Quad-core CPUs About to Surpass Dual-cores for Gamers

[jacobdrj]

[citation][nom]jacekring[/nom]I was on a Q6600 clocked at slightly over 3 ghz with 4 gigs of 800mhz ram. Now I'm on an i7 940 which I OC to 3.2 ghz (air cooled) and 6 gigs of DDR3 ram at 1820 mhz. This computer is at least 60% faster then the Q6600 was, in terms of how long it take for video compression and file encryption. (and gaming is much improved over the Q6600)[/citation]
Good to hear those metrics... But I am unfortunately a couple YEARS away from a new system build...

 

[dickcheney]

I switched a year ago for a 2500k@4.5, worth every penny.

My Q6600 was chocking a GTX 470 at 85%.

 

[eklipz330]

i remember in '07 when everybody was saying they were future proofing with wuad cores. i laughed, telling them they''ll keep adding cores forever. i should have listened.

 

[mcd023]

Oh yea! rockin' the Tri-Core! Who's the oddball? ME!

 

[fancarolina]

Good to be part of the 1.54% who has upgraded beyond a Quad Core CPU. My Q6600 served me well for years but it was running out of ummph, enter i7-970. If you thought a QuadCore did well on games you've never used a Hexacore wow it just laughs at everything, a modern shooter like Black Ops does even break 15% CPU usage while playing. There is no substitute for raw power, I'll be happy when these dual core processors are all relegated to being used in toaster ovens.

 

[TheWhiteRose000]

I'm running a Hexa-core...

 

[BlackHawk91]

I just joined the Quad Core club, it is odd in my case, I went from a Dual core until that system died, my "back up" system was and old Sempron single core. What a huge difference.

 

[antilycus]

1100xt w/ GTX460 1GB w/ 386 Cuda cores. Love it.... drool

 

[coldtortilla]

All I can say is Intel core i3 2100 FTW!! It beats a similarly priced amd quad core any day of the week, while consuming less power

 

[Phyrexiancure]

I always hear that most games don't use more than two threads. Is this a statement for new games that need more computational power than older games but still use two cores. Or is this used to broadly describe the every game in the pc library. I know the newer battlefield games use all 6 cores of my processor.

 

[gm0n3y]

*EDIT*

Nice to see Win7 64bit is at 42% market share. Hopefully Win 8 will only have 64bit.

It also looks like ATI gained a percent or 2 in marketshare.

 

[jprahman]

[citation][nom]Yuka[/nom]"...while 25 percent of AMD gamers use CPUs with clock speeds between 3 and 3.29 GHz, and 21 percent use processors ranging from 2.3 to 2.69 GHz."That... I'm having trouble believing that.I do know that most Athlon IIs and prior CPUs max out at 3.3Ghz-ish, but there IS market for 3.3Ghz + in AMD. I'm one with a 4Ghz PhII and I'm very sure all my friends have their Phenoms at at least 3.6Ghz. Where's the statistic for that? Is it such a lil' number? 8(Anyway, I'm sure it works for Intel too; there's tons of folks with their i5's past the 3.6Ghz mark.Cheers![/citation]
Steam only collects data on CPUs using the CPUID instruction and other methods that do not measure the actual running speed, but instead only measure the rated speed. So a 2.8Ghz i5-760 OCed to 3.4Ghz would be reported to Steam as a 2.8Ghz processor.

 

[sonofliberty08]

[citation][nom]Teeroy32[/nom]woo hoo I'm int he 5.52% rocking a single core, mines the trusty old pentium 4 3.4ghz,. The cpu's still kicking strong its only my grapics card letting it down, old trusty G 6600[/citation]
it was your old school pentium 4 3.4ghz letting the geforce 6600 down

 

[coldmast]

[citation][nom]joytech22[/nom]Trouble running black ops? The game uses almost exactly the same engine as MW2.I understand you might be having trouble in BF3 and GTA4 but definitely not GTA:SA, I mean C'mon my old Sempron 1.6GHz played that back in the day (With a 7600GS).Still, Been on quadcore CPU's since 2007. But I DO own systems with 2 cores and they still perform admirably.[/citation]
Haven't you encountered any game ruining (scripting) bugs in black ops? I know I have.

