Retrospect Opinions - What Year/Game was a Quad-Core Needed?

[MrN1ce9uy]

What year do you remember a dual-core no longer being "enough"? What game was it that made you believe that? What dual-core processors were popular, and what quad-core processor was everyone recommending?

*Almost forgot, how much did the quad-cores cost vs the dual-cores?

Please share.

 

[JalYt_Justin]

Dual core processors are still okay to be honest. For me quad core processors starting being ideal from 2013 and up as far as gaming goes. Bioshock Infinite, GTA V, Battlefield 4, and Assassin's Creed 4 were all games that required more out of the CPU for that stage in its life, and although having quad cores helped before then, it was never necessarily needed before that point.

Most games still aren't fully optimized for 4 cores. Most MMOs, for instance, only majorly use 1 core. (Tera actually fixed this at some point in time, I believe ArcheAge still uses 1 core). It really only matters in recent AAA titles, and that started really mattering 2010-2013, at least for me.

 

[Karadjgne]

I don't see it as in being about games in particular. As said, there's still many that'll run on dual cores, but those are mostly online games tailored for such, to get the widest possible user base. Mainly, quads hit their stride when Windows itself changed from DOS to NTFS. With the demise of Win98SE, the pc went from users needing code experience to navigate, to point and click. All of that takes threads, AV and other automated processes, windows AI, etc. Add in a semi complex game that makes decent use of 2x threads, and dual cores run into trouble in a hurry, having to now share its 2x threads between windows and it's processes, with the game. Better by far to have 4 threads, either in a quad or in a dual + HT.