For games the single core speed is most important still right? As a gamer, why would I be excited about a cpu that has the same clockspeed as my overclocked 8 year old 2600k?
Serious question!
My 2600k is overlocked @ 4.5 ghz, so I guess I mean frequency ?
There is IPC (Instructions per cycle) and clock rate (your GHz).
So basically your computing power is IPC x clock rate x cores.
So a high IPC at a low clock rate can be better than a low IPC at a high clock rate.
Usally modern CPU have a higher IPC and the same or similar Clock rate. (Best is if you can raise both)
Usally high clock rate means high energy consumption, less energy efficiency and more heat. So your CPU is harder to cool and your energy bill is higher.
Your 2600x has a lower core count than the follow up model which is good for multithreading.
Games usally are bad at multithreading so they prefer to run on one or two cores of your CPU. Also this goes for most single player games and it seems like this is slowly changing in the gaming industry.
Star citizen wants to rely on more cores and already does. Also multithreading still usally depends on one main thread which all other threads speed depends on.
It's like having a motorway which gets reduced to a single lane every couple of kilometres. So you still want the highest possible speed on that lane (IPC and clock rate)
This is oversimplified why gamers prefer(ed) Intel, as Intel had a high IPC and clock rate but low core count. (As stated this is currently shifting in the gaming industry)
www.digitaltrends.com
