How Many CPU Cores Do I Need For Gaming 2019?
By Samuel Stewart


Indeed, a CPU’s performance may vary greatly based on its specs, technology, and what is required from it by a certain game. And over the past decade, one particular specification had taken precedence over every other: the core count.
So, how many cores does a gaming CPU need?

What Is a CPU Core?


In layman’s terms, the core count determines how many tasks a CPU can handle simultaneously. Back in the day, single-core CPUs weren’t actually capable of multi-tasking. Rather, they would quickly cycle and switch between priority tasks.
This changed with the release of Athlon and Pentium processors made by AMD and Intel respectively, which were the first multi-core processors to hit the mainstream market. It didn’t take long for core counts to inflate to 4, 8, and even 16 that we can see today with AMD’s latest Ryzen series.

Multi-Core CPU Gaming Performance
In truth, there tends to be a greater disparity between single-core and dual-core performance than between the performance of dual-cores and quad-cores. This was the case with almost every CPU up until relatively recently, mainly because most games were made to run using a single CPU core.
Today, the situation has changed drastically. More and more games can now take advantage of the high core/thread count available with modern CPUs, thus leading to noticeably better performance with processors that have 4 or more cores.
Ultimately, quad-core CPUs tend to be the sweet spot at the moment, with lower core counts leading to noticeably worse performance while those with higher core counts perform only slightly better.

Physical Cores vs Logical Cores
Another great innovation on Intel’s part was their introduction of hyperthreading technology which allowed a single physical CPU core to function as two “logical” cores, or threads, as they’re more commonly referred to. Soon after, AMD presented multithreading, which is their own take on the aforementioned technology and functions mostly on the same principle.
Without going into the technicalities, let us get straight to the important question: is a “logical core” as good as a physical one? The answer is most definitely yes.

Take a look at the benchmark below:


As you can see, a hyperthreaded dual-core processor’s performance is only barely lagging behind that of a true quad-core one. As a matter of fact, 7th generation i3 CPUs (which are hyperthreaded dual-cores) were shown to actually perform slightly better than 6th generation i5 CPUs which had four physical cores.
However, seeing as all gaming CPUs today have been bumped up to a true quad-core status, including the 8th generation i3 models, hyperthreading has lost the spotlight to a degree. But still, you should keep the above in mind if you’re building a budget CPU and you’ve got your sights on a 7th gen i3.

It’s Not All About the Cores!
On-paper specifications don’t have to mean a thing.
A perfect example of this was AMD’s FX-series of CPUs which were released in 2011 and 2012 and relied solely on raw power and high core counts in order to compete with Intel. As years went by, FX CPUs stagnated technologically while Intel kept improving their Core series generation after generation.
The end result? You had hyper-threaded dual-core CPUs (such as the above mentioned 7th gen i3) which greatly outperformed AMD FX CPUs which had as many as 6 or 8 physical cores. The very same can be said for clock speeds.
The moral of the story? Always check the benchmarks!

Bottlenecking
You may or may not be familiar with the term “bottlenecking”, so what does it mean? In essence, it represents whether your CPU can keep up with the GPU. If not, then it will limit the GPUs maximum possible performance.

How to see if a CPU will bottleneck a GPU? Unfortunately, there is no reliable way to pinpoint exactly how compatible a specific CPU would be with a specific GPU, but a good rule of thumb to follow would be: i3/Ryzen 3 for mid-range PCs and i5/Ryzen 5 for the more powerful PCs. Any beefier CPUs are unnecessary unless you plan on running a multi-GPU machine.

Conclusion
Up until recently, we would have advised giving dual-core CPUs a fair chance, but seeing as even the cheapest gaming CPUs come with four physical cores now, there would be little point in skimping on them since the only real dual-cores you can get are simply not intended for gaming and are likely to heavily bottleneck any decent GPU.

So, the bottom line is, do not settle for anything less than four cores in a gaming PC. That way, you will get the best performance and the most future-proof solution. Only deviate from this rule if you’re building a budget gaming PC, but in that case, be sure that you don’t get a graphics card too powerful for it to handle.

Short Answer
All of the new gaming CPUs come with a minimum of four cores, while only the more dated and non-gaming CPUs still have two or fewer cores. Furthermore, when it comes to gaming, quad-core CPUs are ideal at the moment since they are the most affordable and their performance lags only by a split hair behind the CPUs with higher core counts.

How Much VRAM Do I Need For Gaming In 2019?
By Samuel Stewart



VRAM Stands for "Video Random Access Memory" and is pronounced "V-RAM." System RAM is great for loading and running programs, but when you need graphics power, VRAM is where it's at. But just like clock speeds, CUDA core/Stream processor counts, and other common spec sheet entries.

VRAM does not differ fundamentally from the “regular” RAM that your PC uses, at least not functionality-wise. It is built directly into your graphics card, and it uses faster types of RAM such as GDDR5, GDDR5X, HBM2, and GDDR6.

The function is pretty much identical: it stores relevant data (in this case, graphics data) so that the graphics processor (GPU) can access it more quickly when it needs to.

Graphics Settings VRAM Usage


While nearly every setting will take up a certain amount of RAM, but the most demanding ones are:
1. Rendering resolution
2. Texture quality
3. LOD distance
4. Certain types of anti-aliasing such as TXAA or MSAA

Today, the rendering resolution is the most important thing to consider. Textures and LOD distances used to be a rather big deal, but they aren’t something that you need to worry about when getting a graphics card today.

The same could be said for anti-aliasing, as it is slowly becoming less relevant due to the increasingly higher resolutions of gaming monitors.

How Much VRAM Do I Need?
As stated above, the resolution is the main factor to consider. This is what you should generally go by:

720p – 2GB
1080p – 4GB
1440p – 6-8GB
2160p – 8-12GB

Of course, this is assuming that you want to run the latest games with relatively high settings. In truth, you can manage even 4K with just 4GB of VRAM, but keep in mind: what’s “just enough” today will definitely not be enough tomorrow, so plan for the future.





Conclusion
Once again, remember that the above is just a generalization. Any GPU with 4GB of VRAM should be able to handle modern games at any resolution, albeit with some settings tweaking, of course. Needless to say, there is no way to be sure how a certain graphics card will perform with some games without checking out some reliable benchmarks.

But, all in all, we do recommend prioritizing graphics cards with greater VRAM capacity i.e. 6GB and up, mainly because of future-proofing.

Short Answer
Today, 4GB of VRAM is more than enough for 1080p gaming. However, if you’re planning on gaming in QHD and UHD resolutions any time soon, going with 8GB is the safer bet.

This post has been edited by pandera999: Jun 10 2019, 10:02 AM