If you want to equip your existing gaming PC with a faster video card, the question is whether your processor is fast enough to take advantage of it, or whether your performance is lacking. How the video cards from Nvidia, Intel and AMD compare to each other in combination with a slower Ryzen processor, I have already looked at in a previous article. This time it was the turn of a number of Intel processors of different generations with different CPU architectures. Again we opted for mainstream hexacore processors with smt, which for gaming as the sweet spot can be seen.
Thrifty processor load versus performance dependence
As with the comparison between the Ryzen processors, it is also visible with the Intel processors that the Radeon video card is less dependent on a fast processor to get close to its maximum performance. The RX 6700 XT only loses 10 percent in performance when the fastest Core i5 12400 processor in this comparison is replaced by the slowest Core i5 10400. The RTX 3070 clearly drops performance by 25 percent when this video card is powered by a slightly older CPU.
If you go for a GeForce card and you don’t want to miss out on performance, it’s important that your processor can keep this video card working properly. That need appears to be less great with a Radeon card. The Intel Arc falls in between, with the caveat that the absolute performance on the A770 is the lowest of this trio and that this GPU seems to have a preference for processors from its own stable.
With this article I compared the performance of the RX 6700 XT, RTX 3070 and Arc A770 on three generations of Intel processors in a range of DirectX 12 games. In a follow-up article I want to take a closer look at the performance of Nvidia, Intel and AMD in DirectX 11 games.