Ask GN 38: Frequency & Cores, Xeon vs. i7 for Gaming, Threats to Intel

By Steve Burke Published December 19, 2016 at 10:00 am

Hardware

We’re still cranking through content as we roll into the weekend’s holiday, and that’s not going to stop. We’ll be posting on the 25th, as we do each year, and I’ll likely be working on server upgrades. It’s somewhat of a Christmas tradition for GN, it seems.

But until that time, we’ve still got a solid week of production to cut through. This week starts off with the usual Ask GN episode, now #38, and will briefly highlight advantages of the Xeon or i7 CPUs in different use cases, frequency and core count discussion, and threats to Intel’s dominance in the computing world.

We’ll have a new PC build article going live within the next day, too. That’ll feature a few sales for Christmas, so be sure to check that guide. There’ll be a few fairly big ones.

Episode below. Timestamps below that.

Timestamps:

00:44 InSight Show: (Paraphrase) At a top-level, how is hyperthreading actually added to a chip? Is this a physical switch in the die? A microcode toggle? Something else?

1:48 InSight Show: "How does Hyperthreading affect the lifespan (as in still working for new games without much compromise) of a cpu. How does for example an i7-2600k compare to the i5-6600k? I own a few older hyperthreaded i3´s and noticed how well they run, even an old hyperthreaded g9600 could run games at 4k 60fps with a gtx 1080 without many noticeable differences to my i7-6700k."

03:28 DAVID DOUILLET: "What do you think about the iGpu deal between Intel & AMD?"

04:11 RepsUp100: "Do you recommend Xeon CPUs for gaming? They are fairly cheap to get off ebay."

06:38 Rickie Cheong: "if AMD's Zen will flop,do you think that Intel would jack up their prices?"

08:37 Pixelous: "Dear GN: i overclocked my 6700k to 4.5 ghz with 1.35 v core and when I start a monitoring Program like cpu z the voltage seems to go up all the way to 1.4v under load but when i use cpuID it is constant at 1.60v I double checked the bios settings and the voltage is set at 1.350v. can you help me with my misunderstanding with this?"

10:59 smokeydops: "For GN: What's your guys take on FDM / 3D Printers? I predict a slide we see at the New Horizons event will include a red-black AMD branded brackets around a processor sample, and these were 3D Printed. I've no doubt a R&D company would be using 3D printers, but how about you guys? Myself, I'm making a PC case with them..."

12:46 WhoeverThatGuyIs: "Sup Steve? It's been a while. Anyways, I installed this newest NVIDIA driver and it "optimized" all my neatly tuned graphics settings. How do I "optimize" your hairstyle into cornrows?"

Host: Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke
Video: Andrew “ColossalCake” Coleman

Ask GN

Steve Burke

Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. It was ugly. I also had people who were typing apostrophes into the address bar - sigh. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'"

First world problems, Steve. First world problems.