How To Find The Best CPU For Gaming in 2023!

Whether you've got money to burn or you're on a strict budget, finding the right CPU is hard work. It's tempting to either plump for the best of the best and guarantee no problems, or go by something like the most recommended, "Amazon's Choice" or the like. To be fair, that's not a bad strategy, but it can throw up some oddities... like, why is the FX6350 from 2012 still appearing near the top of the list?

I've been through quite a nice upgrade path with my personal PC, beginning with the Ryzen 5 1400 and ending at the 5600x where I am at the moment, and there's still further to upgrade from that point should I need to. That's all thanks so somewhat decent forward planning!

Let's see what you can do to give yourself the best shot and finding the best CPU for your gaming needs in 2023!

4 Cores Are NOT Enough!

Or that's what expert g4m3rs will tell you. The reality totally depends on what you're going for. Yes, for the most part in modern games 4 cores is going to be cutting it close. Cyberpunk 2077 hates quad-cores, as does Jedi: Survivor. There's a bit of a crisis of game optimisation going on for games that are being ported from the PS5 and XSX, so if you have playing new Triple-A's in mind, give yourself the best chance. Go for 6 cores at a minimum. Ideally hyper-threaded, too (12 Threads). This rule will generally direct you to mid-range Ryzen CPUs, which you can't really go wrong with.

If you're getting into PC gaming for the eSports classics like Rocket League, Rainbow:Six, CS:GO, Valorant, etc etc. then it almost doesn't matter. These are designed to be played at extremely high frame-rates, which has the side effect of making them playable on your parents' microwave (don't try that).

The point being, if you buy or already have a cheap pre-built office PC and you're going to upgrade that, which is a great super budget tip, there's a fairly good chance it will have a quad-core CPU from somewhere between 2012-2016. If you just want to play eSports, don't worry too much. However, if you're starting fresh, like I outlined in the Ultimate Guide, you can get a 6-core, 12-thread CPU at the moment on the used market for almost the same price as a 2012 quad-core, so... unless you already have one, there's really no point buying a quad-core any more. Save yourself from an impending compatibility issue.

Forget Charles, Upgradeability is King

Someone had to say it! I did actually have a point to make here... Yes, if you're concerned about spending (which probably accounts for about 99.8% of you right now), PLEASE do yourself a favour and consider your potential upgrade path for the future, because at some point you will get sick of what you have. I'm afraid it's only natural. What I really mean by this is, if you're starting off by keeping to a small budget, give some real consideration to the right motherboard & CPU combination. Like the example given in the Ultimate Guide, if you're going to be starting off with a 1st-gen Ryzen, take the time to get at least a B450 motherboard, because this will guarantee compatibility with 5th-gen Ryzen, and let me tell you, that is one HECK of an upgrade path.

Look at this benchmark test taken from TechSpot's article from last year. Need I say any more, really? And by the way, the 1600 is still currently a fantastic value. The key point here is that if you do this upgrade, you can keep the same motherboard AND, potentially, cooler, so you literally only need to pay for the CPU.

What about the high-end?

I knew I was going to have to talk about this eventually.

Let's just say, you can't really go wrong. You want more? Really?

Okay, there are still a few things to consider. As of May 2023, the current generation of Intel and AMD CPUs are 13th and 7th respectively. At the high-end, there's little to choose between them in terms of performance. It's a close sparring match between the i9 13900K and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D for the gaming crown, but the Ryzen counterpart does this at a considerably lower price. Something to bear in mind is that the Ryzen 7th Gen CPUs are on a totally new LGA motherboard socket, as opposed to previous generations' PGA socket. Essentially, this means you're going to have to upgrade to a new motherboard if you want in on the new generation.

13th Gen Intel CPUs are still using socket 1700, which means you can keep the motherboard you used for 12th Gen if you like. If you already have a 12th Gen Intel CPU, it's probably not worth the initial outlay to switch to Ryzen this generation for the best gaming performance, as a new 7800X3D with even a B650 motherboard will likely set you back at least £600 total. Also, if you already have a 12th Gen Intel CPU it's probably not worth upgrading to its 13th Gen equivalent.

One more consideration if you're starting fresh and choosing between these is the power consumption. The Intel i9 is an extremely impressive CPU, but it might bankrupt you whilst giving you that performance. It gives its monstrous performance by drawing seemingly unlimited power. The 125W TDP appears to be a total pie in the sky number, as it will turbo to 253W under load, making this almost as power-hungry as an RTX 3080, which sounds like an absolutely ridiculous thing to say given the current economic situation.

Also, with great power comes great heat output, and you're going to need an outrageous cooling solution to keep this thing in check. Try a 360mm AIO, or at least the very best 240mm you can find, or else be ready for 95+ degrees any time you stress this thing at all.

TLDR: Just get the Ryzen, if you can.

The Recommended Specs

Every time a new game comes to market, this gets more and more bizarre. It was quite tragic to see 32GB RAM and 16 CPU threads recommended for Hogwarts Legacy last year if you play at 1440p. I really did think that those specifications were some way off, given that a PS5 is roughly equivalent to a Ryzen 7 3700 and has 16GB RAM, but games are so well optimised for consoles and so poorly optimised for PC that we appear to be in a time where you just have to pay for more power to make up for the shortcomings in optimisation. That's pretty rough.

It's important not to get too worked up by the system recommendations, though, because it's extremely unlikely that not having the exact right system is going to result in an unplayable slideshow - their benchmarks are based on a standardised settings slider, so you may just be able to tune a few settings to get things running satisfactorily for your PC.

The current trend, though, appears to suggest that 6 cores, 12 threads is the absolute minimum for most games releasing today as they are becoming more CPU intensive than I have ever seen before. 4 core CPUs just can't cut the mustard in new releases and it doesn't look like optimisation is going to drastically improve any time soon, at least not to the point where it changes this situation.

What can we take from this?

Well, it doesn't have to be as difficult as it sounds. I will reiterate my previous points - forward planning is key to saving money. Think about how soon you will be able to afford an upgrade and if your circumstances are unlikely to change, lay the groundwork for making your next purchase as cheap as possible, and at the same time don't sell yourself short on performance.

If you don't have to worry so much about the cost, think about your personal use case. If you're only gaming, 7th Gen Ryzen is basically unbeatable for performance in relation to cost and power consumption. For everything else in between, there are some incredibly detailed benchmarking tests on YouTube that show the relative performance of most mainstream CPUs in relation to each other. How something compares to what you currently have should be the marker for whether you're ready to upgrade - are you bottlenecking your performance already by having a CPU that is not up to par, or are you still at a point where something else in your system could do with an upgrade first? Perhaps an SSD, RAM or GPU.

I hope this has been helpful. There's plenty more like this on the way, so sign up for email notifications when I post again if you like this sort of thing!