Dual cores are dead for gaming

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FourierT

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I'm patrolling the forums for a Q6600 because my aging E8400@ 4.3GHz is a major bottleneck for my 470.

I just ran the LP2 benchmark and only got 36.7 fps at 1080p, 4x MSAA, max everything else test B.

Others have gotten around 41.9 fps on the same 470 @ 800core.

I did some research before buying the 470, but the general consensus was that a fast dual core was good enough, but I guess that's dated info... so this is just a warning to those of you who are looking to pair a new GPU with an older dual core CPU.

It took quite a bit of time, but it seems quad cores are finally minimum requirements for games :(

PS: if anyone's selling a 775 quad, pm me lol
 
You are testing in one of extremly few games where more than 2 cores matter.
 
there are a few more games that like quads or better.Still,times are changing.
 
I've got a Q6600 desktop I might be parting out soon. Do you need other stuff to go with that? Not all C2D mobos can take a quad core.
 
socK said:
sc2 only uses 2 cores.
Click to expand...

Even for programs and/or games that can only use two cores, you can still see a speed increase going to a quad core because the other cores are free to do backend OS stuff instead of everything having to run on only 2 cores.
 
I still game on a dual core? Practically its not dead for everyone, esp those that are on a tight budget and have mid-range budget systems for gaming.

As for games and cores, I think GTA IV is the only game (I may be wrong about others) that uses more then 4 cores, played it on a 2xQuad-core Xeon system where all 8 cores were being used.

A recommendation? Cheap Q6600 if you can get one, or a Q9550 from newegg or tigerdirect.
 
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Matthew Kane said:
for games and cores, I think GTA IV is the only game (I may be wrong about others) that uses more then 4 cores, played it on a 2xQuad-core Xeon system where all 8 cores were being used.
Click to expand...

I've heard FSX can use more than 4 cores. I only have a quad-core myself so I can't test that.

As for games that use quad cores, GTA4 and BC2 are the only big ones I know of.
 
cyclone3d said:
Even for programs and/or games that can only use two cores, you can still see a speed increase going to a quad core because the other cores are free to do backend OS stuff instead of everything having to run on only 2 cores.
Click to expand...

Not to mention that all video card drivers from ATI and Nvidia have been multithreaded for quite some time now. 2 threads for the average game, 2 or more threads for video card drivers, plus threads for sound card drivers, ethernet drivers, threads for RAID drivers (if you have it), etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on.

Just take a look at the Performance tab in Task manager sometime. It lists how many threads are open at any given time. I have over 1000 threads running right now with 76 processes running (about 20 of those processes are Tabs open in Chrome). Also, do not confuse threads with services or processes, they are entirely different things.

The more and faster cores you have, the easier it is to load balance all the crap that is going on in an operating system at any given time.
 
Dual cores are not even remotely close to being 'dead' for gaming. If you are building a new gaming rig should you look for more? Yes. However DC systems will be fine and dandy for the vast majority of games for a good while longer. Hardly dead.
 
Battle Field Bad Company 2 puts a load on all 6 of my cores, so there is another one for your list
 
Playing BC2 on my E8400 at 3.7Ghz leaves me desiring a quad at times, especially on 32 player servers with lots of action going on. I see dips down into the 20's at times and my GPU usage drops at the same time, so it's definitely my CPU being the weak point as it remains 100% usage on both cores.
 
SUPERGT said:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1536207

Dual core for gaming is still perfectly adequate.
Click to expand...

Is that solely a single video card config though?

While dual-core may arguable still be adequate, it certainly wouldn't make sense anymore to build a new system around a dual-core CPU.

That said, I must admit my i7-920 with dual GTX 480 SLIed seems to be doing fine only OCed to 3.2Ghz so far. Crysis certainly showed improvement from stock 2.66 to 3.2, but current limited testing I've performed hasn't shown any real benefit so far to my quick ignorant OC of just quickly adjusting the BCLCK.

So, far gaming, anyone who's bought better than a 920 hopefully is either doing tri-SLI, or I haven't tried a game yet that's showing an obvious improvement.

