But SOTR does not really show this. What SOTR shows is exactly the opposite, that
game build, and ram speed are more important than IPC/ processor power - to an extent. The 10850K has much lower IPC, less cache and fewer cores than a 5900X - here is SOTR. Even if I took my overclock off and ran at 4.8Ghz I would beat that 5900x at stock.
Stock 5900X w/ 3080
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The 10850K w/ a 3080
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I understand what you're trying to say, but by this logic that 5900x also can't keep up with a 3080 (it can).
Different game build on 10850K:
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I honestly think DDR5 and AMD's 3D cache are going to make a bigger difference than more IPC/Cores. Zen 3 and even Skylake are bandwidth starved -- if you feed them enough bandwidth & lower latency they scale beyond 150-200FPS for bottlenecking even the highest end cards at low resolutions. Rocket lake, for example, has a higher IPC than Skylake by about 20%, and basically ties (and even loses) some games to Skylake -- that to me shows that the current memory platform as a whole is a bottleneck. That extra processor power is just going to waste.
Exactly.
CPU Performance in games is down to optimization and how the API / abstraction is handled. We have literally a whole slew of DirectX versions worth of proof. Every time the burden is on developers to make use of what's possible and do it the right way. If they don't, it costs CPU cycles. GPU is simple, you just crunch pixel info as fast as you get it. CPU is a timing thing and it directly relates to how code is used.
For gaming, raw CPU performance was NEVER a big issue. In DirectX 11, the problem wasn't primarly the lack of CPU grunt, but the lack of threading and handling high counts of draw calls, struggling with cache coherency, scheduling, etc.. Closer to metal APIs fix this - the CPUs are still the same. Similarly, a different API can in that way also improve GPU performance on the same CPU. Why? Because there is less waiting to draw frames. The GPU and CPU are the same, and yet you get more pixels crunched, because code is executed faster early in the pipeline.
The top-down view on CPU performance in gaming based off an FPS number and an ingame counter was always flawed, and it always will be. Processing is a pipeline and the weakest link is really never in hardware - you meet specs or you don't - but in coding things proper. And yes, you can use more hardware to
mitigate the problem of shitty code, but you're not fixing anything. You're just throwing your money at a problem someone else should have fixed proper - and in many games, where the CPU efficiency is abysmal, complaints lead to improvements in due time. Especially now that the APIs
do support threading. Developers can barely get away with games choking on one thread now.
Really, for PC gaming hardware, there is one overarching trend that echoes through the past few decades: we move to a new level of mainstream performance, and lagging way behind that OR jumping way above it is just a big pile of overexpensive waste of time. Gains suffer heavily from lack of optimization for those performance levels, and with the prevalence of console ports, that has only gotten worse. New console generations determine what becomes feasible on the PC, most of the time. That even goes for the adoption of RT right now. Not Nvidia nor the PC gaming space can or will carry that on its own. VR: same rocky start for gaming, chicken-egg problems and it still remains a niche. And that technology isn't new either, has been attempted before. Even natively developed DX12 or Vulkan games are only now starting to pop up - because consoles have now adopted it, so there is an economical advantage.
Its good to recognize these facts because they place the practical use of all your upgrading in a rather different perspective. Trailing under the top-end of performance is generally the best way to go, and lagging a gen or two behind is very cost effective. Match the mainstream as long and as closely as possible, and you have the least problems, the best value for money and a good/great experience, simply because the market demands it.