The Best Processors For You

arstechnica.com

The economic principle I’m exploring is “Because of choices, people choose. All choices have an opportunity cost.”

My research question to help me study the economic principle is “What is the opportunity cost of different brands and types of processors?”

The article published in Digital Trends titled “The Best Processors for Gaming” demonstrates this economic principle by showing the importance of the processor , differences in medium scale gaming processors, and differences in low budget scale gaming processors.

I want to point out the importance of the processor in a build. The processor is the piece that makes all the other parts work together to create a crystal clear, and sustainable environment. Now I will talk about choices.

First, when it comes to getting a processor, there’s most likely only going to be two choices: Intel and AMD. If you’re someone on a bit of a budget but need some bang, there are great choices under $200 for this piece such as the Intel’s Core i5-8400 for $200 or AMD’s Zen+ Ryzen 5 2600 for $150. Both are well made with the same amount of cores sitting at 6 and max speeds at around 4.0GHz. but what else is opportunity cost? With the Intel processor, you’re looking at a smaller amount of cache and threads, which will in turn make it a bit more difficult to run lots of processes at once however, integrated graphics are included (opposed to the AMD card) which can boost performance significantly. On the other side, the AMD card includes a couple nice things including: a large amount of cache and threads. Generally speaking, 1 core has enough strength to run 2 threads at once, which makes the AMD a fast suit for running 12 threads on 6 cores. Another nice plus to have (opposed to Intel) is that AMD’s chipsets and power sockets are going to change anytime until at least 2020, giving you leeway when choosing to upgrade or graphics and motherboard or not.

Second, I want to talk about mid-budget gaming. If you’re trying to build a computer that will meet and/or exceed all of your gaming needs, you need a processor that’s a few hundred dollars. Luckily, both Intel and AMD have outstandingly high performing cards in the price range! Another 2 closely related cards here are Intel’s Core i7-8700K and AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700X. Both are very powerful, but in this scenario, Intel pulls ahead of AMD in the gaming section. According to Jon Martindale, “The higher clock speeds and better single-threaded performance on Intel hardware give it an edge in most titles, while the Ryzen CPU pulls ahead in some productivity tests and especially in multi-threaded software.” Opposed to AMD’s Ryzen model, it would perform much better if you worked and played on the same computer. With a larger thread count, it can offer better performance on animating programs and performing extra tasks overall.

Third, I want to talk about high end gaming. “If you’re a gamer who wants ultimate power, or someone who works and plays hard on the same machine, these are the chips for you.” Processors in this category can be upwards of $500 and offer the best performance possible for all situations. The two I’m going to look at here are the Intel Core i9 9900K at around $500 and the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X also around $500. When we get to this point, we start to see a landslide vote for Intel. The i9 9900K outperforms almost every card to date at this point in regular performance and multi-thread tests. Though the Threadripper may may outperform the Intel processor in certain tasks, Intel takes the lead for high end gaming and tasks.

In my next blog post I will research the question: What are your choices when it comes to motherboards, memory and storage?