What is best cpu for gaming
Best CPUs of 2020 So Far (Gaming, Workstation, Overclocking, Budget, & Disappointment)
with the new influx of CPS from both AMD
and Intel we wanted to round up all the
most recent launches from both companies
and one piece for a firm recommendation
on the best CPUs for different use cases
those use cases include best gaming
overall best budget gaming best overall
or all-around CPU best small business or
hobbyist production CPU best workstation
CPU for someone who's really using it to
make money with their computer and then
we'll be looking at most fun to
overclock and of course most
disappointed so all of this is meant to
help people who are just in the market
to buy something and maybe don't want to
consume the literal hours of content
we've released in the past few days on
CP reviews if you want in-depth really
detailed information on each CPU
individually check out the review for
the CPUs as mentioned otherwise this
will help you get a baseline for what's
going on in the market if you're out of
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description below the format here is
going to be similar to our end-of-year
roundup so the real goal is to just give
a direct recommendation on the different
types of workloads for each CPU that
means we're going to be leaving out a
lot of the more tactical really deeper
information that we've had in our
reviews so again check the reviews for
that information if any of these CPUs
interests you on an individual level
will link the recent reviews below for
the most relevant recent ones and then
in the article provided alongside this
video we'll also have links to each of
the reviews from when they were
published so this won't be as focused on
numbers but will
still includes some charts for you for
the most pertinent information and well
instead of being focused in on
presenting the data rapidly and for
someone who's interested in a roundup of
just trying to pick something we're
going to start out with some of the
newer stuff from Intel and AMD alike and
then we'll work through a couple of the
other recommendations where it's
remained CPUs from end of year last year
because not that much has changed now of
course there are new CPUs immediately on
the horizon there always are and we
won't be able to include those but at
least for now for a little while this
content will remain a useful starting
point for figuring out what CPU to buy
then you'll have to check back once more
stuff comes out later one final note
before we get started with our choices
for the best of each category some of
the data in here might be from older
reviews like some of the thread Ripper
stuff that's because we're just trying
to pull a bunch of different sources
from different points in time from our
testing from our reviews and so you
might not be able to compare all the
charts in this content to the other
charts in this content but within a
given chart you'll be able to make
direct comparisons then obviously again
the original review would be the source
for the cross comparisons within a
methodology intel's new core i5 10 600 k
is the one that we're giving best gaming
despite the 10 900k running technically
higher performance stock for gaming we
have good reasons though the first of
which is that it can achieve 1090 K
levels of performance with an easy
overclock particularly when considering
the inevitable GPU bottleneck in many
games for people who are playing with
reasonable settings that's not to
discredit the 10900 K but we'll come
back to that in a bit
the 10600 K is a genuine leap for Intel
which has been stuck for multiple
generations on unsellable i5 CPUs this
one we think redeems the i-5 line up
thanks to hyper threading in large part
and is the most compelling buy for
someone heavily focused on gaming
performance maybe even with a minor non
daily focus on things like video
production 3d modeling or similar
applications although there are 5 3600
maybe more well rounded particularly at
its price point as the main compelling
reason for that the 10 600 K is often
within 4 to 5 percent of production
level performance of the 3600 while
managing potentially significantly
higher frame rates the 3600 is plenty
capable to game
but if you really only care about gaming
and don't use workstation applications
the 10 600k makes the most sense the 10
600k combines well let's see 494 its
overclocking support discussed later and
is a good tuning base that can reach
performance levels and II can't yet
claim at least in games further
regarding the common misconception that
a and the horizon CPUs are somehow
smoother or more consistent in frame
time delivery our data doesn't support
that the 10th 600 K is higher than
average fps and also in almost all cases
out matches similarly priced rise in
