Do games take advantage of high PC specs?

[toptenmaterial]

I was doing some window shopping on B&H. I was looking at gaming computers, and noticed a rig that has a 16 core processor and 32gigs of RAM. Is that going to equate to butter smooth performance in all that I do, and running emulators better than other machines? My concern is that some of the specs are going to be invisible to most programs.

 

(A little self disclosure, I can barely pay my last parking ticket and so will hold off on the $4500 rig for now.)

[CPUWIZ]

If a program is designed to take advantage of multi-cores, which most are these days, the answer is yes. RAM is automatically an advantage.

[spacecadet]

It depends on the game, but as CPUWiz says, a lot of them can take advantage of that.

 

However, *most* modern games are GPU-constrained more than they are CPU-constrained, and you will get better bang for your buck, performance-wise, by putting your money into a better graphics card than a faster CPU. If you're like most modern gamers, anyway.

 

But this depends a lot on the types of games you play. Heavy simulations and even a lot of strategy games benefit the most by faster CPU's rather than GPU's. Action games and shooters benefit more from a faster GPU. Most modern gamers seem to play more of the latter than the former, and there are more of those types of games out there.

 

Emulators are more CPU-dependent, so a faster CPU will help there. But that's provided you're having performance problems to begin with. Unless you're trying to emulate a pretty recent system, in which case it's usually the emulator that's actually the problem rather than the computer (they're just not usually very refined yet), you usually don't need a very fast CPU. I have a mid-range Ryzen 5 1600X and I can emulate anything I want. Then again, I don't really try emulating the Dreamcast or N64 or anything from that era on up.

 

Bottom line: if you play a lot of FPS's, TPS's and other action oriented games, get the fastest graphics card you can afford and just keep upgrading that until you hit diminishing returns. If you play a lot of sims and strategy, and a lot of more advanced/recent emulators, then get a faster, multi-threaded CPU. Multi-threading is the future, even though not every game supports it well yet. (Especially older games, most of which will likely never be updated to support it.)

[Osgeld]

also depends on what you like to play, generic shooter or RPG probally isnt taxing your CPU that much and needs more gpu, simulators on the other hand can nail your CPU and look pretty bland (with of course plenty of middle ground tween the two)

[Flojomojo]

get the fastest graphics card you can afford and just keep upgrading that until you hit diminishing returns.

I agree with everything you said. I want to emphasize diminishing returns. Games are designed for relatively low-end machines (so they can reach the largest market) and can scale up graphic resolutions and framerates as you throw money into faster GPUs. A $150 GPU can run games and make them look decent. A $1500 GPU can make them "buttery smooth," but paying 10x the price for 3x the performance doesn't make much sense to me. Find the sweet spot, or the minimum acceptable spec. "Expensive" consoles like the Xbox One X look downright thrifty compared to the stupid amounts one can throw on high end PC hardware.

 

Emulators don't need much juice at all, even "high end" systems. Remember the low specs of classic game systems are orders of magnitude slower than modern computers, factors of 100x or 1000x. Spending $4500 on a computer has a place if you do work that requires it, but games just don't live in that space. Most people won't even need 16GB of RAM.

 

Here's a sample performance chart from a review of a $1500 GPU ... the low end of this is $500. My cheesy $150 GTX 1050Ti isn't even on the list, because it runs games at 1080p and handles anything I want to play.

[Keatah]

Most emulators are singe-core optimized.

X-Plane will use whatever cores you give it, and whatever ram you give it.

[Osgeld]

Here's a sample performance chart from a review of a $1500 GPU ... the low end of this is $500. My cheesy $150 GTX 1050Ti isn't even on the list, because it runs games at 1080p and handles anything I want to play.

 

even my now aicent AMD HD7050 (which on the geforce scale is a bit faster than a 760 but not as fast as a 780) runs a lot of higher end games at 1080 on max or near max settings in the 40-70 fps range ... depending on the title (doom 2016 no problem, GTA5 a bit on the low end) but you CAN feel it like in GTA5 when a bunch of crap happens on screen and my even older AMD FX cpu starts holding the system up

 

and it goes back to my other post, when there's lots of math going on a slow CPU can bottle neck a fast GPU, Jayz two cents did a video within the last few months where he paired up a pentium and a bottom end ryzen3 with 1050ti's and they ran games great, until he tried a rally racing sim game and, on a stronger cpu the 1050ti handles it no problem, but with the weaker cpu's it just wasnt enough cause it couldnt process the data fast enough and the GPU was waiting for info

 

am I saying go get an i9 or a threadripper, nah unless your doing like weather simulations, or cranking out 4k video's all day, its not that worth while, can you get two titanX's and pair it with a ryzen3? nah that would be pointless

 

my general rule of thumb is kind of balance the two, but today you can get a good (upper) mid range cpu and pair it with a lower end current gen GPU and get good results, cause the top notch GPU's are aiming for things like 4k and VR ... and if you are not running those, its not as critical to have like a 1080ti or whatever

Edited January 8, 2018 by Osgeld

[CPUWIZ]

For video game development, we not only use the fastest machines, but we also use other peoples machines with distributed compile requests. I have a system like this at home, multiple machines doing compile work at the same time.

 

I'll give you an idea, Mafia III (as a recent example) took about 45 minutes to compile on a single machine, 3-4 minutes on a DBS network, at the office.

 

This new CPU patching via software madness is going to cost us a LOT of time compiling. Think about each programmer that will be affected by the slowdown.

 

BOTTOM LINE: GPU! Do not buy a new CPU at the moment.

[zzip]

I was doing some window shopping on B&H. I was looking at gaming computers, and noticed a rig that has a 16 core processor and 32gigs of RAM. Is that going to equate to butter smooth performance in all that I do, and running emulators better than other machines? My concern is that some of the specs are going to be invisible to most programs.

 

(A little self disclosure, I can barely pay my last parking ticket and so will hold off on the $4500 rig for now.)

 

I agree with Flojo- today's games are targeted towards much lower-end PCs and consoles. Sure they might give you amazing framerates and higher detail than lower end systems, but the games aren't really pushing that hardware to its full potential. Plus when the game is in motion, you probably aren't even going to be able to tell that your machine has slightly nicer shadows than a lower-end system.

 

Also right now if thinking about buying a PC, I'd wait until processors are released that aren't affected by the recent bugs. Or else the OS may crimp its performance.

[spacecadet]

Also right now if thinking about buying a PC, I'd wait until processors are released that aren't affected by the recent bugs. Or else the OS may crimp its performance.

 

You're pretty safe buying AMD. AMD processors are affected by Spectre, but not Meltdown, and it's Meltdown that's causing the performance problems when patched on Intel systems.

 

I'd buy AMD again anyway (I just recently did, and don't regret it). Moar cores!

[ClassicGMR]

Most emulators are singe-core optimized.

X-Plane will use whatever cores you give it, and whatever ram you give it.

 

Wow... never heard of X-Plane. I just checked it out on Steam. That went right on my wishlist for a birthday present. Already sent the kids a link!

[AMenard]

 

Wow... never heard of X-Plane. I just checked it out on Steam. That went right on my wishlist for a birthday present. Already sent the kids a link!

 

After that there's the flight controller with rudder pedals and then there's https://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/for the head tracking :-)

Those kids have to give a bit of love back