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Let me preface this to say I'm a bit of a techno dunce in relation to most people on this site, but I enjoy reading and learning.

I'm putting together a pc that I will do some gaming on. I'll get the newest games but probably "only" play at 1080p. I'm looking at the i5 3570k for the processor. My question is this, is the fact that this cpu only has 4 cores going to hinder it in the future if the current consoles are using 8? I realize that the gpu I pick (probably 280x) should outperform what the new consoles have but I'm worried that the new generation of games will be optimized for 8 cores and that when they port to PC my CPU will be lacking. Am I up in the night?

Unlikely. Sure, consoles are going to have to do better at multi-threaded tasks in order to truly unlock better performance, but a 3570k paired with a 280x will have a lot more power than the consoles can offer.

It won't make any difference in the next few years. The thing you have to keep in mind is the 3570K may only have four cores but it does quite well in games when compared to the best AMD provides today. Beating it in some games and losing in others.

In addition you have to take into account that the Jaguar based processor used in the PS4/Xbox One is running at a much lower clock speed than the CPUs/IGPs/APUs that AMD and Intel sell to end customers. That should mean that the raw CPU performance of the PS4/XB1 will be much less than a 3570K so if you marry the 3570K to a good mid-range or higher GPU then your system should have no problem matching the performance of a PS4/XB1.

emvath79 wrote:

Let me preface this to say I'm a bit of a techno dunce in relation to most people on this site, but I enjoy reading and learning.
I'm putting together a pc that I will do some gaming on. I'll get the newest games but probably "only" play at 1080p. I'm looking at the i5 3570k for the processor. My question is this, is the fact that this cpu only has 4 cores going to hinder it in the future if the current consoles are using 8? I realize that the gpu I pick (probably 280x) should outperform what the new consoles have but I'm worried that the new generation of games will be optimized for 8 cores and that when they port to PC my CPU will be lacking. Am I up in the night?

I would wait a couple of months and go for an AMD HSA APU, a Kaveri chip that is. Why? Aside from a Kaveri platform being cheaper on the whole, Kaveri will have 8 GCN CUs and those can do some heavy physics/AI compuations quite a bit faster than the four AVX compatible FPs in Ivy Bridge. So if some console developers say decide to use 4 or five of PS4's 18 Radeon CUs to do physics, then the ported game will most likely be able to run the same physics code on your platform.

A single 3570K core can run three threads sequentially faster than three Jaguar cores can run three threads in parallel.

Intel has nothing to worry about in the CPU arena. AMD have basically admitted defeat and completely given up.

Chrispy_ wrote:

A single 3570K core can run three threads sequentially faster than three Jaguar cores can run three threads in parallel.
Intel has nothing to worry about in the CPU arena. AMD have basically admitted defeat and completely given up.

Well, the chips the new consoles are using are APUs, and APUs more than just X86 CPUs, so your point doesn't hold here...
If well utilized, an APU can put a 8 core Intel CPU to shame in many scenarios including gaming.

emvath79, do not take the Lionheart's advice. The 3570K is and will continue to be a much better gaming CPU than an AMD APU. And it is far and away superior to either of the console CPUs.

Chrispy_ wrote:

A single 3570K core can run three threads sequentially faster than three Jaguar cores can run three threads in parallel.
Intel has nothing to worry about in the CPU arena. AMD have basically admitted defeat and completely given up.

I want to see some benchmarks backing up that claim!

the Lionheart wrote:

Chrispy_ wrote:

A single 3570K core can run three threads sequentially faster than three Jaguar cores can run three threads in parallel.
Intel has nothing to worry about in the CPU arena. AMD have basically admitted defeat and completely given up.

Well, the chips the new consoles are using are APUs, and APUs more than just X86 CPUs, so your point doesn't hold here...
If well utilized, an APU can put a 8 core Intel CPU to shame in many scenarios including gaming.

Sorry dude, I think you're confused on IPC vs number of cores.

For starters, Kaveri will *not* come with 8 cores, only 4.

Secondly, I doubt very much that Steamroller will still be able to match Ivy Bridge on IPC, let alone Haswell.

To answer the OP, the Jaguar cores in the Xbox/PS4 are very slow and simple CPUs, about on par with the Bay Trail Atoms. They will be completely overmatched by *any* PC desktop CPU from the past 3-4 years.

Also, despite this, game performance is rarely CPU-limited, the 3570K should be overkill for any PC game for a few years to come (although Star Citizen may prove me wrong).

