Looking for the BEST CPU

[madeOfClay]

Hi

Greetings from South America  
First of all, i want to say THANKS from the bottom of my heart to all the people involved in the development of PCSX2, you guys are amazing!.

Second, I have already read the Important threads on the forum talking about the emulator, FAQ, etc... and thats why im writing this post.

In the upcoming days, I am gonna buy a new PC, desktop of course, and I am looking for CPU benchmarks so I can have an idea of which CPU I should buy... and my doubt is, which benchmark tests should i care if im 100% focus on playing games using PCSX2 at 4k or above....

> Single Thread Performances?
> Single Core Mixed Speed?
> Quad Core Mixed Speed?  

Im using this website as a tech guide for comparing cpus, gpus, etc..
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com

Which CPU is the best, in this case, for PCSX2, and im looking for the BEST!!!! T.H.E  B.E.S.T CPU

Thanks in advance
Cheers

[vsub]

The GPU is also important if you want 4k and above
For emulators STP is the most important.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

[TkSilver]

If you want a simple answer it is the newest generation Intel CPU with overclocking i5 or i7 (only matters if you want to do other things with the computer).

Intel (currently and for a long while) has better single threaded performance (stp from now on) then AMD. The newest AMD chips (Ryzen) are impressive but still about 4 generations behind in stp from the newest Intel (in native PC gaming it really makes no difference and in multi threaded workloads it is great)

The newer the generation the more fine tuning the architecture has gone through and the more overall improvements to stp (not always large gains and fron the 6th gen to the 7th gen there was 0 gain). This is a general rule of thumb and not a guarantee.

An overclockable processor and an overclockable motherboard will allow (luck and skill permitting) to get the absolute most performance out of a CPU. Keep in mind you need a stable overclock (basically emulation works quite well as a stress test of a CPU and can wreck unstable overclocks).

So as of this post the TL;DR would be
i5 8600k
or if the other things you are doing benefit from mor cores
i7 8700k
on a Z370 board with good overclocking support (this means good power delivery)

That is the BEST performance, but it is not going to be the BEST value. Ypu can use cheeper CPUs and still get 90/90 (90% or better speed, 90% of the games that PCSX2 handles well). You can spend more and more money to get diminishing returns in extra perfomance in edge case games (and if you really care about those games then go ahead and spend whatever you wish to spend), but the magic number on the cpubenchmark chart for 90/90 (including demanding games) is around 2000+ whichyou kight notice even includes a few Pentium CPUs and others that might be a better performance per dollar proposition.

[madeOfClay]

Alright, thank you for the replies so the i7 8700k will be my next cpu then.

[cailei110]

I7 8700k is the best.

[JobeStroud]

8700k seems the best now. Though the sample size is crazy low. Under 100 have been upladed vs 14000 the 4790k has, for obvious reasons. 4790k is what I use, but 7700 or 8700 seems to be a tad better. My 4790k is getting 2621 STP so there still isn't a reason to update computer yet. Just don't get AMD for emulation (As of this post) due to its' lower STP.
Nother against AMD, but that is just the way it is for now.