So the computer they offered for this PC preview sports a 3080 and a ... i7 7700K
Real men still game on quad core!!
and so do I.
Viability of old CPUs and value of upgrading *spawn
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Real men still game on quad core!!
davis.anthony
Veteran
Real men still game on quad core!!
and so do I.
My 4770k is still delivering the goods, sure it's not giving me the 400-500fps a 12900k or 5800X3D will but the amount of games it can't give me at least a 60fps in I can count on one hand.
Svensk Viking
Regular
Agreed. The only upgrade for me has been replacing an original Titan with the 2060, and sure, there's a bunch of games where the 4770 has been the obvious limitation, but there's just not enough right now to prompt me to get a new motherboard, CPU and RAM.
I think you'll both change your mind in about 5 minutes as soon as you upgrade to a new cpu. And you'll probably see even games you thought were running well, were not, actually. Biggest change you'll get is not higher framerate, but more stable lows. Every game will run more fluid. Check out the .2 for Cyberpunk. All those cpus except the bottom two are 60 or above in averages.
Svensk Viking
Regular
Yeah, Cyberpunk is one of the games I know to be considered unplayable on the old i7 CPUs. But due to all negativity at release and me not being in a hurry to play it until it was considered fixed, it fell off the radar for me.
The latest title I tried that was running so badly that I actually stopped playing it was the Battlefield 2042 Beta.
There are undoubtedly games where people would say one is stupid for not having upgraded their old CPUs yet, but that's a problem first when it happens to be a game you genuinely are eager to play.
But in general I think the PC market would benefit from acknowledging low end PC gaming more, that PC hardware nowadays actually can play modern games even 8+ years after release is staggering compared to the past, and a stark contrast to the myth that PC hardware was useless after four years. Until AVX started being required, a PC with a HD 7950 and i7 920, or even the Phenom II X6, used to be enough to outperform the PS4 versions (though many old tests did not have frame latency).
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I think you'll both change your mind in about 5 minutes as soon as you upgrade to a new cpu. And you'll probably see even games you thought were running well, were not, actually. Biggest change you'll get is not higher framerate, but more stable lows. Every game will run more fluid. Check out the .2 for Cyberpunk. All those cpus except the bottom two are 60 or above in averages.
Yep I went from a 4670K to 4790K to a 5950X and each upgrade helped a lot with framerate consistency. The 4670k especially was struggling.
920 still is magnitudes faster than the jaguars in the base consoles.
davis.anthony
Veteran
If all the games I play (Bar a handful like 2007 Crysis release) run at a locked v-synced 60fps what will I notice if I upgrade CPU?I think you'll both change your mind in about 5 minutes as soon as you upgrade to a new cpu. And you'll probably see even games you thought were running well, were not, actually. Biggest change you'll get is not higher framerate, but more stable lows. Every game will run more fluid. Check out the .2 for Cyberpunk. All those cpus except the bottom two are 60 or above in averages.
I think you'll both change your mind in about 5 minutes as soon as you upgrade to a new cpu. And you'll probably see even games you thought were running well, were not, actually. Biggest change you'll get is not higher framerate, but more stable lows. Every game will run more fluid. Check out the .2 for Cyberpunk. All those cpus except the bottom two are 60 or above in averages.
Quite the thing that the CPU performance of a 3700X has been almost doubled in such a short time-frame in the CPU-world. Guess UE5 games will benefit hugely from having a more capable CPU. Alder Lake doesnt seem to be included that in graph, nor the 5800x3D, these should perform some notches above the top performers in that list.
The 5950x is at around double the consoles CPU in raw strength, launched at the same time.
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davis.anthony
Veteran
Reviews don't help as they always test at stock clocks which makes the difference seem huge as the out the box clocks on the new CPU's can be well over 25% higher than my 4770k.
Overclock my 4770k (I know many don't overclock) and it's right up there with the new quad core stuff.
A 4770k at 4.5Ghz is at Ryzen 3300x performance which even today isn't a bad CPU itself.
No reason to upgrade if you're satisfied. That is the beauty about the PC platform.
As for me, having faster cores, and more of them, make the overall experience of using a PC just that much nicer.. and substantially so in some ways. Quicker install times, quicker decompression, decryption, encoding, and just higher framerates in general which take advantage of other aspects of my setup such as my 175hz monitor. Lower input latency which comes with the faster framerate, higher 1% lows.. things like that. More PCIE lanes for more peripherals connected at once, and support for faster file transfers.
If you're wanting Windows 11 any time soon, then the upgrade may be essential. Better security, mitigations for vulnerabilities ect..
Other things to consider such as upgrade cycles. No sense in buying a new CPU that requires a socket that will soon be outdated, so waiting can be the smart thing to do. Everyone is different.. we all do different things with our PCs and value different aspects more than others.
