Importance of Single-Core Performance for Gamers 🎮

Key findings:

Single-core performance refers to the maximum capability of a single core in a CPU 🖥️.

Most games don't efficiently take advantage of multiple CPU cores due to the complexity of splitting workloads ⚙️.

While single-core performance is critical for gaming PCs, game engines are improving to utilize more cores effectively 🚀.

Nowadays, both gaming consoles and PCs feature multi-core CPUs, but there’s still a lot of talk about “single-core performance” and its impact on running a game 🕹️. If you’ve been wondering what this means or why it’s so important, I’ll explain it to you in a simple and clear way.

What is single-core performance? 🤔💡

Modern CPUs come with multiple “cores.” A core is basically a complete, stand-alone processor. So a modern CPU actually has multiple CPUs inside it. When we talk about single core performance, we are referring to the best possible performance that can be obtained from a core of that CPU operating at its maximum potential. 🏎️💨

The software generates “threads,” and each of these is processed by a separate core. Some processors can even work on multiple threads at the same time, thanks to technologies such as hyperthreadingFor example, if you're rendering a video project in something like Adobe Premiere, the rendering workload can be split across multiple threads. 🎥✨

If you have a CPU that can process 12 threads, you'll get that amount. If your CPU can handle 100 threads, you'll get that amount. This ensures that the CPU is utilized to its fullest potential and you get the highest possible performance. 🚀💻

However, if all CPU cores are active, their individual performance is not as fast as it could be on their own. This is because running all cores under load increases heat and power usage. 🔥⚡

So the cores run at lower clock speeds to compensate. Still, you get a lot more performance than just running everything on a single core at a higher clock speed, so the trade-off is worth it. ⚖️👌

🎮 Did you know that most games don't take full advantage of all the cores in your processor? 🤔

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The thing is, not all software can be divided so neatly into multiple threads. With jobs like offline graphics rendering or video conversion, it's easy to divide the work for each CPU core. However, games don't have this kind of workload. 🎮

A game might have one thread for physics, another for AI, one to run a specific simulation in the open world, another to help the GPU with ray tracing, etc. Games have been notoriously difficult to “thread” in such a way that they can utilize many cores. 🧩 That’s why gaming PCs have been behind the mainstream race for quite some time.

If you just want to play video games, you don't need a lot of cores. Nowadays, the sweet spot seems to be six to eight, which makes sense since all major consoles have eight-core CPUs and that's what developers are coding for. 🎮💻

🎮 The main thread is the common denominator 🧵

So what's the problem with single-core performance? 🤔 In most games, there is a core thread that acts as the backbone of the game. It runs the main logic and processes of the game, and is responsible for distributing work to other subordinate threads. In other words, there is a thread that the other threads in the game have to wait for before they can do their work. 🕒

Therefore, the fastest game performance cannot exceed the speed at which this main thread can run. When we say that a game is “CPU limited” or that there is a “CPU bottleneck,” it is usually because this main software thread is limited by the highest possible performance on a single thread on a given CPU. 🚀

Some CPUs are designed for threads

🎮 Do you think that buying the most expensive CPU is the best option for your games? 🤔 That's not always the case! Even if your budget allows you to choose the most expensive one, it doesn't mean that it's the best for gaming. CPUs with many cores usually have lower performance per core compared to cheaper models in the same line. 🤑

These CPUs are designed for software that can distribute work evenly across all cores. In these cases, they do outperform the other options. But be careful, because this also means that each individual core does not reach the same levels of performance. 🚀

Now, this isn't always the case. If two CPUs have the same boost clock frequency on a single core, even with different core counts, the performance per core should be similar. 💡

So for a PC that you're going to use primarily for gaming, you don't need a 24-core CPU. An eight- or twelve-core CPU, but with high performance and speed, is more than enough. 🖥️👌

Things are changing for games

🔥 While single-core performance is still key for gaming, things are changing! 🎮 Game engines are now taking advantage of more cores, and developers are finding clever ways to distribute the workload across available CPU cores. 📈

For example, Bethesda with his Doom Eternal has shown that does not depend on a single thread of work central processor that can stop everything. 🚀 Having a large amount of CPU cache is becoming another crucial factor for gaming CPUs. This is clearly seen in AMD's successful 3D V-cache gaming CPUs. 🏆

At this point, I wouldn't recommend buying a CPU with more than eight cores if your primary goal is gaming 🎮. However, in the future, we're likely to see games that can take advantage of more cores 🖥️. This will allow the main thread to be split into more threads, preventing a single core from being overloaded to the limit 🚀.