I'm really into older games like Garry's Mod and Minecraft, especially when I'm adding tons of mods and graphic enhancements. I've heard that in instances where a game needs to handle a lot of calculations, like with heavy NPC battles in Gmod, the CPU plays a significant role compared to the GPU. So, I'm curious if going with a high-end CPU like the Threadripper paired with 128GB RAM would be better for my gaming setup compared to a standard gaming CPU.
1 Answer
Generally speaking, games today focus more on single-core performance rather than just having a lot of threads. A Threadripper isn’t known for its single-core effectiveness, so something like the Ryzen 9 9900X3D could be a much better fit for gaming. Most games these days typically don’t utilize more than 8 cores anyway.
To clarify, while games from the last decade or so do use multiple cores, it's not as critical as it once was. Having a solid balance between fewer fast cores usually works better than many slower ones. The 9800X3D shines not just because of its single-core strength but mainly due to its large 3D cache that all cores can tap into.