My Haswell (4) v. Gulftown (6) Gaming Rigs on BF3

[AMD Die Hard]

I have the following two gaming systems side by side in my basement:

Proc: i7 970 Gulftown hexacore
Mobo: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
Mem: 24GB DDR3 1333
HD: OCZ Vertex 4 256GB
Vid: EVGA 680GTX
Monitor: Asus VG248 24" 144Hz
OS: Win7 64 Pro

and

Proc: i7 4770K Haswell quadcore
Mobo: Asus z87 Sabertooth
Mem: 16GB 1866
HD: Samsung 840 Pro 512GB
Vid: EVGA 780GTX Superclocked
Monitor Acer 274H 27" 120Hz
OS: Win8 64 Pro


Me and my buddy sit next to each other and play BF3 every Friday night. Both systems scream. I noticed, with BF3's ingame FRAPS, that with settings of 1920X1080 ULTRA, the Haswell system runs around 80 FPS in full combat and the Gulftown runs at 60 FPS. Both systems burst well over 110 FPS.

More noticeable is the difference between the monitors. The Asus has much better brilliance in colors. Especially yellow. Maybe I need to tune the color on the Acer, they are both stock settings.

Real world usage gave a 33% increase from Gulftown to Haswell. However, both of these systems are so fast that it practically doesn't make any difference. In regular usage, you couldn't tell them apart. In gaming, the difference is too slight to notice. They are both more than adequate for a high level of play.

Nevertheless, I play on the 4770 and my buddy plays on the 970

 

[Soulkeeper]

looks like a nice setup
Makes me wish I had friends that'd come over to game.
I havn't done that in maybe 8yrs now
I've got 4 gaming systems that just sit around and collect dust ...
I'd trade hardware for friendship if I could.

 

[Riek]

I have the following two gaming systems side by side in my basement:

Proc: i7 970 Gulftown hexacore
Mobo: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
Mem: 24GB DDR3 1333
HD: OCZ Vertex 4 256GB
Vid: EVGA 680GTX
Monitor: Asus VG248 24" 144Hz
OS: Win7 64 Pro

and

Proc: i7 4770K Haswell quadcore
Mobo: Asus z87 Sabertooth
Mem: 16GB 1866
HD: Samsung 840 Pro 512GB
Vid: EVGA 780GTX Superclocked
Monitor Acer 274H 27" 120Hz
OS: Win8 64 Pro


Me and my buddy sit next to each other and play BF3 every Friday night. Both systems scream. I noticed, with BF3's ingame FRAPS, that with settings of 1920X1080 ULTRA, the Haswell system runs around 80 FPS in full combat and the Gulftown runs at 60 FPS. Both systems burst well over 110 FPS.

More noticeable is the difference between the monitors. The Asus has much better brilliance in colors. Especially yellow. Maybe I need to tune the color on the Acer, they are both stock settings.

Real world usage gave a 33% increase from Gulftown to Haswell. However, both of these systems are so fast that it practically doesn't make any difference. In regular usage, you couldn't tell them apart. In gaming, the difference is too slight to notice. They are both more than adequate for a high level of play.

Nevertheless, I play on the 4770 and my buddy plays on the 970

Are you sure the difference is due to the cpu's and not the difference in gpu's? not that ir really matters though.

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

I'd trade hardware for friendship if I could.

I'll be your freeeend Soulkeeper <3

OP definitely has a sweet setup to game side by side with a friend. Nothing quite like gaming on a LAN when playing team games.

 

[UaVaj]

it's gpu that set the system apart. at 1920x1080. difference between 780 n 680 in bf3 is 20fps. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_780/8.html

one thing for sure - neither cpu is at max.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

its cool you're giving us this input, but at the same time a lot of things are missing

1. what are the CPUs clocked at? So far we might only be able to infer you have them at stock which would be i7 970 @ 3.2GHz vs. i7 4770K @ 3.5GHz, although average overclocks on each would likely preserve that ~300MHz advantage for the 4770K. At any rate, its still important to know the difference.

2. did you test them with the same GPU? If you're running Ultra, you're going to be GPU limited quite often, and the speed of a 780 against the 680 can easily make up the difference in performance you're seeing:

here we can see a similar 20fps difference, but with the only difference in the tested platform being the GPU, so from that information and what you've given us we could infer that your CPUs are performing identically for BF3, its just the GPUs that are the difference, and that anyone still rocking an i7 970 or better would be fine just upgrading their GPU if their concern is gaming performance

 

[Tsavo]

More noticeable is the difference between the monitors. The Asus has much better brilliance in colors. Especially yellow. Maybe I need to tune the color on the Acer, they are both stock settings.

