Value and Conclusion

It looks like the clear winner of our little skirmish is Intel's "Sandy Bridge" Core i5-2500K. The processor has a significant performance advantage over our other contenders thanks to the combination between an efficient microarchitecture, high clock speed and Turbo Boost. At our lowest resolution of 1024x768 we see about 20% improved framerates when compared to the i7-920 and the AMD FX-8150. However, as resolution increases, and our tests become more GPU limited than CPU limited, the performance lead shrinks to below 10%, which is still noteworthy.

When looking at AMD's Bulldozer at low resolutions, which is where each CPU can prove its worth, we see the FX-8150 showing more weakness than strength, despite its eight CPU cores. That does not mean that Bulldozer is hopeless for gaming. Once resolution and AA is cranked up, even the fast HD 7970 GPU becomes the limiting factor in most games and we see very decent performance. Unfortunately platform cost of the Bulldozer setup is similar or higher when compared to the Intel 2500K which does offer better performance overall. In its current state Bulldozer is a very tough sale to any member of the gaming crowd. I could imagine it being interesting for users who want to use other benefits of the platform, like multi GPU gaming with two graphics cards connected via PCI-Express x16 each - Sandy Bridge LGA 1155 supports only 2x x8. Another incentive for Bulldozer could be the native six SATA 6 Gbps ports with RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 support, which would make a hell of a server. Nevertheless, the average gamer is better off with Intel's LGA 1155 Sandy Bridge platform.

Our aging Core i7-920 is still doing respectably well. So if you still have a first-generation Core i7, there's no need for you to upgrade.