AMD vs NV (290 vs 780): CPU bottleneck BF4

[Erenhardt]

The proper conclusion imo is that NVidia drivers scales best on multicore processors that offer at least four threads, whether dual core with hyperthreading, or an actual quad core assuming the actual game can take advantage of those threads.. Processors with eight threads are just extra gravy, and only a select few games can use that processing power..

AMD drivers on the other hand seem to have difficulty going beyond two threads. They still scale, but not to the extent that NVidia drivers do.

The actual game matters a great deal as well. Some games like Rome Total War II or StarCraft 2 do not scale beyond two threads whatsoever. However, most games these days are trending towards at least quad core support, as that's where the technology is heading.

If developers cannot multithread their games, they will go out of business as the next gen consoles rely heavily on multithreading for performance.

Again the conclusion in that review was that nvidia cards need more than 2 threads to work, while amd cards work good with dualcore CPU

 

[el etro]

I'm thinking about a new gpu. for AMD speaks mantle and cheaper, for NV gsync (this upcoming asus 1440p screen sounds interesting) and maybe as said above better MT support.

The price craziness has not stopped for r9 cards. Go GTX 780.

Your processor is sightly slower than a i7-2600 at 3Ghz, but can hold the GTX 780.

 

[el etro]

Again the conclusion in that review was that nvidia cards need more than 2 threads to work, while amd cards work good with dualcore CPU

This test shows Nvidia card doing a little better with weaker processors.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-scaling-bottleneck,3471-12.html

 

[Carfax83]

Again the conclusion in that review was that nvidia cards need more than 2 threads to work, while amd cards work good with dualcore CPU

Thats an oversimplification. NVidia drivers don't need more than two threads to work, it's just that they perform much better with at least four threads. AMD drivers on the other hand seem to scale exceptionally well on two threads, but poorly with more than two threads.

The question is, what does this mean for the PC gamer? In my opinion, this trend means that since both games and CPUs are becoming more and more multithreaded, NVidia is the safer bet for avoiding becoming CPU limited, as their drivers are more optimized for multicore processors.

Mantle might shake things up a bit, but since I don't think Mantle is a serious long term solution for PC gaming (too many strikes against it), it's impact is likely to be very limited.