Great_Big_Abyss wrote:

Chrispy_ wrote:

A single 3570K core can run three threads sequentially faster than three Jaguar cores can run three threads in parallel.
Intel has nothing to worry about in the CPU arena. AMD have basically admitted defeat and completely given up.

I want to see some benchmarks backing up that claim!

Ask, and ye shall receive. Now multiply that core i5 3317 performance by two (to get to 3.4 Ghz on 3570K). Since Anandtech was comparing a 2-core IVB to a 4 core Jaguar, it should be a similar delta between the 4-core 3570 and the 8-core Jaguars in PS4/Xbox. There's some fiddling to do with frequencies (1.5 GHz vs 1.6 GHz vs 1.75 GHz), but PS4 reserving one whole core for OS and Xbone reserving 2 (!) for OS means that Jaguar is going to get even more handicapped.

Comparing the 3570K to Jaguar is like comparing the sun to a candle and asking which is brighter.

emvath79 wrote:

Let me preface this to say I'm a bit of a techno dunce in relation to most people on this site, but I enjoy reading and learning.

I'm putting together a pc that I will do some gaming on. I'll get the newest games but probably "only" play at 1080p. I'm looking at the i5 3570k for the processor. My question is this, is the fact that this cpu only has 4 cores going to hinder it in the future if the current consoles are using 8? I realize that the gpu I pick (probably 280x) should outperform what the new consoles have but I'm worried that the new generation of games will be optimized for 8 cores and that when they port to PC my CPU will be lacking. Am I up in the night?

"Hinder it"? Well, I would not really use such words, but the future games WILL be more multithreaded and WILL definitely benefit from extra physical cores... Or even logical cores - for example you can definitely see (using appropriate benchmarks) the performance difference when running BF4 on, say, i7-3770 with Hyperthreading enabled and when running it with Hyperthreading disabled. Whether that performance difference is actually worth the price increase is entirely up to you to decide

Voldenuit wrote:

the Lionheart wrote:

Chrispy_ wrote:

A single 3570K core can run three threads sequentially faster than three Jaguar cores can run three threads in parallel.
Intel has nothing to worry about in the CPU arena. AMD have basically admitted defeat and completely given up.

Well, the chips the new consoles are using are APUs, and APUs more than just X86 CPUs, so your point doesn't hold here...
If well utilized, an APU can put a 8 core Intel CPU to shame in many scenarios including gaming.

Sorry dude, I think you're confused on IPC vs number of cores.
For starters, Kaveri will *not* come with 8 cores, only 4.
Secondly, I doubt very much that Steamroller will still be able to match Ivy Bridge on IPC, let alone Haswell.
To answer the OP, the Jaguar cores in the Xbox/PS4 are very slow and simple CPUs, about on par with the Bay Trail Atoms. They will be completely overmatched by *any* PC desktop CPU from the past 3-4 years.
Also, despite this, game performance is rarely CPU-limited, the 3570K should be overkill for any PC game for a few years to come (although Star Citizen may prove me wrong).

First off, I was comparing AMD's upcoming Kaveri APUs to Intels CPUs, and AMD APUs do hold and advantage if the 8 GCN clusters (not cores) are utilized in games and many other scenarios which is about to happen with Mantle and HSA.
Offloading Physics/AI to the GCN part of an APU has been simplified quite a bit with Mantle. Now the game engine can create threads that target the different parts of the APU with ease. And those coding practices will most likely be used in most console games. So why not just go with an APU and be more future proof...?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpkVmpx2u1U

JohnC wrote:

"Hinder it"? Well, I would not really use such words, but the future games WILL be more multithreaded and WILL definitely benefit from extra physical cores... Or even logical cores - for example you can definitely see (using appropriate benchmarks) the performance difference when running BF4 on, say, i7-3770 with Hyperthreading enabled and when running it with Hyperthreading disabled. Whether that performance difference is actually worth the price increase is entirely up to you to decide

How long did the multithread revolution take on PC?

Additionally, with the PS4 having 7 Jaguar cores accessible to developers and the Xbox One having only 6, I think wild speculation that all future game development will focus exclusively on 8-core configurations is premature at best.

the Lionheart wrote:

Chrispy_ wrote:

A single 3570K core can run three threads sequentially faster than three Jaguar cores can run three threads in parallel.
Intel has nothing to worry about in the CPU arena. AMD have basically admitted defeat and completely given up.

