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

[verbalizer]

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

all that for nothing, I was being sarcastic..

 

[tipoo]

So quads are surpassing dual cores now, and multicore consoles have been out for years. Yet most game code isn't very well multithreaded yet, and its almost 2012. Time to fix that. No trivial task, I know, but some games demonstrate that its possible, yet we have big budget games like Skyrim being CPU bound yet only using two threads.

 

[zloginet]

[citation][nom]jacobdrj[/nom]Q6600 G0 FTW!!!So glad I got 1 a couple years back... But the company I bought it from, unfortunately, no longer exists...RIP ClubIT... Your giveaways and pension for super cheap components will be remembered and missed...[/citation]


A couple years back, huh? You must have not bought it new... So why would you be glad you bought it... lol... just messing with ya...

 

[cmcghee358]

[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]

I hate to break it to you. But the IPC of the 970 is what is giving you the better performance in an engine like Modern Warfare. Thanks for sharing though.

 

[de5_Roy]

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.

intel did iirc - core i5 655k.

 

[fancarolina]

[citation][nom]shin0bi272[/nom]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.[/citation]


You are very correct most games do not currently make use of all of the cores. However that being said you cannot run a game without Windows and other background tasks. What a Hexacore really gives you is the ability to do anything at any moment. It ensures that you have extra power always. I can multitask while playing games I can be running HD streaming video on one monitor while playing a 3D game one one and have additional tasks running on a third monitor. Granted all of these tasks are disk dependent too. I haven't tired it but I bet I could push the pc to its limits but it would take running Prime95, 3DMark, and BlackOps all at once, and then it's only because prime95 is designed to max out any CPU.

 

[fancarolina]

[citation][nom]cmcghee358[/nom]I hate to break it to you. But the IPC of the 970 is what is giving you the better performance in an engine like Modern Warfare. Thanks for sharing though.[/citation]

Link to additional information? I'd like to read more then just an acronym I haven't seen before.

 

[lpedraja2002]

Pfft you people and your fancy i7's. I'm still rocking it with my good ol' Q6600 @ 3.2ghz! Games barely benefit from the cpu so I think I'll be good for 2 more years. What I need is a new video card, my 8800gt doesn't cut it anymore lol.

 

[xj9a]

[citation][nom]fancarolina[/nom]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]

15% is just about one sixth of 100%, which suggests that your game isn't using more than one core, which means that your hexacore would be beaten by a faster single core.

 

[eddieroolz]

Well I suppose I count as a quad, though its a laptop chip.

 

[teslafreakshow]

[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]

Wrong dude. Black ops is made by treyarch, mw2 and 3 were made by Infinity ward. Totally different engines.

I upgraded from a dual core and with a dual core I could play mw2 flawlessly but black ops was a stuttery laggy pile of crap. Blacks ops uses almost the same engine as world at war. MW3 is similar to mw2 but they made it worse in my opinion.

Quad core makes a huge difference in newer games.

 

[SteelCity1981]

[citation][nom]nottheking[/nom]
Well, it's not entirely this, actually. Rather, it's Intel's design philosophy, which clearly shows from die photographs, is that they're focusing less on "more cores," and more on the "uncore." Looking at a Sandy Bridge CPU reveals that the actual die area taken up by cores is a small minority: non-core fixed-function units (such as the memory controller, various extra accelerators, not to mention the embedded GPU in the SB chips) take up a much more significant portion of the die space compared to Nehalem, and even moreso compared to Core 2.AMD appears to be taking the opposite approach: aside from integrating the NorthBridge into the CPU, the FX-series focuses a lot less of the non-cache part of the die on the "un-core" stuff, and in fact appears to remain relatively close to the level found with the older Phenoms and Athlons.[/citation]


Yes and why do you think that? Because going beyond 4 cores isn't popular buys. I mean if 6 cores was all the rage intel would be making 6 cores on it's mainstream product right now.

 

[jesh4622]

Wasn't there supposed to be some sort of advanced multithreading feature in dx 11.1? That could entirely change the ballgame if it's executed well.

