Now we all know that a good CPU is important to our PC gaming experience, The question is; How important is it really? Do you need 8 cores or will a quad core do just fine? Do you need Intel or AMD?

-- The guest author for this piece is Matthew Bush. You can find him on twitter @_Bilko_--

Well hopefully we can shed a little light on these questions with some help from WCCF's US Hardware Editor, Keith May. To test these two processors out we decided that a variety of modern titles at 1440p would be best considering that resolution is starting to become the new norm and with the FX-8370 and i5 6400 capable of overclocking we thought we'd include overclocked results as well.

To start with lets take a look at these two processors a bit:

AMDs FX-8370 is a 125w TDP 8 core CPU built on a 32nm process, features 8MB of L2 cache (split 4 ways) and 8MB of L3 cache with a base frequency of 4.0Ghz and a turbo speed of 4.3Ghz.



Intels i5 6400 is a 65w TDP quad core processor built on a 14nm process, it features 1MB of L2 cache (split 4 ways) and 6MB of L3 cache with a base frequency of 2.7Ghz and a turbo speed of 3.3Ghz.

So essentially what we have here is AMDs aging 8 core vs Intels newest quad and with them going for the the same price on Newegg and near enough to the same on Amazon this comparison seems set to be a good one.

Test Rigs

Now lets go over the test systems used here:

CPU: AMD FX-8370

Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0

Memory: 16GB G.SKILL TridentX DDR3 2400Mhz

GPU: XFX R9 Fury Triple Dissipation

OS Drive: Samsung 840 Evo 250GB

Games Drive: WD Black 2TB HDD

Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Gold 1200w

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Driver: Crimson 16.3 Beta

So there is the AMD system covered, now to the Intel platform:

CPU: Intel Core i5 6400

Motherboard: ASRock Z170 Extreme 6

Memory: 16GB G.SKILL TridentZ DDR4 3200Mhz (When CPU is at 4.6Ghz Memory is at 2800Mhz)

GPU: XFX R9 Fury Triple Dissipation

OS Drive: Crucial MX100

Games Drive: Seagate 4TB SSHD

Power Supply: Corsair AX860i

OS: Windows 10 Pro

Driver: Crimson 16.3 Beta

I'd just like to stress to everyone that this is the same GPU used in both systems,

It was shipped halfway across the world to help ensure that the results were as close as possible (and because why not?)

Intel i5 6400 And AMD FX 8370 Gaming Benchmarks - Stock Clocks

Games Tested:

Star Wars: Battlefront

Battlefield 4

Rise of the Tomb Raider

GTA V

Dirt Rally

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Batman: Arkham Origins

Fallout 4

As before all games are tested at 2560x1440 using the highest preset available. So with all that out of the way lets jump into the results and we'll start off with the CPUs at stock.

Star Wars: Battlefront

The FX-8370 is doing very well here doubling the minimum fps of the i5 and keeping a higher average fps to boot.

Battlefield 4

This one was very surprising with the FX-8370 having a huge 33fps increase over the i5 6400 in average fps.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Again there is some interesting results here with the 8370 having a lower average fps but also a higher minimum as well.

GTA V

In GTA V It appears as though the low stock speed of the 6400 hurts it here with it averaging 57 fps to the FX-8370's 68fps.

Dirt Rally

With Dirt Rally the low stock clocks of the i5 6400 are no issue with it scoring a minimum of 75fps and an average of 94fps.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Shadow of Mordor didn't seem to mind either CPU much but ultimately did prefer the i5 recording a minimum of 52fps and an average of 75fps.

Batman: Arkham Origins

In Batman: Arkham Origins the FX-8370 managed to record a higher average than the i5 but also a lower minimum as well.

Fallout 4



With Fallout 4 there really are no surprises here with the i5 6400 recording a much higher minimum fps of 49fps (vs 25fps) and a 74 fps average. Now some of these results are no doubt surprising to you as much as they were to us, until the day before this article went up we didn't know what the results were and needless to say I'm quite impressed with how both of these CPUs are holding up. With the stock results out of the way let's see if overclocking these two processors brings about any real change.

Intel i5 6400 And AMD FX 8370 Gaming Benchmarks - Overclocked Results

As before the i5 6400 is running at 4.6Ghz with DDR4 2800Mhz Memory and the FX-8370 is running at 4.8Ghz with DDR3 2400Mhz Memory.

Star Wars: Battlefront

Overclocking the i5 brought about much higher minimums than before (42fps stock vs 78fps overclocked) and the average fps rose by 3, for the FX-8370 nothing changed at all, in fact it was 2 fps slower for the minimum and average fps which suggests that even at stock the 8370 was in fact GPU bound.

Battlefield 4

For Battlefield 4 both CPUs seen an increase to both minimum and average fps with the i5 gaining 3 fps minimum and 6fps average and the FX going from a 56fps minimum to 65fps and from 99fps average to 100fps.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

With Rise of the Tomb Raider overclocking didn't seem to help much for either CPU with the i5 gaining 3 fps on the minimum and 2 fps average and the FX recording the same minimum fps and raising 2fps for the average.

GTA V

In GTA V the i5 didn't seem to benefit from an overclock with the minimum fps staying the same and the average fps raising by 2, the FX on the other hand nearly doubled its minimum fps and gained 7 fps average.

Dirt Rally

With an overclock the i5 gained 6 fps on the minimum and 2fps average and maintained its lead over the FX-8370 which gained 5fps and 1fps for the minimum and average respectively.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

For Shadow of Mordor the i5 6400 gained 6 fps minimum and 3fps average with an overclock and the FX-8370 gained 2fps minimum and the average stayed at 77fps.

Batman: Arkham Origins

In Arkham Origins the i5 6400 saw a 9fps increase to the minimum fps and a 3fps increase to the average but FX-8370 saw an impressive 35fps increase for minimum fps going from 61fps to 96fps.

Fallout 4

With Fallout 4 the i5 increased its lead with a 5fps increase to the minimum and a 1fps increase to the average, the FX saw a 6fps increase for minimum and a 5fps increase for the average.

Conclusion

Well, there you have it.

As I mentioned earlier, some of these results are quite surprising and show that at least at 1440p the FX series CPUs can still provide a decent gaming experience on quite a few games, Intels i5 6400 put up a rather impressive showing as well considering its overclocking ability.

Now I can can hear you saying “But what about 1080p? It's still what most people use!”

Well in regards to that I am working on a follow-up to this article with 1080p and 1440p results from a wider variety of games so that'll be one to look forward to.

If you have any questions the feel free to ask in the comments below.