600X.
PastryAssassinDeux@reddit
Shhhh let the circle jerk keep going lol it's actually hilarious how mad these people are a 7500f/7600/7600x is iirc pretty close to 8 core and higher x3d CPUs in 4k. Like 1% to 5% difference at 4k iirc? So 1% to 5% more performance in 4k for 243% more in price if talking 9800x3d 😂 that's why they're all mad
yeshitsbond@reddit
Not everyone plays at 4K though, I have a 4k monitor and can play BF6 at 4k 90fps or so but I'd rather play at 1440p 130fps instead
Crenorz@reddit
Sort of. use better coding and you need those. Then add - we are about to add much better AI to games - you think that does not need power?
Currently, normal games - the AI (NPC's) takes 20-40% of the CPU
Winter_Pepper7193@reddit
do you even play games? AI npcs has been pure shit for decades, theres games 2 decades old that have better AI than 90 percent of current games
if theres ONE thing I have ZERO hopes of seeing ANY improvement in games is npc ai
BlueGoliath@reddit
It's really funny how bad NPC AI is.
Vegetable-Intern2313@reddit
Yeah, this is one of my biggest disappointments with the current console generation. I was really hoping that the big increase in CPU performance between 8th gen and 9th gen would allow for games to be denser and more interactive, with better NPC AI and environmental gameplay options.
Like, I'm a huge fan of immersive sims, and I would love to see a new Deus Ex or Dishonored game with way more interactable objects and potential AI states. I feel like it really ought to be possible to make a cross-platform game with this level of complexity these days, given how powerful current-gen consoles actually are (relatively), but we haven't gotten anything like that.
I recognize that the real bottleneck might be game design issues and not hardware, but still, it's a disappointment.
bizude@reddit
6-cores still works "well", if you're only gaming.
Shader compilation, however, will be a pain compared to 8+ core CPUs - and while it doesn't happen often, it can happen after any driver update!
And then there's the matter of background tasks and whatnot, or if you know - you use your PC for things other than gaming!
Irisena@reddit
Key word is: for now*
Once AMD made 12 core CCD a thing, and the new ryzen 5 an 8 core chip, 6 cores are going to go outdated really fast. That rumored 12 core ccd is next gen according to leaks, though take it with a mountain of salt.
soggybiscuit93@reddit
It's not about an arbitrary amount of cores, but about the overall performance of the CPU - specifically, enough multithreading performance. It's just a lot easier to add more cores than to design a 50Ghz single core CPU (assuming the software is written to be multi-threaded). For most games, you just need sufficient nT performance, after which there more important considerations. Just see how a 12100 compares to something like a 3700X.
Pillokun@reddit
12100f is faster in most games especially paired with fast ddr5 ram. zen2 can be tweaked as well but when I had 3700x ands 12100f the quad core was faster for me.
soggybiscuit93@reddit
Yeah, it's not about a specific number of cores, but the total overall performance of the CPU. When ST performance improvements slowed down, adding more cores was a more effective way of adding that performance.
It's not that a specific number of cores will become necessary because the games will specifically require that amount - it's that a certain number of cores will eventually be necessary because that'll be the only effective way to get that performance.
A 10Ghz dual core raptor lake chip will perform similarly (or better) in games to a 12100, but it's just significantly easier to make a quad core (or even more) than it is to hit 10Ghz.
yeshitsbond@reddit
Don't think we're at the stage where 6 core 12 thread is not viable either, my 9600x is blasting through most games I throw at it but I do think probably 2-3 gens from now we'll see a difference
Captobvious75@reddit
7600x here. Plenty of CPU for gaming with my 9070xt.
PastryAssassinDeux@reddit
Yup the best price to performance by far if you managed to get a $600 9070 xt plus a $150 7600x from AliExpress:)
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
I have seen 14600 for similar price with a game
6950@reddit
6 Cores might work well for couple of years but this will increase in future
960be6dde311@reddit
I run 16 cores for software compilation, video work, and so on. But yeah most people would be dandy with 6 cores.
constantlymat@reddit
I bought a 6core Ryzen 7500f for 130€ in the summer of 2024 because that made the AM5 upgrade path price competitive with the 5700X3D upgrade option I had available on AM4.
Looking back at it, I am extremely glad I sold my AM4 platform at that time when its market value wad still high.
I am equally glad AMD offered that extremely affordable 6core entry CPU that is still chugging along just fine @1440p.
That being said, I do think AMD is using Intel's weakness when you look at the Ryzen 7700X and 9700X pricing. If you don't have access to the cheap aliexpress/mindfactory Ryzen 7700 trays, AMD is definitely charging you a pretty penny for the privilege of an 8-Core Processor.
That being said, what really disarms this controversy is the amount of upgrade options available to AM5 users.
Ask Intel Quad Core victims what options they had except selling their entire platform far below the price they had paid.