[green.pixel]

Only the K models have an unlocked multiplier which allows to reach those high speeds. The only way to OC the non-K ones is by increasing the base clock frequency, which is very limited.

As you say, since you'll be using it for virtualization, the 3770 is a better choice. Both chips have HD4000.

[Dr Evil]

Originally Posted by green.pixel

Only the K models have an unlocked multiplier which allows to reach those high speeds. The only way to OC the non-K ones is by increasing the base clock frequency, which is very limited.

I think you can up the multiplier by 4 bins on a non K processor. So I think it can reach 3.9 GHz on four cores and 4.3 GHz on single core without touching the base clock vs 3.5 GHz on four cores and 3.9 GHz on one core as it turbos on stock settings.

[homerdog]

I got a i5-3550 because I got it at a slight discount and didn't see the point in getting anything faster. This processor blows the nuts off of every game I throw at it.

[swaaye]

Originally Posted by homerdog

I got a i5-3550 because I got it at a slight discount and didn't see the point in getting anything faster. This processor blows the nuts off of every game I throw at it.

There are a few strategy games I can think of that can use more yet, including old 2007 SupCom FA. I'm ready for doubled per-core performance. Though frankly what we need is open sourcing of the engine and to have some of the fans-who-are-programmers rework it. It's almost a single thread game once you add in AI and have a huge multiplayer scenario going on.

[Sxotty]

Kind of related, but the last time I upgraded I was debating the same thing and got the i5. AMD just failed big time lately.

[homerdog]

Originally Posted by swaaye

There are a few strategy games I can think of that can use more yet, including old 2007 SupCom FA. I'm ready for doubled per-core performance. Though frankly what we need is open sourcing of the engine and to have some of the fans-who-are-programmers rework it. It's almost a single thread game once you add in AI and have a huge multiplayer scenario going on.

I'm sure there are a few wacky examples of poorly coded games that no computer on earth can run well (the X series games come to mind), but I can't really take those into my purchasing decisions or I would never buy anything!

[almighty]

For gaming and light rendering get the 2500k

For extreme rendering get the FX-8

[Davros]

Originally Posted by homerdog

I'm sure there are a few wacky examples of poorly coded games that no computer on earth can run well (the X series games come to mind), but I can't really take those into my purchasing decisions or I would never buy anything!

but lets say the next big popular game (bf4 for example) was designed for 8cores and you had a situation much like gta4 in the quadcore/higher clocked dual. You may think differently

[I.S.T.]

That is not gonna happen, GTA5's on current consoles, and the next gen ones will not have anywhere near that many cores.

Plus, no one's gonan build a game based off of 8 cores. Also, GTA4 was mainly built around 3 cores?

[Davros]

still 1 more core than most people had, and there could still be a big popular game built around more than 4 cores

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by I.S.T.

That is not gonna happen, GTA5's on current consoles, and the next gen ones will not have anywhere near that many cores.

But the PS3 already had 7 cores ... heck, the Vita has 4 ... surely you're not going to tell me that the next gen Playstation will have less?

Plus, no one's gonan build a game based off of 8 cores. Also, GTA4 was mainly built around 3 cores?

Noone will build a game based on 8 cores, but they will make games that scale better to however many cores are available.

[homerdog]

Well then I'll eat my words when these future games come out that run better on AMD FX series CPU than my i5-3550. I am not too worried

[I.S.T.]

Originally Posted by Davros

still 1 more core than most people had, and there could still be a big popular game built around more than 4 cores

Not any time soon, which is what I am trying to say. Making games that can actually use that many cores is incredibly fucking not easy. You can only do so much splitting up and threading and etc.

Even so, with a standard SB or IVB i7 you'd be fine for the most part due to how insanely fucking slow BD really is. If you for some bizarre reason have one of those six core i7s, you're completely safe.

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by I.S.T.

Not any time soon, which is what I am trying to say. Making games that can actually use that many cores is incredibly fucking not easy. You can only do so much splitting up and threading and etc.

Even so, with a standard SB or IVB i7 you'd be fine for the most part due to how insanely fucking slow BD really is. If you for some bizarre reason have one of those six core i7s, you're completely safe.

Don't you think that at least engines like Unreal and CryEngine will be developed to scale well on multiple cores? Or physics libraries (insofar as they even use the CPU)?

I am not an expert, but I'm getting the impression that actually the main bottleneck for using the CPU to a good extent on PC is simply that the CPU and GPU are miles apart from each other and communication between them has too much latency.

Perhaps a developer here can comment.

[swaaye]

UE3 has always used 3 cores pretty well.

RAGE is maybe the most threaded game? Its texture transcode likes more cores.

[homerdog]

Originally Posted by swaaye

RAGE is maybe the most threaded game? Its texture transcode likes more cores.

That is not a good example of a game that needs a lot of CPU power.

[I.S.T.]

Why not? I mean, on a technical level and not a "is the game fun" level.

[homerdog]

Well it doesn't seem to require a lot of CPU power although it is very difficult to tell since there is no way to get useful benchmark results from it that I know of.

[swaaye]

The most obvious benefit with super-fast transcode speed is reducing rate at which the annoying placeholder textures disappear when you spin around.

NV GPU transcode is maybe the best approach though. It seemed to work very well with my 560.

[Arwin]

I thought the placeholder texture thing was bottlenecked by harddrive speed?

[homerdog]

It's all entirely subjective anyway since like I said there's no good way to test it. There is a transcode benchmark, but at what point does faster transcoding stop making a perceivable impact? Nobody knows as far as I can tell, and it would seem that all modern x86 CPUs are capable of running the game smoothly. Remember it was designed to run on console CPUs which pale in comparison to even x86 CPUs from as far back as 2007.
Also transcoding is not the only thing the CPU does while you're playing Rage. All the other game code has to run at the same time. So there is no way at all to produce benchmark results that could be meaningful to your gameplay experience. It is literally the worst game in the history of 3D gaming for benchmarking. There have been in-depth articles written about how useless it is as a benchmark.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4970/r...chmark-machine

That said, I think the quality scaling they do to maintain FPS is a good idea and I wish more engines would implement it. With an option of course to turn it off so we can run benchmarks.

That was just a bit off topic...

[Arwin]

I only remember it because on PS3 it was tested by replacing the internal HDD with an SSD, and that pretty much eliminated texture pop-in on that machine. Of course a high-end PC with high detail may have other bottlenecks, but there too putting in an SSD would definitely help reveal what bottleneck is more prominent.