As for me, having faster cores, and more of them, make the overall experience of using a PC just that much nicer.. and substantially so in some ways. Quicker install times, quicker decompression, decryption, encoding, and just higher framerates in general which take advantage of other aspects of my setup such as my 175hz monitor. Lower input latency which comes with the faster framerate, higher 1% lows.. things like that. More PCIE lanes for more peripherals connected at once, and support for faster file transfers.
If you're wanting Windows 11 any time soon, then the upgrade may be essential. Better security, mitigations for vulnerabilities ect..
Other things to consider such as upgrade cycles. No sense in buying a new CPU that requires a socket that will soon be outdated, so waiting can be the smart thing to do. Everyone is different.. we all do different things with our PCs and value different aspects more than others.
davis.anthony
Veteran
I'm under no illusion that my 4770k is on borrowed time and when this current cross generation period ends I believe that will be the start of a quick down fall in it's usefulness and performance.
I have a 144Hz monitor and if I can't hit that target it's always my GPU, not my 4770k.
I have been keeping an eye on upgrades, I'll likely avoid Intel next time round due to the small support each of their sockets has, I will upgrade if the price is right but parts, even as old as mine still go for silly money.
Even then I'll likely still go with a used Ryzen bundle, I'm also more awkward as I have an ITX system which adds cost as the smaller form factor stuff always costs more.
A 3700X should be somewhere around ~50fps in that graph, extrapolating from the other results.
Obviously hardly anything on the gaming side. And possibly not much even in general PC use, either.
I'm definitely waiting things out with my 4c/4t 3570k as well. I have a bit more pain than you with just the four threads and also my desire to play some more demanding games, but so far nothing I'm desperate to play that I really need a better CPU for. I've got lots of games to play in the meantime, though I'm betting Starfield could be the game that really tests my patience.
davis.anthony
Veteran
Drop in a 3770k for a quick and dirty performance boost?
Or overclock, I had a 3770k that was de-lidded, direct die cooled and clocked to 5Ghz.....never went over 55c.
Then I sold it for this 4770k and ended up with less performance due to the clock speed drop being greater than the IPC gain (Back in the day when I had every new CPU when they released regardless
)If I had an mATX or ATX build I would have upgraded by now as that stuff is much more plentiful and cheaper than ITX parts.
Maybe, but then again theres CPUs missing, CPU's that have some true performance increases like Intel 12th gen and 5800X 3D. Almost double the performance to this point in time, which is quite impressive.
Having used a 6700k and recently an alder lake system (build for someone else) side by side theres quite the difference in just about everything. Even when limiting yourself to 60fps (modern) gaming. You also need to account for that everything else becomes more modern, Haswell arch was great for its time, but todays chipsets, instruction sets, features, interfaces and memory are much faster and efficient. When talking a significant CPU upgrade from say a 2013 ivy bridge to a 2020-something platform, you're upgrading practically everything.
I see talk about OC, while that does generally boost performance, its not the same thing as jumping seven generations or more ahead. Going from ivy to haswell i can understand an OC would suffice though.
My wife and daughter are still running Phenom IIs and they're pretty happy. Me and my son both are running the Ryzen 5 1600 and they're still holding up really well, but they're both overclocked to 3.9Ghz and have been since they've been installed.
And thats the thing, people are happy enough with the hardware they got. Most console gamers i know are on PS4's still and happy with it. Give them a PS5 and they wouldnt want to switch back. Same for going from a 2010-ish phenom to a 2022 alder lake/Ryzen system.
davis.anthony
Veteran
I have more old hardware than new stuff as it's much more fun.
The Phenoms II's have aged really well, the issue was that review sites don't know how to overclock them properly they don't perform as well as they can.
Hey you're preaching at the choir. I enjoyed playing through Diablo II on that nForce1 / Athlon XP / Voodoo3 / Win2k setup earlier this year.
It's just that this place is mostly about chasing the rush of the latest greatest and they will tell you how your old stuff is clunky and wasting electricity. Because perceptions.
And hell it's not just experts that do this. People tell me their PC is slow and they can't even tell me in what way. Hard drives used to make you wait a minute for a program to load but now software pops up in 5 seconds and that is still perceived as slow so they want more. Even if it's like impossible to make these things instantaneous.
It's just that this place is mostly about chasing the rush of the latest greatest and they will tell you how your old stuff is clunky and wasting electricity. Because perceptions.
And hell it's not just experts that do this. People tell me their PC is slow and they can't even tell me in what way. Hard drives used to make you wait a minute for a program to load but now software pops up in 5 seconds and that is still perceived as slow so they want more. Even if it's like impossible to make these things instantaneous.
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