Yup with the i7 930 overclocked to 4Ghz you get same benchmarks as a 3 year old i5 (i5-6600). Largely due to having 8 cores (hyper threaded) to compensate and obviously higher clock speeds than the more modern CPU to compensate for APU efficiency and cache improvements.
But since that gen of i7's is known as some of the best overclockers in history you can easily push it to 4.5Ghz and get even better performance thats nearly 2x the stock speed. Also ofcourse the higher resolution you run the less of a strong CPU you need before the GPU is capped out at 100%. Yes if I ran it at stock 2.8Ghz then it would eat shit, or if I ran at 1080p it would also start capping out if Vsync was off at like 300FPS. But having GTX 1070 push out 144FPS at 1440p the GTX1070 caps out at 100% before the CPU does.
I did plenty of benchmarks when I first got the GTX 1070 and all my FPS benchmarks were in line with the reviewers of GTX 1070 who at the time were using the best CPUs on the market (i7-6700k) as to ensure not to bottleneck the GPU in the review. And so since I got the same FPS benchmarks that means the GPU is what is bottlenecking both me and the reviewers.
I made a post about this when I did the test you can find it here with plenty of screenshots of the GPU capping out at 100% before the CPU could even reach there. Heres full gallery https://imgur.com/a/nSOox
Like look at this GTA 5 test and Witcher 3 tests both on maxed out graphics obviously. (GPU is top right, CPU is top left). GPU graph dips are menu time/loading time, which is also why the FPS during those GPU dips goes to like a 1000.
https://i.imgur.com/CQslL1G.png https://i.imgur.com/A5gPaYT.png You have to understand that year over year CPU improvements are negligible for gaming. And all modern CPUs chill comfortably under 50% utilization in most hardcore gaming situations. My i7 930 definitely has to work harder, it will creep up to 80% or even 90% utilization, but it will still push through in most demanding titles and GTX 1070 will bottleneck before it will. So its not like i7 930 doesnt have to work harder. It runs way hotter and works way harder but still keeps up. I could push it to 4.5Ghz like I said but I like a whisper quiet PC and I cool with air. So its a bit of a tradeoff.
When GTX 2070 or whatever is next rolls around (should be this year) then yeah, the 10 year old i7 930 probably wont be able to keep up anymore. But hey, if I bump it up to 4K then maybe it will :) Like I said ill be upgrading to next mainstream 10nm CPU though.
