CPU vs CPU for Gaming

How to read a processor comparison

Processor comparisons are more misleading than graphics card comparisons, because a single performance number hides the two things that decide which chip is right: how the work is distributed across cores, and how much of it fits in cache.

• Gaming rarely uses every core. A chip with more cores can lose to one with fewer, higher-clocked cores in games, while winning comfortably in rendering or compilation.
• Large-cache parts are a special case. Stacked-cache processors post ordinary numbers in most benchmark suites and pull far ahead in simulation-heavy titles, because the working set stops leaving the chip.
• Resolution flattens the differences. Comparisons are run at 1080p precisely to expose them. At 4K, two processors a tier apart frequently produce the same frame rate.
• Platform longevity counts. A socket that will receive another generation of processors is worth real money at upgrade time.

The relative indices used on these pages are a broad summary of gaming performance, not a benchmark average, and they are not a substitute for game-by-game results in the titles you play. What they are useful for is answering the narrower question people actually ask: is this processor sensible next to this graphics card? For that, the bottleneck estimator and the pair verdicts are the better tools.