CPU Performance

By default the Intel Cadre i7-3770K processor comes clocked at 3.5GHz. Right abroad we found that reducing the clock speed resulted in a considerable drop in frame rates. There was a 14% drop in functioning when going from 3.5GHz to 3GHz so an fifty-fifty bigger 19% drop from 3GHz to ii.5GHz.

Naturally, we felt that overclocking the Core i7-3770K would lead to increased functioning and assist us unlock the true potential of the GTX Titan. However this was not the case, as the i7-3770K clocked at 4.5GHz was merely 5% faster than the standard 3.5GHz configuration.

What'southward more surprising is that despite appearing very CPU bound, SimCity only used four cores. While monitoring CPU utilization we observed it was generally depression at around 20%. If the game was fully utilizing four cores, the utilization of the i7-3770K should have been around 50%, simply it was less than half that.

The AMD FX-8350 comes clocked at 4GHz and at that speed it was much slower than the Core i7-3770K. Overclocking the FX-3850 to 4.5GHz was necessary to attain 40fps, and then this suggests that AMD users are best off dabbling in a fiddling overclocking.

Yet still, we found CPU utilization to be rather low. Of the three to four cores that the game was using we simply saw ~70% utilization per cadre.

The Core i7-3960X was the fastest processor tested averaging 44fps, while the i7-3930K and i7-3770K were a close 2nd with 43fps. The Cadre i5 processors performed exceptionally well equally the i5-3570K averaged 41fps and the i5-3470 39fps. The fastest AMD processor tested was the FX-8350 which averaged 36fps, while the FX-4320 was just slightly faster than the old Core i7 920.

Those using older FX processors such every bit the FX-8150 or even a Phenom 2, including the X6 1100T, are going to have a actually difficult fourth dimension afterwards a few hours of playing, equally larger cities bring them to their knees. Dual-core processors are fairly useless and even the Core i3-3220 was express to just 23fps.