 

[moonzy]

Dual cores still run games fine.
I'd invest in a better video card before a Quad core.
A fast Dual core, over clock it and see the results.
However, Quad cores DO make a difference. I wouldn't sweat it though.

 

[verbalizer]

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

336 Cuda cores..

 

[clonazepam]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]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.[/citation]

When they run benchmarks to show core performance, I don't think they install all the crap the avg person does, anti-virus/spyware protection, fancy logitech drivers for keyboard lcds, firewall, Asus AI Suite or brand equivalent, a bunch of intel/nvidia services or equivalent, etc... The difference between gaming on a Pentium D 820 and Q6600 at stock clocks was not needing to use msconfig to disable start items, and services.msc to set many services to manual or disabled just to get the Pentium D usable with today's games. Overclocking it to 3.4-3.5ghz didnt help much either. I traded a complete system with the Pentium D 820 at the heart, for power washing my house. I got a good deal. 😉

I had the Q6600 (bought 2007) at 3.6ghz, 1.45v with Corsair's H50 with full loads about 40-45c above ambient. I wouldn't pair anything more than a gtx 570 and that's pushing it, but you can keep that 570 for the *new* cpu and be a-ok!

 

[misha87]

phenom 9950 FTW !!!!! LOL OLD ASS PC I HAVE

 

[hevix]

[citation][nom]dickcheney[/nom]Been on 4 core since the Q6600 came out, never looked back. Ok maybe a bit when I saw the OC numbers coming out of the E8400s but thats it.[/citation]

I ran one of these for a long time, e8400 @ 3.8 until a few months ago. i5 2500k now in a rebuild with a gtx 580 picked up at microcenter for $400.. impressed with 4 cores.

I really noticed the difference for the first time while encoding in itunes at like 40x.. used to get max like 8-10x and that might be overstating it even (on the e8400)

 

[Guest]

Well i just switched from a E8400 to Q6600, and BF3 runs smooth finally.
I intend to OC it to 3.0 or 3.2 next week.

 

[shafe88]

Been on a single core for 15 years and will continue too for many years to come. Who needs a fancy smancy dual and quad core processor when Puppy Linux is happy with a single core processor.

 

[banzaigtv]

It's only a matter of time until quad-cores become mainstream in gaming. Games like Arma II, Metro 2033, Crysis, Skyrim, and Battlefield 3 are pushing current mainstream gaming PCs to their boundaries. My quad-core i7 950 (and its eight threads) @ 3.07 GHz LOLs at just about everything I throw at it. But now I've been noticing 40% total CPU usage on Arma II and 33% on Battlefield 3. Even Battlefield 3 has driven my RAM usage through the roof (up to almost 6 GB total in processes). My 12 GB DDR3 sure comes in handy now, doesn't it? And with ARMA III's minimal system requirements including a quad-core i5 or Phenom II (yes, QUAD-CORE), you will start to believe that dual-core CPUs will begin to phase out by 2014 or so. Then watch 512 MB video cards start to become totally obsolete and give way to the likes of 2 GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760s, AMD Radeon HD 8770s, and so forth. And with SSDs eventually becoming mainstream over HDDs, there you have it, folks! Technology continues to move forward.

 

[bentonsl_2010]

[citation][nom]JOSHSKORN[/nom]I'm still on a dual core, but I do have trouble running the newer games (CoD Black Ops, MW3, BF3, GTA 4 AND SA). I plan on upgrading to Ivy Bridge next summer.
[/citation]

(Blow's a whistle and throws a yellow (BS) flag across the room at JOSHSKORN's head)

Wasn't GTA:SA developed for the PlayStation2? I don't think that classifies as newer.... Just saying.

 

[LORD_ORION]

What scares me now. There will be a bunch of hack developers forced to write multi-threaded code, and they'll hard code for 4 asynch threads, once again making software suck when cores increase 5 years down the road.

 

[applegetsmelaid]

I like pigeons.

 

[robojox]

I hope they all start finally writing code to use the 4 cores or more.
I would like to see artificial intelligence put in the PCs. The extra core could be used for redundancy to make the OS more stable.