Are Dual-Cores Dead now?

[aquivery.rez]

Saw RGinHD Video about the G5400 vs. The R3 Lineup and i saw a debate in the comment section saying that, well dual cores are dead and that got me intrigued because i was suppose to upgrade my old i3 4130 system to the G5400 system in a month or so and is Dual-Core actually dead now?

 

[Shektron]

Yes, pretty much dead. Especially if you want to game with a nice mid-range graphics cards, like the GTX 1050 Ti or above. Even quad cores are slowly on their way out now, and it's the time of hexa-cores. For casual gaming, though, a quad core is fine. But dual cores? Nah.

 

[rgd1101]

depend on what you use the computer for. A dual core with HT still work fine for light/office works.

 

[Onus]

There are only a few games that either won't run on a dual-core, or require unusual tweaks to make them work. For the most part, however, dual-core CPUs can still run most games and other programs. The problem you may have though, is that a modern PC often has more and more things on it, all needing CPU resources, and a dual-core will bog down and performance will suffer. Tom's recent game reviews have typically showed a core-count graphic, which shows how the game performs as the number of available cores is reduced. There is usually drop-off down at two cores, or even two hyperthreaded cores (2c but 4t); this will miss my above point though. Unless you disable everything else on your system (including firewall, anti-virus, anti-malware, etc; not a great idea), your game will not see the optimized 2C/2T or 2C/4T of a test machine. So, while I wouldn't call 2C "dead," especially for casual titles, the writing is definitely on the wall. IMHO, if you're building new, 4C/4T should be your minimum target.

 

[photonboy]

G5400 isn't a better CPU so why are you "upgrading" to that?

Performance for most tasks is nearly IDENTICAL possibly SLIGHTLY faster on the G5400 but then the G5400 is also missing some capabilities ( I think AVX ) though not sure how much that matters.

Not sure the point of the upgrade but for GAMING I'd be going with at minimum an R5-2400 (4C/8T) or similar Intel 4-core CPU.

 

[photonboy]

Plus the G5400 uses DDR4 memory so you'd have to buy new memory, a new motherboard, probably reinstall Windows and still your performance will be about the same.

You may want to state your reasons, give a budget, and ask for some advice.

 

[TerryLaze]

Saw RGinHD Video about the G5400 vs. The R3 Lineup and i saw a debate in the comment section saying that, well dual cores are dead and that got me intrigued because i was suppose to upgrade my old i3 4130 system to the G5400 system in a month or so and is Dual-Core actually dead now?

Do you mean this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81gnwJggHvU
Where every game he showed runs pretty much the same on the 5400?
2/4 equaling 4/4? (Even down to the stuttering on the same games)
Why do you care what people are discussing,the pentium will be just as good as a quad ryzen if all you want is gaming.
But as was already said basically you are just gaining 300Mhz and maybe a little bit better IPC,it would be better and cheaper to get a used i5 or even i7 haswell for your current platform.

 

[mdd1963]

Grandma checking email, or, a poor gamer wanting to play only Quake 3 or Medal of Honor, etc, a dual core is fine....

For use as a Linux file server, it's fine....

As a base for a new gaming build (save perhaps for the poorest villages in Sri Lanka to get basic internet to a village), it should quickly go the way of the dodo.

 

[photonboy]

Saw RGinHD Video about the G5400 vs. The R3 Lineup and i saw a debate in the comment section saying that, well dual cores are dead and that got me intrigued because i was suppose to upgrade my old i3 4130 system to the G5400 system in a month or so and is Dual-Core actually dead now?

Do you mean this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81gnwJggHvU
Where every game he showed runs pretty much the same on the 5400?
2/4 equaling 4/4? (Even down to the stuttering on the same games)
Why do you care what people are discussing,the pentium will be just as good as a quad ryzen if all you want is gaming.
But as was already said basically you are just gaining 300Mhz and maybe a little bit better IPC,it would be better and cheaper to get a used i5 or even i7 haswell for your current platform.

Just FYI, but he does not explain if it's one stick or two of DDR4 memory. Ryzen needs higher bandwidth and starts losing performance below roughly 3200MHz (varies a bit by game) and in addition the Ryzen APU (CPU portion only used with dGPU) is overclockable whereas the Intel CPU AFAIK is not.

There's a big difference in performance if you have a 3200MHz Dual Channel setup and also overclock the Ryzen chip. If it's a single stick it's essentially comparable to a "1200MHz" Dual Channel setup so I wish he'd clear that up, but even if it was 2400MHz Dual Channel he could gain up to 30% improvement through BOTH higher memory bandwidth and overclocking.

