Gaming on Intel or AMD...The truth

Ok so as you guys know I am into the hardware scene. Love everything tech related :love:
But for a few years now I've been getting pissed off with people claiming they can tell the difference between Intel and AMD while gaming and that Intel is def better. Now I am sorry but I own a i7 3930K, i7 3770K and 2x AMD FX8350 machines. I game on all of them and I usually share cards between them (7970 Matrix, 680, Titan, 7870 cf, 660ti sli). I can not tell the difference between them. They only time I see a difference is when I benchmark or while running fraps.

The machines will be running the exact same hardware, only the board and cpu will differ.
Games will be set up to run the exact same settings.

So my plan is to do a blind game play test on some mates and possibly some of you guys if your keen :)

The idea is to let my mates play on each machine, machines will be hidden and they won't be able to see system specs.
After letting them play on the 4 machines they then have to tell me which machine they were playing on (Intel or Amd). I want a fairly large group, ranging from seasoned hardware nuts like myself to people that really don't care what they play on.

What do you guys think?

Good experiment to prove a point. I'm like you, love tech and building and I love AMD and Intel...for different things. AMD is just the best for gaming because you won't see a difference in gaming but only on gaming. Thats why I choose Intel:) I think i'm gonna get a 4770K.

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Originally Posted by rootworm41

Good experiment to prove a point. I'm like you, love tech and building and I love AMD and Intel...for different things. AMD is just the best for gaming because you won't see a difference in gaming but only on gaming. Thats why I choose Intel:) I think i'm gonna get a 4770K.

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That was confusing even for me:D

This sounds like an awesome little experiment :D

Personally, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between anything, but I look forward to your findings.

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Originally Posted by Eugene

This sounds like an awesome little experiment :D

Personally, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between anything, but I look forward to your findings.

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You are more than welcome to join in bud :D

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Originally Posted by The Joker

You are more than welcome to join in bud :D

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Maybe. Where is my monitor by the way? :p

I would love to but you are not in Cape Town esp if we can take a mach home if we guess correctly :p

Please run the experiment on 3840x2160 res screens.
I'll take part if ^ is true! :D

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Originally Posted by Eugene

Maybe. Where is my monitor by the way? :p

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At CRT. Meh will call them now.

As far as resolution goes, I'll do the test @ 1920x1080 and 2560x1440

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Originally Posted by The Joker

Ok so as you guys know I am into the hardware scene. Love everything tech related :love:
But for a few years now I've been getting pissed off with people claiming they can tell the difference between Intel and AMD while gaming and that Intel is def better. Now I am sorry but I own a i7 3930K, i7 3770K and 2x AMD FX8350 machines. I game on all of them and I usually share cards between them (7970 Matrix, 680, Titan, 7870 cf, 660ti sli). I can not tell the difference between them. They only time I see a difference is when I benchmark or while running fraps.

The machines will be running the exact same hardware, only the board and cpu will differ.
Games will be set up to run the exact same settings.

So my plan is to do a blind game play test on some mates and possibly some of you guys if your keen :)

The idea is to let my mates play on each machine, machines will be hidden and they won't be able to see system specs.
After letting them play on the 4 machines they then have to tell me which machine they were playing on (Intel or Amd). I want a fairly large group, ranging from seasoned hardware nuts like myself to people that really don't care what they play on.

What do you guys think?

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Make sure to use a CPU heavy game, my recommendation is PlanetSide 2 since I found the game to give the biggest discrepancies between Intel and AMD.

I'm not sure that this will have a great value if you're using top end GPUs like Titans or 7990s, where the difference in FPS between CPUs is in the imperceptible range: a 10fps difference between 70 - 80 won't affect many people. If you were to use a more mid-range GPU like a single 660ti on the machines you'd see the performance gaps (if there were any, I'm not saying there are enormous differences) in a fairer way.

Still nice idea :D

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Originally Posted by jasong

I'm not sure that this will have a great value if you're using top end GPUs like Titans or 7990s, where the difference in FPS between CPUs is in the imperceptible range: a 10fps difference between 70 - 80 won't affect many people. If you were to use a more mid-range GPU like a single 660ti on the machines you'd see the performance gaps (if there were any, I'm not saying there are enormous differences) in a fairer way.

Still nice idea :D

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Will look into that, I do get what your getting at though.
@Isengard, will try games like SC2 and Dota 2 which are both pretty cpu intensive. Will look into Planetside 2 as well.

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Originally Posted by The Joker

Will look into that, I do get what your getting at though.
@Isengard, will try games like SC2 and Dota 2 which are both pretty cpu intensive. Will look into Planetside 2 as well.

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If you had Guild Wars 2 it would also show quite a difference. My FPS more than doubled when I went from my Phenom II x4 965 to the i5 3570k.

