5 ms·

Yeah; games to this day are still pretty bad at utilizing multiple cores. Any idiot can do the math; the i7 13700k has 16 cores, and an advertised max TDP of 25

by 015a 4y ago

Yeah; games to this day are still pretty bad at utilizing multiple cores. Any idiot can do the math; the i7 13700k has 16 cores, and an advertised max TDP of 250W. That's a ton of power; but if you're only really stressing 2 or 3 cores the real power draw isn't that high. These chips are so powerful that your bottleneck is almost always GPU, unless you're playing CS:GO at 1080p and aiming for 800fps, so realistically its common to see 25-60% utilization on 1 or 2 P-cores, and the rest just running Windows background shit. This is proven by any outlet which takes the time to measure Performance Per Watt (e.g. https://www.hwcooling.net/en/intel-core-i7-13700k-efficient-choice-for-a-gaming-workhorse-review/37/ https://www.hwcooling.net/en/intel-core-i7-13700k-efficient-...). Intel has consistently driven higher PPW with every generation, when you're comparing like-for-like binned chips. AMD, on the other hand, has been a bigger victim of what the OP is describing; while their raw PPW is generally higher than Intel, so they have room to fall, their Ryzen 7x chips aren't consistently posting higher PPW numbers over Ryzen 5x. In other words; both Intel and AMD are doing well here. If you're stressing every core on the CPU at 100%, you're going to draw a lot of power, but you're also going to be completing workloads much faster than on 12th or 11th gen, so your aggregate power draw will be lower. The low-tier media outlets that post "OMG 250W" aren't doing research, and also don't care to, because they get clicks from tons of people like the OP who eat outrage at face value.

BoorishBears 4y ago
It's not just low-tier media outlets (at least in terms of reach), this is largely driven by large names like LTT and Gamer's Nexus People don't realize that mid range mobile chips from both Intel and AMD out perform top of the range desktop SKUs from a few years ago because they're constantly bombarded by hot takes based on things like CPU rendering and unzipping files... At this point I'm convinced it's just an informal cycle, where if they actually reported in a realistic manner, no release would be exciting. If they didn't pair bottom of the line CPUs with top end GPUs and odd settings configurations under the guise of "not wanting to reflect a GPU bottleneck", it'd be a lot clearer how badly needs have stagnated vs the speed of these new SKUs
- gruez 4y ago
  >At this point I'm convinced it's just an informal cycle, where if they actually reported in a realistic manner, no release would be exciting. If they didn't pair bottom of the line CPUs with top end GPUs and odd settings configurations under the guise of "not wanting to reflect a GPU bottleneck", it'd be a lot clearer how badly needs have stagnated vs the speed of these new SKUs Hardware unboxed did a video explaining why reviews do that: https://youtu.be/Zy3w-VZyoiM https://youtu.be/Zy3w-VZyoiM tl;dw: you're not caring about the performance today, you're caring about the performance a few years from now when you bought a faster GPU.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    Wow that's the most blatantly misleading chart I've seen out of these types of outfits in a long time! I'm sorry this is kind of long, but I really had to make sure I wasn't missing something with how obvious there were about it. The complaint people have is that they're not matching up hardware realistically... so they take a ~$350 Intel CPU and pit it against a ~$250 AMD CPU, instead of the ~$350 AMD sibling it launched alongside of to artificially induce a larger gap! How much do you want to bet the same graph with a 2700x would have given a much less convincing gap? - Now you might be thinking I'm just being uncharitable... but they actually tested the correct SKUs specifically for future proofing, twice over the last few years! Talk about a smoking gun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11GvlWamF2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11GvlWamF2E And no surprise, it took using a $1000 GPU at 1080p to shake out half the gap shown for a similarly priced GPU in the video! And even worse, if you actually go and look at the individual titles, unlike the graphs shown here, at no point was the difference enough to affect your ability to hit a playable refresh rate! The largest differences were in games where they were both getting over 300 FPS since again, they're using a $1000 GPU for 1080p! - And if you're still not convinced it's an intentional attempt to push a misleading point, I mentioned they've done this comparison twice... the last time the entire point of the video was to not base your choice on future proofing! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZkJ_-vfQa8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZkJ_-vfQa8 They actually concluded by saying there was no meaningful difference, gaming is largely GPU limited, and specifically replied to people claiming that you can just wait for the difference to appear: I wouldn't hold your breath, I expect you'll upgrade your [CPU] platform once or twice before those extra cores for gaming matter I don't know how much more blatant you can get than that...

by 015a 4y ago

BoorishBears 4y ago

It's not just low-tier media outlets (at least in terms of reach), this is largely driven by large names like LTT and Gamer's Nexus People don't realize that mid range mobile chips from both Intel and AMD out perform top of the range desktop SKUs from a few years ago because they're constantly bombarded by hot takes based on things like CPU rendering and unzipping files... At this point I'm convinced it's just an informal cycle, where if they actually reported in a realistic manner, no release would be exciting. If they didn't pair bottom of the line CPUs with top end GPUs and odd settings configurations under the guise of "not wanting to reflect a GPU bottleneck", it'd be a lot clearer how badly needs have stagnated vs the speed of these new SKUs

gruez 4y ago
>At this point I'm convinced it's just an informal cycle, where if they actually reported in a realistic manner, no release would be exciting. If they didn't pair bottom of the line CPUs with top end GPUs and odd settings configurations under the guise of "not wanting to reflect a GPU bottleneck", it'd be a lot clearer how badly needs have stagnated vs the speed of these new SKUs Hardware unboxed did a video explaining why reviews do that: https://youtu.be/Zy3w-VZyoiM https://youtu.be/Zy3w-VZyoiM tl;dw: you're not caring about the performance today, you're caring about the performance a few years from now when you bought a faster GPU.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  Wow that's the most blatantly misleading chart I've seen out of these types of outfits in a long time! I'm sorry this is kind of long, but I really had to make sure I wasn't missing something with how obvious there were about it. The complaint people have is that they're not matching up hardware realistically... so they take a ~$350 Intel CPU and pit it against a ~$250 AMD CPU, instead of the ~$350 AMD sibling it launched alongside of to artificially induce a larger gap! How much do you want to bet the same graph with a 2700x would have given a much less convincing gap? - Now you might be thinking I'm just being uncharitable... but they actually tested the correct SKUs specifically for future proofing, twice over the last few years! Talk about a smoking gun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11GvlWamF2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11GvlWamF2E And no surprise, it took using a $1000 GPU at 1080p to shake out half the gap shown for a similarly priced GPU in the video! And even worse, if you actually go and look at the individual titles, unlike the graphs shown here, at no point was the difference enough to affect your ability to hit a playable refresh rate! The largest differences were in games where they were both getting over 300 FPS since again, they're using a $1000 GPU for 1080p! - And if you're still not convinced it's an intentional attempt to push a misleading point, I mentioned they've done this comparison twice... the last time the entire point of the video was to not base your choice on future proofing! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZkJ_-vfQa8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZkJ_-vfQa8 They actually concluded by saying there was no meaningful difference, gaming is largely GPU limited, and specifically replied to people claiming that you can just wait for the difference to appear: I wouldn't hold your breath, I expect you'll upgrade your [CPU] platform once or twice before those extra cores for gaming matter I don't know how much more blatant you can get than that...