Also, those are just a few games so don't draw too many conclusions. Though one such conclusion is that MICROSTUTTER exists so maybe it's best to get a better CPU than either of these such as an R5-1400 or better (for long-term an R5-2600 would be a great CPU to build a system around).

Other: in the video he also talks about the CPU not being 100% utilized. While technically true that does NOT mean the CPU isn't still the point of bottleneck as a game can't always use all cores/threads at all times... I think his point meant a better CPU would not matter at that point in the game and it's quite likely he would be wrong there.

As I said in my other comment though, he (OP not the video guy) should give more information if he wants the best feedback. Building a PC is a careful balance of all the parts and based on his current CPU he'd likely need to replace most of his PC (mobo, CPU, DDR4 memory, probably graphics card, reinstall Windows etc).

*as for whether dual-core is "dead" or not?
I think that's a yes since there was a lot of micro-stutter and lower FPS (though the GTX1070 isn't an ideal pairing). We can also argue that a lower-end quad-core CPU (APU in this case) is dead too. I don't like the word "dead" really since for some games you can have a great experience if the other parts are good too, but conversely you're going to have a CPU bottleneck in other games that causes stuttering or at least limits the FPS you can achieve.

It's a bit like arguing that the PS4 is dead when that's obviously not the case so what about a PC that can hit 30FPS with a similar visual experience (assuming okay GPU) as many PS4 games?

 

[madmatt30]

Ht dual core dead ?
No not at all , for someone after a 'light' gaming rig, general purpose desktop with a budget gpu the ht pentiums are fine .

You could argue that the 2200g is better simply because.

1. Its a true quad core
2. It has integrated graphics on par with a gt1030/rx 550.

The youtube video is massively skewed in favour of the pentium though , those game benches are gpu benchmarks , cpu doesnt play a massive part & farcry 5 is plainly gpu limited there.

The Pentium shows better single core performance with only 1 thread loaded , the fact is though load a real core & its corresponding ht core to 100% & you actually compromise both performance wise.

What youre really getting is 75-80% of max performance at best on each thread which is why the ryzen kills it on multi threaded benches.

Some games are heavily multithreaded nowadays , a quad core ryzen just kills a ht pentium on BF1 & Project Cars 2.

Then take into account background processes etc, many of these reviewers are running a 'clean' system with nothing running in the background at all.

This inflates results & will also favour a processor with less cores result wise.I dont know about the rest of you guys but when Im gaming I dont shut down antivirus, malware, open windows , chrome etc.

My system is run as it stands on a daily basis without any messing about.

I3 4130 to a g5400 though ??
Thats so incredibly close to a sidegrade its not worth the outlay imo.

Either drop a real quad i5 in your current system or go i3 8100 or ryzen 1200/1300x (if you have a dedicated gpu)

 

[LordVile]

Saw RGinHD Video about the G5400 vs. The R3 Lineup and i saw a debate in the comment section saying that, well dual cores are dead and that got me intrigued because i was suppose to upgrade my old i3 4130 system to the G5400 system in a month or so and is Dual-Core actually dead now?

Depends on threads. dual core HT would generally be fine until a 6GB 1060 but 4 threads are going too you reall want a quad core with HT or a 6 core.

 

[aquivery.rez]

All right thanks for the replies. I guess i'm going to go for a sandy/ivy bridge i5 or a ryzen thanks!

 

[madmatt30]

^ you mean a haswell i5.
The 4130 is haswell

 

[LordVile]

^ you mean a haswell i5.
The 4130 is haswell

Or broadwell that fits into the 1150 socket doesn't it?

 

[madmatt30]

^ only 2 broadwell mainstream desktop cpu's available , bot overpriced & I doubt you'd find either for sale .

You may mean the haswell refresh cpu's??

 

[TerryLaze]

The youtube video is massively skewed in favour of the pentium though , those game benches are gpu benchmarks , cpu doesnt play a massive part & farcry 5 is plainly gpu limited there.

He is using a frikking 1070...with a dual core...in a 2018 game...how is that massively skewed towards a dual core?
This is the level of games we have right now and will continue to have for at least 2-3 years even if the PS5 would come out tomorrow (well on monday) .

The Pentium shows better single core performance with only 1 thread loaded , the fact is though load a real core & its corresponding ht core to 100% & you actually compromise both performance wise.

Yes but that would only happen with games that rely on throughput,those are the only ones that fully load as many cores as they can,so it's still a win win,better single threaded for games with single threads and better throughput for games that run a lot of threads.

What youre really getting is 75-80% of max performance at best on each thread which is why the ryzen kills it on multi threaded benches.

Well if a ryzen quad couldn't kill a dual core in multi threaded benches we would have a completely different conversation right now.

