We know that you wanted a new test system for our PC Performance Analyses. Blasphemy, how could we write about PC games and how they perform when we are using a mere Q9650? Truth be told, an overclocked Q9650 is still a good choice and will not bottleneck even a GTX690, provided the games are properly optimized for the PC platform. But… well… it was time to upgrade our test system in order to find out how games perform on high-end CPUs.
Below you will find our first comparison with our previous test system. Our new system is packed with 8GB of DDR3, Intel’s i7 4930K, Nvidia’s GTX690 and Gigabyte’s X79-UD3 and Zalman’s Reserator 3 Max cooling solution. In addition, we’ll be using Windows 8.1 for our future Performance Analysis articles.
As we can see, Intel’s hexa-core processor benefits our GPU. The performance difference in Battlefield 4 and Tomb Raider is huge. We are talking about almost an 100% increase in performance. Not only that, but in both of these games we were GPU limited with this new CPU processor. Lost Planet 2 also saw a big boost, though the SLI scaling was not as ideal as in the two aforementioned titles.
Do note that these results are with hyperthreading enabled. When we disabled it, we saw minor increases in Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6, suggesting that this old powering Capcom’s titles is incapable of taking advantage of it. Lost Planet 2, on the other hand, saw a performance decrease, meaning that this particular title benefits from hyperthreading.
But what about Watch_Dogs? Ah yes, Ubisoft’s title is what most of you are interested in, right? Well, we can confirm that there are still some minor stuttering side-effects. We can confirm that our RAM usage has not increased significantly (compared to our Q9650 system) and we can confirm that there are dips to mid 50s even with this powerful CPU. We’ll have more on Watch_Dogs in our upcoming Performance Analysis.
All in all, there are still not enough games to justify purchasing this powerful CPU. We’re certain that there will be games – in the near future – that will demand more CPU power, however even games like Sleeping Dogs ran amazingly great on our older system (we saw a 30fps boost in Sleeping Dogs with the i7 4930K). Unfortunately we could not test Assassin’s Creed IV, THIEF or ARMA 3. We may dedicate another article for these CPU-bound games, so stay tuned for more.
Until then, enjoy a great weekend!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Finally, but john you should choose a most common system and not a so high end pc.
discusion for “beasts”! and then u tell me that i got a beast, mine is like a smurf next to that one!
mine too.?? 6870 ??? phenom 9550 ????? 😛
ego gtx 660 168 euro apo to eshop kai phenom 955, kala ayto to cpu to exo kapsei, skeytome na to kano overclocking gia na kaei na paro kana FX 8 core.
amdfx 9370 4.4G 8core 12mb cache
Asus Sabertooth r2
Asus R9 270x
2x4Giga Kingstone 1866 XMP
gamaei, eidika h sabertooth, eftiaxa ena pc gia ena filo mou me ayto to mobo san transformers einai, otan eida oti to bios exei mouse epatha plaka.
? 955 ??????? ???? ???? ?????.???? ???? ???????.?????? ????? ????????? ?? ?????? ??????? ?? 90?.???? ??????? ?????? ?? ??? ?? 8320 & R280X
katse na vgei maxwell kai tha paro kai ego. Tora na paro tsampa lefta, ti tha pexo? den vgenei tipota vary, tha doume mpas kai dixoune tipota E3 na vgei to xhmona.
You should’ve picked an i5 4670k john
Maybe he could still turn off HT and 2x extra core’s when needed ?. Something like that will show much wider core scaling in perfornance analyses.
Anyway, I remember when I replaced my old quad with i5 3570 @4.4, I was shocked how much boost I could see in crysis 1 (30-60 fps vs 70-110 fps). Crysis 2 on the other hand, was runring great (60 fps cap) even on my old quad 🙂
Definitely. This processor will give us a lot of data for CPU scaling on more than 3-4 cores.
And now John you just have to swapp out that pesky old GPU and get a Titan Z please 😉
And a nice weekend to you to Sir!
Or.. you know.. just buy 2 Titan Black’s for 1K$ less and get better performance.
2x Titan Z 😀
Hell yeah, now we talking bro 😀
and i5 4670k or an i7-4770k should’ve been more practical in my opinion too!
But anyways….good to see that you upgraded finally! 🙂
Cannot say it enough: I love DSOGaming! 😀
That’s a fairly big difference! I’m assuming this is with all settings equal? Usually I can push and pull on a game’s graphics and get the most frames per second with little apparent quality loss.
Congratulations .
Meh ignore the noobs saying to opt for 4670/4770k. The 4930k is excellent. It uses fluxless solder as opposed to the sh!tty thermal goo in haswell and ivy. Its got more PCI lanes, so its best for multi gpu. And dat Quad channel DDR3.
Although haswell has double the bus speed. So in theory, watch_dogs uses HEAVY streaming, so the game benefits from bus overclock. hence a haswell cpu will run watch_dogs better, until the ubishaft optimizes the game instead of brute forcing it.
6 real cores always better than 4 😉
He He Hexa core like me and WC AiO !! Great Hardware 😀 but better for that Monster is the CM Nepton 280L 😉 you can go easily for 4.8 – 5GHz and never go above 80 deg celsius 😉 he he
My phenom x6 4.2GHz (for now cuz i have to change my PSU now i have only 730W CM SilentPro) is only 50deg Ambient 30deg !! thats RAW POWER of the Cooler Master 😀
But i love Zalman too 😉 they have Superb Cooling solutions
Watch Dogs …. most likely GOTY 2014 by the gamers. The bad news? It was made by UBI. The good news? It was made by UBI! Why? UBI ALWAYS patches their PC games, it may take 2-3 patches or even 10 and 2 GB worth of data but they do it and that says helluva lot how much they care unlike that evil stupid EA and their idiotic svedish game BF4. Say: Are some of you newcomers or didnt you know this common fact? Watch Dogs will be patched/updated soon. It will however be a very demanding game…..
agreed but watchdogs is just average, wolfenstein is much better.
Watchdogs is average on all fronts, driving? subpar, graphics? last gen, shooting mechanics? horrible. Story? Crap the only good thing is that it has alot of distractions.
Damn…Watch Dogs and U made me change what a good CPU could do in perfomance…
Next time I am buying a I7(i53570k) to rest at least 3 years!