I won't address the CPU stuff...but both of those panels are TN-based. Even going entry-level Dell IPS (2312HM and 2412M like I have) will instantly make your gaming that much more enjoyable.

 

[beginner99]

I won't address the CPU stuff...but both of those panels are TN-based. Even going entry-level Dell IPS (2312HM and 2412M like I have) will instantly make your gaming that much more enjoyable.

And what about input lag? Thats my main reason i have not updated my display. I have an old Samsung that is basically king in that area. For me it made a very noticeable difference tunning vsync off.

 

[2is]

This is hardly a comparison between two different processors. It's a comparison between two almost completely different systems, which makes it a touch meaningless.

The title wouldn't have been any less accurate if it read GTX 680 vs 780 in BF3

 

[inf64]

Like bunnyfubbles noticed, i7 970 is 3.2Ghz chip that can clock up to 3.46Ghz in less threaded workloads. On the other hand, 4700K is 3.5Ghz chip that almost always runs at near maximum Turbo speeds no matter what (think 3.7-3.9Ghz for fully threaded workloads and 3.9Ghz for less threaded and ST ones). So in the end you will have something like 3.3Ghz on older gulftown vs 3.8Ghz on newest Haswell. That's ~15% difference and the rest is uarchitecure improvement that is noticed in this workload (so from Westmere to Haswell around ~16%).

edit:2is noted that gfx cards are different. This alone makes the comparison meaningless (my fail I haven't noticed it lol).

 

[Pandamonia]

I have the following two gaming systems side by side in my basement:

Proc: i7 970 Gulftown hexacore
Mobo: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
Mem: 24GB DDR3 1333
HD: OCZ Vertex 4 256GB
Vid: EVGA 680GTX
Monitor: Asus VG248 24" 144Hz
OS: Win7 64 Pro

and

Proc: i7 4770K Haswell quadcore
Mobo: Asus z87 Sabertooth
Mem: 16GB 1866
HD: Samsung 840 Pro 512GB
Vid: EVGA 780GTX Superclocked
Monitor Acer 274H 27" 120Hz
OS: Win8 64 Pro


Me and my buddy sit next to each other and play BF3 every Friday night. Both systems scream. I noticed, with BF3's ingame FRAPS, that with settings of 1920X1080 ULTRA, the Haswell system runs around 80 FPS in full combat and the Gulftown runs at 60 FPS. Both systems burst well over 110 FPS.

More noticeable is the difference between the monitors. The Asus has much better brilliance in colors. Especially yellow. Maybe I need to tune the color on the Acer, they are both stock settings.

Real world usage gave a 33% increase from Gulftown to Haswell. However, both of these systems are so fast that it practically doesn't make any difference. In regular usage, you couldn't tell them apart. In gaming, the difference is too slight to notice. They are both more than adequate for a high level of play.

Nevertheless, I play on the 4770 and my buddy plays on the 970

GPU limited. Lol.

 

[Yuriman]

edit:2is noted that gfx cards are different. This alone makes the comparison meaningless (my fail I haven't noticed it lol).

In a sense, yeah, but we can see that a Gulftown if still more than adequate for his needs.

 

[guskline]

AMD Die haed: Thanks for your post! You have two top end gaming rigs. I bet most of the fps difference is the gpu, not the cpu. Here is the link to ANand's Benchmark section comparison of the GTX680 vs the GTX780 (stock not even superclocked):
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/772?vs=827

Notice that with the same processor the 780 has a significant gain on the 680. I'm sure the Haswell 4770k doesn't "hurt" but I'm not sure that it is the difference. Why don't you switch the gpus and see what the 780 would do in your Gulftown hexacore?

 

[Eureka]

And what about input lag? Thats my main reason i have not updated my display. I have an old Samsung that is basically king in that area. For me it made a very noticeable difference tunning vsync off.

If you are sensitive to input lag, then it is noticeable in the IPS/PVA panels. I never noticed mine except in CS and BF3 TDM. It's a small difference but for me it's enough to make the switch to a 120 Hz screen.

If you want better screen quality, you can go with the 120 Hz Samsung screens. The Samsungs have the best screen quality (and glossy screens too), but even then it's still a bit pale compared to my Ultrasharp 2407WFP, and it's got a little bit more lag than the Asus screens. The 144Hz Asus screen is matte but there are gloss mods that you can get for slightly better screen quality.