Some games are heavily multithreaded nowadays , a quad core ryzen just kills a ht pentium on BF1 & Project Cars 2.

Some games are still single threaded even after all these years,a dual core kills (any) ryzen in LoL Dota WoW bla bla bla.

Then take into account background processes etc, many of these reviewers are running a 'clean' system with nothing running in the background at all.

This inflates results & will also favour a processor with less cores result wise.I dont know about the rest of you guys but when Im gaming I dont shut down antivirus, malware, open windows , chrome etc.

My system is run as it stands on a daily basis without any messing about.

All the background processes run wildly on all available cores,cores with lower single threaded power take longer to dispatch jobs so they take longer to move on to the next task,having a quad that needs all of it's 4 cores to run a game doesn't give you any headroom for background processes you will still need to run them instead of your game threads.
"Im gaming I dont shut down antivirus, malware, open windows , chrome etc.
My system is run as it stands on a daily basis without any messing about. "
That's what I do as well and I have a g4560,I also have a lot of videos on youtube.


I'm not saying that the g4560 is great or better then xyz CPU,it gets low FPS in a lot of games, I'm just against the argumentation.

 

[madmatt30]

Hes not showing ingame benches , hea showing in game graphics benchmarks , they domt use the cpu any where near as much as the actual engine in game itself.

Hes also not showimg anything in game from the ryzen , all the video is from the 4500 , & at that it is still touchimg 100% usage some of the time & in the high 80s the rest of the time.

That is likely a system with minimal background processes running.

These processes kill perfoemance on a ht pentium when the game itself is pushimg 90% usage constantly.

Not so much on a true quad core.

In retrospect 'massively skewed' was exaggerated on my part.

Plainly he's biased though , that's obvious just from his dialogue.

& im not having a go at the 4560 here ,that cpu on release was an absolute killer buy.
Literally an i3 6100 for 40% of the price which made the kaby/skylake i3 obsolete in reality.
A quad i5 then was some 3-4x more expensive.

The 4500 however looks bad in comparison now.
A ryzen 1200 is the same price & can be run on an even cheaper board, the i3 8100 is a paltry £20 more in the uk.
Im sure your aware the new i3 is a true quad & essentially a last gen i5, atcthe current pricepoints I don't see the market for the 4500 at all.

 

[TerryLaze]

Hes not showing ingame benches , hea showing in game graphics benchmarks , they domt use the cpu any where near as much as the actual engine in game itself.

Hes also not showimg anything in game from the ryzen , all the video is from the 4500 , & at that it is still touchimg 100% usage some of the time & in the high 80s the rest of the time.

That is likely a system with minimal background processes running.

These processes kill perfoemance on a ht pentium when the game itself is pushimg 90% usage constantly.

Not so much on a true quad core.

In retrospect 'massively skewed' was exaggerated on my part.

Plainly he's biased though , that's obvious just from his dialogue.

1070 though,in real life you would have an even weaker GPU so the CPU would be doing even less work than is shown here so you would have plenty of overhead.
Even if you go with this 1070 numbers,see how you just assume that the 2200g would have more idle time just because the guy only shows the utilization of the g4560?

Here have a video of the 2200g running dota 2 on just a GTX 1030, it hits 80-90% usage just looking at the scenery,it even hits 100% on a few cores some times.And that's just dota not even a demanding game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35HYwC77HyY

In origins even a 1600 hits well over 80% usage (1070ti but still)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucJqHUpc2RU&feature=youtu.be&t=318
In far cry 5 the 2200g hits 100% just with the iGPU
https://youtu.be/RC-EO4bNLr4?t=114
And so on and so on...

 

[madmatt30]

^ honestly not sure of the argument here at all.

All those videos actually point to the fact that these titles are becoming majorly more multi threaded & you need to be looking at a minimum of a quad core nowadays if you're building a system if you have any sense.

 

[TerryLaze]

Exactly, they show that both are getting swamped,both of them are minimum,there is no way for the 2200g to run anything in the background, at least not anymore then the pentium.
You need to look at least at a quad ryzen since the 2200g is hitting 100% more often then not but the 2/4 pentium is the minimum for intel since it hits 100% more often then not while having the same FPS as the 2200g.

 

[LordVile]

Exactly, they show that both are getting swamped,both of them are minimum,there is no way for the 2200g to run anything in the background, at least not anymore then the pentium.
You need to look at least at a quad ryzen since the 2200g is hitting 100% more often then not but the 2/4 pentium is the minimum for intel since it hits 100% more often then not while having the same FPS as the 2200g.

the 2200g is a quad core ryzen