Well, the chips the new consoles are using are APUs, and APUs more than just X86 CPUs, so your point doesn't hold here...
If well utilized, an APU can put a 8 core Intel CPU to shame in many scenarios including gaming.

This argument reminds me of how people insisted that the PS3's Cell was vastly superior to the CPU in the 360. End results? Pretty minimal difference.

And as someone already pointed out, games are rarely CPU limited, and our GPUs are already much, much more powerful than those in the consoles.

So going back to the original question: no, "only" having four cores in the 3570K is not going to hinder it. Consoles aren't going to use multi-threaded processing to outpace PCs, they're going to use it to close reduce the gap between the two.

Well I didn't mean to start an argument but I think I'm just going to go for it. Thank you all for your input!

A 3570k and something like a 280x for 1080p will be ample for years to come (I'd guess pretty close to as long as the XB1 and PS4 are relevant) at fairly high, if not maxed out graphics settings. Since your're getting a "k" version, worse comes to worse, you can overclock the CPU down the line for a bit of extra performance (maybe with the addition of closed loop liquid cooling). And when your system does finally become limited at 1080p, chances are, it will be the 280x holding things up, and not a 3570k running at 4 Ghz+.

One thing to keep in mind is that Intel still hasn't made more than 4 cores mainstream on the desktop. As such, there will be a vast number of people who currently have and will continue to build gaming systems based on 4 core Intel CPUs. Developers would be shooting themselves in the foot if they came out with PC games in the next 5 years that ran well on 6-8 cores, but scaled terribly on 4 cores. Sure, there will be a shift toward more multithreaded performance in games - as we have already seen in games such as Crysis 3 - but that does not mean that 4 core core i5s since Sandy Bridge will suddenly start performing like crap compared to i7s or "E" series or AMD CPUs. Rather, the performance delta between 4 cores and more than 4 cores will increase somewhat (where much before Crysis 3, the added performance over a 2 core CPU in most games was pretty much negligible).

the Lionheart wrote:

Well, the chips the new consoles are using are APUs, and APUs more than just X86 CPUs, so your point doesn't hold here...

The advantages of an APU over a plain x86 CPU are completely pointless when talking about a 3570K for a gaming build, because the gaming build will have a seperate graphics card to do all the heavy lifting. Even an affordable R9 270X (HD7870) is significantly faster for this

superjawes wrote:

This argument reminds me of how people insisted that the PS3's Cell was vastly superior to the CPU in the 360. End results? Pretty minimal difference.

I think the difference is that the architecture is essentially the same in this generation, making raw compute power less of a theoretical advantage and more of a realistic advantage.

A quad core will be sufficient to run anything for a very long time. If you're eyeing that Microcenter deal I would say go for it, that's about as good as it gets in CPU land.

I realize that the gpu I pick (probably 280x) should outperform what the new consoles have

OK, here's the trick: Go with the 3570K (or a faster CPU if you can afford it) simply because you need a fast CPU to keep up with a higher-end GPU, and *optimistically* Kaveri will only be about on par with the 3570K while costing about as much (if not more) and pulling more power to do it. Don't worry about the noise being emanated about "8 core" CPUs on consoles, those CPUs are not even in the same ballpark as what the 3570K will give you. Additionally, if you think Mantle will be a big deal, the 280X with Mantle will work just as well (if not better) on the 3570K as it will on a Kaveri part.

Kaveri has one advantage: If you absolutely, positively cannot get a discrete GPU of any kind (I mean you can't even get an HD-7750, which is less than $100 and is 100% guaranteed to outperform Kaveri's GPU), then wait until January/February to get Kaveri since it will have the best IGP available until the Iris-pro version of Broadwell launches. From your situation though, it sounds like you will be going for the discrete GPU, so don't worry about it.

I have a graphics threshold right now, based on today's games at 1080p - which is what most people will be aiming for.

Get an i5 as long as your graphics card is at least an HD7790 (or R9 260X). Once you have four Intel cores that are Sandy Bridge or newer, very few games benefit from more processor - the only thing to do is ramp up clockspeeds for a few rare games that are CPU-intensive.

If you can't afford at least an HD7790, you should get a cheaper processor to make room in the budget for one; A $70 Pentium dual-core with an HD7790 will run most games (like 98% of them) better than even a $1000 i7-3970X if the i7 only has an HD7750.