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Originally Posted by The Joker

Will look into that, I do get what your getting at though.
@Isengard, will try games like SC2 and Dota 2 which are both pretty cpu intensive. Will look into Planetside 2 as well.

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I would recommend not showing the current fps either, because people will see a game running at 50 fps then the same game at 70 fps and say, the latter is a intel or AMD.

Sounds like a cool experiment, I'm keen to see the results of your research.

Sounds like a fun idea. I assume you'll keep the same number of cores in each CPU? I'm sure all threading is not created equal.. :/

Haha this sounds awesome. When is this planned for? I'd like to see the outcome, already guessed what it would be. :)

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Originally Posted by Glordit

I would recommend not showing the current fps either, because people will see a game running at 50 fps then the same game at 70 fps and say, the latter is a intel or AMD.

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Is that really a good idea? Then all you're proving is that most gamers don't notice a difference between 40 and 50fps.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/697?vs=701

Truthfully there is quite a difference in gaming between AMD and Intel at the high end.

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Originally Posted by jasong

Is that really a good idea? Then all you're proving is that most gamers don't notice a difference between 40 and 50fps.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/697?vs=701

Truthfully there is quite a difference in gaming between AMD and Intel at the high end.

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http://www.anandtech.com/show/6985/c...-in-haswell-/5

The above mentioned article is the reason I am doing the test. Some people still claim that intel is better for gaming bla bla.

Well this is how its going down.
The cpu's will be run at stock clocks with HT and all cores/modules active.
Each machine will be running the same memory (G.skill DDRIII 2400 16GB at its rated speed)
They will be running the same SSD's (OCZ Vector 128GB)
I will not be showing any fps numbers during the test, I want it to be a "blind" test

If you guys can think of anything that needs to be added or changed please let me know.

Stick a FX-6300/FX-6100 in there and that would be an interesting test. No Crossfire or SLI, though. We wouldn't want Nvidia's frame metering tech to smooth out the frame delivery while Xfire with VSync disabled is almost a complete mess.

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Originally Posted by Wesley

Stick a FX-6300/FX-6100 in there and that would be an interesting test. No Crossfire or SLI, though. We wouldn't want Nvidia's frame metering tech to smooth out the frame delivery while Xfire with VSync disabled is almost a complete mess.

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I'll try organize a FX-6300, as for sli and cf, I am not gonna bother with that for now.
Most normal gamers don't bother with multi gpu setups.

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Originally Posted by The Joker

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6985/c...-in-haswell-/5

The above mentioned article is the reason I am doing the test. Some people still claim that intel is better for gaming bla bla.

Well this is how its going down.
The cpu's will be run at stock clocks with HT and all cores/modules active.
Each machine will be running the same memory (G.skill DDRIII 2400 16GB at its rated speed)
They will be running the same SSD's (OCZ Vector 128GB)
I will not be showing any fps numbers during the test, I want it to be a "blind" test

If you guys can think of anything that needs to be added or changed please let me know.

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Are you going to downclock the AMD's to give the Intels a fair shot? :p

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Originally Posted by jasong

Truthfully there is quite a difference in gaming between AMD and Intel at the high end.

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Originally Posted by The Joker

Some people still claim that intel is better for gaming bla bla.

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There is quite a marked difference in frame time delivery between the platforms. If you go way, way back to Tech Report's original story on frame time latency, they had a large test with 18 CPUs and they all showed frame variances.

Inside the second: Gaming performance with today's CPUs

Joker, you're correct about the bottlenecking that you see in the Anandtech graph and that even the A10-5600K seems to run pretty well with the other chips, but they're only noting average frame times. Parts of games like Last Light, Civilisation V (actually, lets just say most of Civ V) and DiRT are GPU-dependent, whereas other parts, perhaps even an overwhelming majority, is CPU-dependent.

http://techreport.com/r.x/cpu-gaming...-beyond-50.gif

By only noting average FPS instead of the minimum and maximum frame rates and the way they oscillate, those graphs mean bugger-all. I like what you're doing, but I wish Anandtech would just move to FCAT benchmarking already.

Once I've got my benchmarking rig set up, I can switch to using FRAPS data for my reviews. I did some testing a while ago and although my Athlon X3 and HD6870 keeps up well, in the graphs I can clearly see where I was experiencing stutter and for how long. Seeing those results for the first time gave me data to use to smooth out my experience by adjusting settings until I had less frame variance.

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Originally Posted by The Joker

I'll try organize a FX-6300, as for sli and cf, I am not gonna bother with that for now.
Most normal gamers don't bother with multi gpu setups.

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Or just disable one module and clock the other FX-8350 down ;-)

I don't see how it could make a difference. If you get 50fps on one machine and 50fps on the other it is all the same. The only thing I can think of that makes a difference is AMD's tend to be slightly louder.

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Originally Posted by jasong

Is that really a good idea? Then all you're proving is that most gamers don't notice a difference between 40 and 50fps.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/697?vs=701

Truthfully there is quite a difference in gaming between AMD and Intel at the high end.