 

[verbalizer]

this in theory makes sense.
BUT.
so in 5 years from now the AMD FX-8150 will then make gaming sense.?

 

[A Bad Day]

I would've liked Intel if they added overclocking support to at least one of their dual core processors. I don't need a quad core when all of my favorite games can't use more than one core.

 

[Caffeinecarl]

Maybe I'll eventually upgrade from my E8400/GTS250 combination...

 

[newbie_mcnoob]

Back in 2006, before Core2 Quad, if you wanted quad-core you would need a dual socket motherboard running two dual-core CPUs. Tyan's dual Socket 940 K8WE was popular for its two x16 PCI Express slots and SLI support.

It was crazy expensive, but the bragging rights were worth it.

 

[sinclaj1]

Now if only game developers would begin making more games that EFFECTIVELY used more than one CPU core!

 

[quangluu96]

I'm not surprise quad core is passing dual cores, games become better and better, so more cpu power is needed, nowadays dual core can only run a few games smoothly. Dual cores is gonna be for surfing the internet in a few years and every games will require a minimum of quad core to run. I can't wait to see a game that actually use 6 cores

 

[shin0bi272]

[citation][nom]fancarolina[/nom]Good to be part of the 1.54% who has upgraded beyond a Quad Core CPU. My Q6600 served me well for years but it was running out of ummph, enter i7-970. If you thought a QuadCore did well on games you've never used a Hexacore wow it just laughs at everything, a modern shooter like Black Ops does even break 15% CPU usage while playing. There is no substitute for raw power, I'll be happy when these dual core processors are all relegated to being used in toaster ovens.[/citation]
Id like to see some data to back up these claims. All the benchmarks Ive seen have shown zero in game benefits from faster/newer/higher core count cpus with the current games.

Dual core is starting to show its age and quad core is about to become the sweet spot (something I said last year and was laughed at for saying) hexacore and octacore will have years to wait before they are going to show any ingame benefit over a quad core. That is unless the ps4 and new haxb0x make substantial leaps forward in their cpu and gpu departments and the pc's start getting hexacore optimized console ports... which we all know isnt going to happen.

Ive got an i7-920 in my game rig and it still keeps right up with the newest sandy bridge E chips in game. Sure it takes twice as long to rip a cd or convert an MP3 but Ive got the extra minute to spare to wait for my cd to finish ripping its ok.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

It was just a matter of time before it happened.

 

[yumri]

where the section for those of us who have Intel or AMD processors with 9+ core count? as i do not see them in there or am i the only person who has that in their computer and thus i do not count enough for a section in the survey?

 

[iLLz]

I have a Q6700 and even some modern games can give it a run for its money. BF3 has my CPU working hard. The CPU is overclocked to 3.33Ghz and all four cores run at like 85 % or more. I am so hoping IVB will get 6 or 8 core CPUs to us mainstream folks. I so want a 6 or 8 core with 12 or 16 threads!

 

[yumri]

[citation][nom]malmental[/nom]this in theory makes sense.BUT.so in 5 years from now the AMD FX-8150 will then make gaming sense.?[/citation]
so far in the 3DMAX graphical environment it only reduces it by about .4 secounds per frame per object in rendering time going from 4 cores to 8 cores on a intel Q8200 @ stock speeds so hyperthreading doesn't send the extra performance which you are thinking of or at least not in OpenGL which i ran this test in. though i am unsure if that would be the case while using DirectX11 but with that using DirectX any version of it restricts it to Windows and that is not what i am looking for as i see gameing going off of a windows only thing in the future and for that DirectX even though it is a excellent platform to base it upon has to many restrictions on it to be cross-platform