There are also 1440p IPS screens that people have claimed to overclocked to 120 Hz, but you have to do the legwork on those.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Please use the same CPU clock speeds when testing for* some kind of basis.. use this idea when doing comparisons with all other aspects when comparing

*correction

 

[Edrick]

Different RAM speeds
Different SSDs
Different GPUs

So what exactly is the purpose of this thread?

 

[2is]

Different RAM speeds
Different SSDs
Different GPUs

So what exactly is the purpose of this thread?

That two computers, both with good processors and video cards can game and the one with a better CPU paired with a better GPU can do it even better! I for one am shocked at the results

 

[guskline]

A little kindness goes a long way. I'll suggest to the OP that since both of his rigs use Nvidia cards, the easiest thing to do is run both rigs with the GTX680 and same monitor and record the speeds in various games and then run both rigs with the GTX780 OC and same monitor and record the speeds. Then you might get a little better idea of the effect of the Gulftown vs the Haswell.

 

[moonbogg]

it's gpu that set the system apart. at 1920x1080. difference between 780 n 680 in bf3 is 20fps. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_780/8.html

one thing for sure - neither cpu is at max.

You sure? My 3930k@4.3 dips to the low 50's with two GTX670s @ 1080p.

 

[Makaveli]

A little kindness goes a long way. I'll suggest to the OP that since both of his rigs use Nvidia cards, the easiest thing to do is run both rigs with the GTX680 and same monitor and record the speeds in various games and then run both rigs with the GTX780 OC and same monitor and record the speeds. Then you might get a little better idea of the effect of the Gulftown vs the Haswell.

Agreed with this.

The test as is only shows the difference between gpu's.

 

[Concillian]

Even though there are differences in hardware, the following statement stands out to me:

both of these systems are so fast that it practically doesn't make any difference. In regular usage, you couldn't tell them apart. In gaming, the difference is too slight to notice.

20 FPS difference...
can't tell them apart...

Take note of this. Sometimes faster is better, sometimes faster just wastes money. Obviously there are or will be games that challenge these systems more and reveal differences, but for BF3 it is interesting to note where the limit of perception is. Whether the FPS difference is due to CPU or GPU is irrelevant to this observation. Just that 20 FPS makes little to no difference to what is perceived is extremely interesting.

 

[bryanW1995]

looks like a nice setup
Makes me wish I had friends that'd come over to game.
I havn't done that in maybe 8yrs now
I've got 4 gaming systems that just sit around and collect dust ...
I'd trade hardware for friendship if I could.

I'll be your friend!

 

[UaVaj]

Even though there are differences in hardware, the following statement stands out to me:

20 FPS difference...
can't tell them apart...

Take note of this. Sometimes faster is better, sometimes faster just wastes money. Obviously there are or will be games that challenge these systems more and reveal differences, but for BF3 it is interesting to note where the limit of perception is. Whether the FPS difference is due to CPU or GPU is irrelevant to this observation. Just that 20 FPS makes little to no difference to what is perceived is extremely interesting.

once you get to 60fps (30fps for most, 45fps for some, 60fps for few). 80fps does not matter.
only that 2% who are ultra ultra sensitive can tell the difference at 80fps.

 

[VirtualLarry]

looks like a nice setup
Makes me wish I had friends that'd come over to game.
I havn't done that in maybe 8yrs now
I've got 4 gaming systems that just sit around and collect dust ...
I'd trade hardware for friendship if I could.

I used to go to LAN parties at a friends house in the past. When I got my own place, I bought three identical desks and chairs, and some identical gaming rigs, so my buddies could come over and game. Sadly, that never really happened.

So I know how you feel.

 

[aigomorla]

Real world usage gave a 33% increase from Gulftown to Haswell. However, both of these systems are so fast that it practically doesn't make any difference. In regular usage, you couldn't tell them apart. In gaming, the difference is too slight to notice. They are both more than adequate for a high level of play.

which again makes me a sad panda..
And can i whine a bit more about no upgrade?

one thing for sure - neither cpu is at max.

I totally agree... hence why us gulftown users are seriously stuck in a freaken VOID.

So what exactly is the purpose of this thread?

he's come to the conclusion that i had ran into 1.5 yrs ago...
we are fubarded if we have gulftown and the itch to upgrade.

Cpu is not a big performance boost as we had from
quad => hex.

There is no Hex -> Octo
There is no big performance boost on PCI-E 2.0 -> PCI-E 3.0
There is no noticable difference in gaming on SSD on a SATA2 vs SATA3.
Everything is still GPU limited.

We have been stuck here collecting dust since everyone was playing Balarina on Sandy.