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Yes it's the point exactly, if you don't know the fps count of the game yet it plays the same on 2 PC's with different hardware at the same settings, what's the point of calling one better than the other.

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Originally Posted by Glordit

Yes it's the point exactly, if you don't know the fps count of the game yet it plays the same on 2 PC's with different hardware at the same settings, what's the point of calling one better than the other.

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10fps might not be that perceptible at high rates but if you end up in a scenario where you're oscillating between 30-40fps from one CPU to the next you will definitely notice it. And after some time your average fps on any rig are going too come down to that level eventually - Crysis3 will strain any GPU on the market.

Intel is better for gaming in the long run, if you are not going to upgrade often. The newer games will start to utilize more cores though so AMD sometimes catches up, especially when you are streaming a game.

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Originally Posted by The Joker

Ok so as you guys know I am into the hardware scene. Love everything tech related :love:
But for a few years now I've been getting pissed off with people claiming they can tell the difference between Intel and AMD while gaming and that Intel is def better. Now I am sorry but I own a i7 3930K, i7 3770K and 2x AMD FX8350 machines. I game on all of them and I usually share cards between them (7970 Matrix, 680, Titan, 7870 cf, 660ti sli). I can not tell the difference between them. They only time I see a difference is when I benchmark or while running fraps.

I was at a AMD conference a few years back and they had some of the top guys from AMD talking about their hardware. According to them CPUs are not as important today as what they use to be. Games rely more on GPUs and only a fraction on CPUs, the only games today that i still see relying heavily on CPUs is MMOs. In my own personal experiments, I had a duo core intel but running a AMD 5970 and i was able to run the game at full gfx and during that time i monitored CPU usage which was nominal at best, most of the performance came from the GPU.

So its it viable still to fork out the money for a new intel (which always seems to come with a new socket) imo no. As long as u have 8gb memory and a good graphics u will game away without noticing anything

The machines will be running the exact same hardware, only the board and cpu will differ.
Games will be set up to run the exact same settings.

So my plan is to do a blind game play test on some mates and possibly some of you guys if your keen :)

The idea is to let my mates play on each machine, machines will be hidden and they won't be able to see system specs.
After letting them play on the 4 machines they then have to tell me which machine they were playing on (Intel or Amd). I want a fairly large group, ranging from seasoned hardware nuts like myself to people that really don't care what they play on.

What do you guys think?

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Got to love it when u type up a msg and it doesnt go through...

In a nutshell, gaming is more reliant on GPU these days then CPU. Only games iv noticed where you see a noticeably difference is MMOs, they seems to rely more heavily on CPU

That is an awesome idea. I also don't really see how you can notice gaming performance differences between an Intel and AMD. I would say maybe when it comes to CPU intensive apps like Adobe Premier or aftereffect, then maybe... with a big maybe.

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Originally Posted by VegOtter

That is an awesome idea. I also don't really see how you can notice gaming performance differences between an Intel and AMD. I would say maybe when it comes to CPU intensive apps like Adobe Premier or aftereffect, then maybe... with a big maybe.

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There are some games that I know for a fact you'll be able to tell. It's in the minority though.

If indeed the heavily CPU games are in the minority then I think it's only fair/legit to actually do the test on 'mainstream / most popular' games. Digging out a game specifically because it'll run better on an Intel rig probably won't disappoint your expectations and make this test useless.

PS. This is a great idea, OP.

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Originally Posted by The Joker

Ok so as you guys know I am into the hardware scene. Love everything tech related :love:
But for a few years now I've been getting pissed off with people claiming they can tell the difference between Intel and AMD while gaming and that Intel is def better. Now I am sorry but I own a i7 3930K, i7 3770K and 2x AMD FX8350 machines. I game on all of them and I usually share cards between them (7970 Matrix, 680, Titan, 7870 cf, 660ti sli). I can not tell the difference between them. They only time I see a difference is when I benchmark or while running fraps.

The machines will be running the exact same hardware, only the board and cpu will differ.
Games will be set up to run the exact same settings.

So my plan is to do a blind game play test on some mates and possibly some of you guys if your keen :)

The idea is to let my mates play on each machine, machines will be hidden and they won't be able to see system specs.
After letting them play on the 4 machines they then have to tell me which machine they were playing on (Intel or Amd). I want a fairly large group, ranging from seasoned hardware nuts like myself to people that really don't care what they play on.

What do you guys think?

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same here i a 2600k and 8120 and if you multitask (converting video/backing up) while gaming is the only time you see a difference and that is that you wasted money on Intel sine it does not multitask while playing new games. where as my finding is that the amd has no performance dead spots or fps drops it just handles it like a boss.

what this means is that the next gen games will use all 8 cores and this means the 8 core amd's will start outperforming their previously on par rivals at that point in time.