CPUs for frame time consistency with
overall few excursions from the interval
and -1 our criteria for the best gaming
CPU includes price but also absolute
performance and ability to tune in this
regard the 10 600 K can achieve 10900 K
stock performance in games and it can be
tuned until both of them hit a GPU limit
so although it's always an arms race and
the 10900 k could also be overclocked at
some point for most users but not all
you'll probably hit a GPU bottleneck and
we'll talk about that more in a little
bit because there are some redeeming
factors that time 900 K anyway until
more threads are needed in games this
will be true in most cases or until the
30 atti comes out but for now we're
giving the 10 600 K our not for the best
gaming CPU particularly or especially
considering its price Intel did well to
get back in the game here but it's not
uncontested and these still has a long
way to go to compete head-to-head with
Intel for the gaming crown and it's
definitely catching up with that
regeneration so Intel's gotta really get
moving on 10 nanometer or whatever it's
next true iteration on processes in
order to try and keep the lead that it's
been able to stop gap hold for the last
few releases next up our recommendation
for best budget gaming CPU where we
might recommend the Intel i5 10 600 K
for gaming with less restrictive of a
budget or the 10900 K for the absolute
peak of FPS for the few competitively
privileged enough to really need it and
notice it we'd recommend something else
for more budget-conscious gamers the am
the horizon 330 300 X gets that
recommendation this CPU with its pricing
at $120 MSRP
is able to achieve 80 to 85% of the
performance of higher-end CPUs in most
games it's significantly better than the
$100 3100 thanks to its 4 +0 CCX
configuration rather than the 2+2 CCX
configuration of the 3100 where Kross
CCX latency affects performance so much
so that even tuning infinity fabric and
throw in better memory at the 3100 can't
make up the gap against the 3300 acts in
most of the tests that we published
previously the 3300 acts critically can
be coupled with nearly any current
generation video card without
significant bottlenecking on the cpu for
higher graphics settings this does
become less true if you care more about
low graphics high FPS competitive gaming
at which point our recommendation would
shift toward the intel parts instead if
you want more of a GPU bines though
meaning you prefer higher graphics
settings potentially higher resolutions
than 1080p although high enough graphics
at 1080p is still a bind or if you want
something where the GPU is rapidly going
to become more limiting than CPU the
3300 X makes a lot of sense as a
starting point for that approach
especially on a platform that has become
mature enough now that you're no longer
dealing with first gen rise and adopts
or BIOS challenges we've been flashing
through some of our bottleneck charts by
this point but you can check the
previous content on that for more
information on which GPUs make the most
sense to pair with a 3300 X although we
absolutely do not recommend coupling a
$1,250 xx atti with a $120 CPU
technically you could do it and get at
least half the performance in the worst
case scenarios the 2080 super is about
the peak for full performance in all the
tests that we've done so far but
something more reasonably priced makes a
lot more sense particularly because GPS
are often easier to upgrade than CPUs
anyway either way the 3300 X offers
plenty of room if you want to get more
out of it then look into our coverage on
memory tuning and Infinity fabric
overclocking for AMD Rison cpus some of
its from before the 3300 x launch but it
all applies that will get you more
mileage and increase FPS Headroom as
preparing a card with it although you
could go all the way up the stack and be
mostly fine something more price
appropriate to the $120 part probably
makes more sense just to make sure
you're not overspending on one part and
creating
too much of an imbalance as an honorable
mention will point out that the Athlon
3000 G at roughly $60 is another good
consideration for ultra budget gaming
this is mostly a stopgap measure if
you're playing simpler games with less
of a graphics slant or if you're
planning to upgrade later we've tested
this one a lot over the years so we'll
leave it as an honorable mention and
just note that you can watch our
previous content to get an idea of ideal
use cases for AMD Athlon cpus the 200 GE
wasn't interesting one in a similar spot
and the 3000 G is - it's not what we'd
call good but it can certainly get you
by if $100 is out of reach for now next
up is best overall which goes again to
the rise in 536 hundred we awarded the
3600 the same honor in our best CPUs of
