Every processor in our database, with its specifications, where it sits for gaming specifically, and which graphics cards it can drive without becoming the limit. Pick a processor to see its full page, or run it against a card in the calculator.
Processors are indexed on a gaming scale where the Ryzen 7 9800X3D sits at 100. This is deliberately not a productivity ranking: a chip with twice the cores can sit below a cheaper one for games, because most game engines care far more about how fast a handful of cores run than about how many there are.
Why gaming and productivity rankings differ
A sixteen core processor will crush a six core one in rendering or compiling, and may well lose to it in a game. Game engines are hard to parallelise, so what matters is per core speed, cache and memory latency. That is why processors with large stacked cache sit at the top of our gaming index despite modest core counts and clock speeds.
If you render, compile or stream alongside gaming, look at both figures. If you only play games, the gaming index is the one to use.
How much processor do you actually need?
- At 4K the card does almost all the work. A mid range processor from the last few generations is enough, and spending more buys you very little.
- At 1440p the balance is even. This is where matching the two parts properly pays off most.
- At 1080p, especially at high refresh rates, the processor is often the limit. This is the one case where a top end chip genuinely changes your frame rate.
- For competitive shooters at 240 Hz and above, the processor matters more than the card, because you are already running settings low.