2019 PS that we published friend of year
the r5 3600 maintains this title even
under direct fire from Intel's new 10
600k with the key distinction being that
the 3600 in 2020 has had some of its
viability in the mid-range gaming
installations eroded by Intel's part
that's her reasons discussed in the best
gaming section and even the best budget
game in section because the 3300 acts
takes some of the 3600 performance marks
in games where the single ccac's
configuration benefits it either way the
3600 still maintains its price and
advantage against the Intel 10 600 K it
still maintains its versatility and
production and gaming applications and
it maintains an average lead in
applications like blender premier v-ray
and similar it's not as big of a lead as
once existed in the two hundred to two
hundred and sixty dollar class but it's
still elite and it's also about $100
cheaper at $180 at the time of writing
on new AG anyway where the 10 600 K is
closer or should be closer to 280 for
anyone not as concerned about the
highest frame rates the 3600 makes the
most sense we think for saving some
money but maintaining the production
capabilities that you would lose with
the 3,300 X it's not as potentially Korb
out as the 3300 X might become in the
future and so it provides some more
reassurance for a longer lifespan that
said trying to guess at the future or
trying to future-proof a system is
mostly a fool's errand we view the 3600
as the news
any bridge this is the CPU people will
be happy to have bought in six years and
people will have a hard time parting
with it when it's time to upgrade the
price to performance was unbeatable at
launch and although it can now be beaten
in gaming performance more consistently
at a more reasonable configuration
having hyper-threading on the intel part
the gap isn't always wide enough to
justify the cost jump with a 9600 K it
was easy to recommend the 3600 instead
even though the 9600 K often held a lead
in gaming and that's because the 3600
maintained better overall frame time
consistency because specifically of its
threat advantage in some games the 3600
hangs on for another quarter and overall
best value and best all-around and it's
got the most balanced performance even
for imbalanced workloads that are gaming
oriented it's hard to beat the 3600 in
price to performance at least up until
intel's newer stuff the 10 400 came
close but it misses when paired with a
non 0 90 platform based on our knowledge
today the 10 600 K does win but it's
about $100 more expensive at the time of
writing and that's a big jump our next
category is for the best small business
and hobbyist production which we
assigned last year to the Andy our 939
50 X in light of current releases that
hasn't changed
thread rivers still offers value for the
high-end workstation users but for
people who might be hobbyist artists
editors or coders or maybe on small
businesses that work with CPU intensive
applications the 3950 X is justifiable
as a means to better enable making money
off of your work it's not as full-on of
a financial commitment as threader fur
is but it still provides a lot of the
benefits your major loss other than more
cores is in PCIe lanes and maybe in
memory bandwidth with the difference in
channeling but the high core count and
performance offers a lot for users of
popular workstation applications or
workflows at our testing we've seen the
3950 acts show expressive performance
and code compiling and windows achieving
the top ranked on the chart outside of
these significantly more expensive
threader 4 series recently we've also
noticed that the 1350 acts has dropped
from its launch price of $750 to
normally about $700
which further strengthens the argument
and nearly every other
production application we tested the
3950 access come out on top of the
processors near it in price class it's
the top and handbrake it's at the top
and compression and decompression of
workloads near price class anyway other
than threaded fur it's tied with a 10
980 axion v-ray or very close to it in
applications like Premiere and rendering
tasks and it's also the 3950 axe a firm
chart leader again behind the 3970 axe
in blender 4 cycles rendering on the cpu
with heavy scenes as a bonus the 3950
axe is capable of gaming unlike Andy's
original 16 core threaded for CPU the
3950 axe has solved many of the latency
related issues that caused problems
where some games just didn't work you
definitely shouldn't buy it for a gaming
system but if you do mostly work on a
machine and then sometimes play games
the 3950 axe is a capable performer we
see this as a good CPU choice for people
who use or hope to use their computers
to make money our next one is a natural
transition into best high-end
workstation this is for people with
thread intensive heavy production
workloads especially those who might be
more established in their money-making
endeavors the 3990 axe comes out between
our previous best CPUs piece and this
one and so it's a newcomer to the
roundup in terms of best overall value
for a production machine the 3970 axe
makes more sense
definitely but the 3990 axe does get
crown for quote best in the purest sense
of the word in a lot of the tests
although not all of them the 10 9 8 exe
and the 3125 axe were Intel's attempts
with the 3175 axe coming out much before
but our recent revisit of the Intel W 30
175 X showed it against parts like the
3990 X and we'll put that on the screen
it was rare that Intel could out match
the 3990 X and even rarer that the Intel
part and a motherboard could be bought
for anywhere near the combined price of
the thread River combination in Blattner
the 39 ND act scales cleanly and holds a
significant lead even over the 3970 X of
about 39 percent in the GN logo render
it's not as advantaged in premiere where
the cores aren't fully leveraged so it
wouldn't be our go-to choice for a video
editing machine the 3950 X splits the
difference and makes a lot more sense
there the hundred 960 X is also
in this application and is one that we
use for our video editing machines it's
also the 3990 acts somewhat truncated in
performance in the compression and
decompression 7-zip testing where the
3990 exit needs more memory bandwidth to
really make full use of its course the
CPU does however directly benefit in
applications like Kaos groups v-ray
encode compiling with chromium and a few
other tests that we've published the
biggest note is that you'll want to buy
more RAM with the threader for 3990 X
the amount will depend on your projects
and what you're doing but an hour code
compile we saw a huge hit to performance
where it fell to 200 minutes to render
when coupled with 32 gigabytes of RAM
while the 64 gigabyte solution allowed
it to finish in 22 minutes that
difference is thanks to paging out to
the drive which hurts performance the
3990 X really needs to be partnered with
other high-end parts so the CPU cost
alone isn't the only thing you're
looking at in greasing here you also
need more or faster memory depending on
your applications that you're using and
you might potentially need a faster SSD
or i/o solution if you are in a scenario
where you're going to be paging out
every now and then the best balance
would be the 39 70 X as you aren't
overspending for constrained scenarios
but the 3950 acts would be the best
price conscious fallback that still
achieves most the performance in
specific applications like premiere as I
mentioned will note that Intel's
high-frequency parts like the 9700 K and
9900 K are among the best performers in
Photoshop that specific application
still seems to like frequencies so heavy
Photoshop users might want to look
elsewhere next is most fun to overclock
the Intel Core i 9/10 900k gets our
recommendation has the most fun
overclocking CPU until Z 490 platform is
completely insane for overclocking it
has overclocking features an abundant
builds IDE has called the platform the
easiest to overclock and we've heard
similar accolades from Joe of bearded
hardware in our own experience we'd
agree with the caveat that it's not only
the easiest to tune but also the most
scalable to user experience you don't
have to be a pro like these guys to
leverage the ease of overclocking
features in Z 490 if you want something
that's good out of the box but can also
be treated like a tuning project for
days off of work we can highly recommend
the Intel eye 910 900
okay and a z4 90 bored with it we've
overclocked the ten nine hundred K both
with standard coolant and with extreme
cooling like in our video with hi cookie
where we were reaching about seven
gigahertz and the boards are supportive
of both approaches z4 ninety earmark
features include the following one is
per core hyper-threading which allows
tuning for applications that may have an
optimal count of threads for peak
performance or might enable you to
better do core binning DMI and PG
overclocking for i/o performance
increases are also present in this
version of the Intel chipset for point
number three extremely capable memory
overclocking support is a major one with
tuning upwards and beyond five thousand
megahertz for the best kits and skilled
overclockers although bios overall
depends on the vendor the z4 90 core
feature set of OC knobs is replete with
tools to research and tweak making it a
great combination for enthusiasts who
are more interested in the tuning aspect
than the baseline performance this is
sort of like a project car except it's a
project car that came fully complete and
functioning our next one is for biggest
disappointment a tradition for GN round
ups we were torn between the 10 400 and
the 10 700 K for reasons that you can
check our reviews for ultimately we
decided to give the honour to the 10 700
K that's because the 10 7rk is
positioned in a way that doesn't give it
much selling room for workstation tasks
and these now same priced 3900 X gets
you up to 12 cores instead and it
manages to win and nearly every
production workload we test it because
cores aren't everything for gaming tasks
although the 10 7rk is objectively
superior to a.m. these offerings Intel's
I own 10 600 K roughly matches it or can
be made to outmatch it meanwhile $100
higher anyone looking for the highest
framerate possible without any
compromise should be looking at the 10
900k instead the 10-7 RK fails to prove
much value as flanked between Intel's
10900 K and 10 600 K and as similarly
contested by AMD is 3900 X now finally
as we always like to do with these
pieces we also have a worst trend and
that one's going to be tone-deaf
marketing which seems like you could
mostly set phrase for just about any
worst trend at any point in time
AMD and Intel
both been guilty of tone-deaf marketing
lately AMD's side there was the sort of
almost playing a victim card in regard
to the be 550 X 570 fiasco and the whole
fracas around not supporting the 400
series motherboards for his m3 parts but
at the same time Andy put itself in that
position and he had some legitimate
technical excuses that were valid but
also and these marketing is what caused
the whole problem to begin with and
that's because Andy whether it meant to
or not and through its partners whether
they meant to or not did sort of lead
people along thinking that they'd be
able to upgrade later so that's just
what you get for taking shots at the
other guy in this case that'd be Intel
for doing something that you will
eventually do and we have a whole series
on all that if you want to learn more
about it
and they had many technical reasons that
were valid it ended up walking it back
and has new technical issues that will
emerge but at the end of the day it was
all caused by tone-deaf marketing on
Intel side Intel is so focused on having
six times more soldiers in total war
that it has also overlooked some of its
own poor marketing one of those was the
phrase that we sort of went off on on
our Intel 10 series specifications
roundup where we talked about how in top
presented that X percent of games are
single threaded doors optimized for
single thread is specifically what the
marketing text said optimized for single
thread when we pushed on that matter it
proved that it wasn't defensible and so
Intel struck that line from its PDF and
re-released a revised version so this is
another instance where marketing if not
for being challenged by technical press
or users will obviously just try to say
whatever it wants and in both scenarios
Intel and AMD have demonstrated that
they apparently seem to have maybe
numbers to back it up but they seem to
think that just marketing the product on
its merits alone isn't good enough and
both companies have to sort of tweak the
wording one way or the other to be maybe
a little bit gray area as to whether
what they're saying is even possible
for being true not just if it's true
which is normal marketing but if there's
any possibility that what they've said
can be reinforced with data and then
that I mean that's just it's just where
we are with the sort of tribal mentality
of picking a brand and defending it in
any case the the end result hopefully
will that be that both companies can
learn from their respective experiences
in the last month and hopefully focus on
revising to market instead on the
actually very strong independent merits
of each of their products in an
objective sense rather than trying to
tweak the dialogue to mislead people and
that'll bring us to the end so hopefully
that helps out with getting a handle on
the cpu situation right now there's a
ton of stuff out there we've released I
think at least some of our highest
quality content in a long time with
back-to-back really in-depth reviews of
each of the new CPUs we have follow-up
coverage we have overclocking coverage
we have live streams with liquid
nitrogen if that interests you and then
we've got recaps of those if you want
the short version so if it's been a
little while you're building the first
system and a couple of years or
something each of those content pieces
would be a great place to go once you
think you've found a CPU for maybe from
this list and want to learn more about
it and we'll point you that way so that
you can learn more about the CPU you're
potentially choosing including things
like power thermals all that stuff
thanks for watching as always if you
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