$1K CPU is definitely not necessary from my limited experience if you're just building a game machine. (Hell, Kyle's running an i7-920!) So, upgrading can be done relatively cheap.
 
with dual core i5 being the mainstream CPU dual core is not going anywhere anytime soon...
 
I just tried the Lost Planet 2 demo, and on Test B, DX9 mode, it put a huge load,+80%, on all 6 cores on my rig, DX 11, uses all cores, but does not load it as bad.
 
DrDoU said:
there are a few more games that like quads or better.Still,times are changing.
Click to expand...

No they aren't changing at a decent pace. The big reason you won't see a move to support for quad cores is that the console market dictates how developers spend their time learning how to utilize multiple cores. MS is the leader among the HD systems and its cpu only has three cores, that's why slowly overtime the rule of thumb that 2 cores was enough became outdated two years into the 360's lifetime.

One minor reasons that holds back developers back is that coding for multiple cores is still very hard to do and not enough talent around to exploit the way it could be.

A possible secondary minor reason is proprietary software like PhysX being allocated to the gpu even though it was proven a few months back CPU would offer superior performance. It's not like such software couldn't be designed to run on the CPU but noone is terribly interesting in creating 3rd party tools that try to utilize the CPU for gaming. *Shrugs*
 
AION (http://na.aiononline.com/) doesn't run near as well on a dual core as it does on a quad core.

Did a test on my computer qt the time - q6600 running at 3.84Ghz vs. a computer I had just build that had a Pentium Dual Core (e6300 I believe) running at 3.7Ghz. The dual core computer had very noticeable stutter with high-ish in-game settings, while my quad setup was buttery smooth with almost everything maxxed out.

Both computers had Radeon 4850 cards. The quad machine had a 512MB card while the dual core had a 1GB card.

WoW runs a lot better on quads as well.
 
Here's a related question. I have a 975X board and I'm looking at going from my E6600 to the Q9550.

I know I want to go quad core, but do you think it's worth buying a new one for my old board or just go with a current quad (i7 or Phenom II) and a new setup. The deals at microcenter would get me a quad + mobo + 4gb ram for around $230 vs the Q9550 for $150+ tax.

I know this is a little off topic, but the FFXIV beta has solidified my opinion that I need more cores!
 
Personally, I would go for the Microcenter deal. That's a lot more performance for just $80 more and you also would still have your current E6600 board and ram to either make a 2nd PC or give away or sell.
 
Almost every new PC game benefits immensely from Quad Cores -- GTA4, Dragon Age 2, Medal of Honor, Bad Company 2, Prototype, Metro 2033?, Supreme Commander 2, Assassin's Creed 2, Just Cause, virtually every big PC game. To be honest... I can't even play these at 30fps @ 1440x900 with a 3.2GHz Core 2 and a HD4850. My old 8800Ultra seemed to help with the CPU bottleneck more than the HD4850 for some reason, though.
 
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FourierT said:
I'm patrolling the forums for a Q6600 because my aging E8400@ 4.3GHz is a major bottleneck for my 470.

I just ran the LP2 benchmark and only got 36.7 fps at 1080p, 4x MSAA, max everything else test B.

Others have gotten around 41.9 fps on the same 470 @ 800core.

I did some research before buying the 470, but the general consensus was that a fast dual core was good enough, but I guess that's dated info... so this is just a warning to those of you who are looking to pair a new GPU with an older dual core CPU.

It took quite a bit of time, but it seems quad cores are finally minimum requirements for games :(

PS: if anyone's selling a 775 quad, pm me lol
Click to expand...

It's a 5 fps difference.
 
Kuromizu said:
Here's a related question. I have a 975X board and I'm looking at going from my E6600 to the Q9550.

I know I want to go quad core, but do you think it's worth buying a new one for my old board or just go with a current quad (i7 or Phenom II) and a new setup. The deals at microcenter would get me a quad + mobo + 4gb ram for around $230 vs the Q9550 for $150+ tax.

I know this is a little off topic, but the FFXIV beta has solidified my opinion that I need more cores!
Click to expand...

The 975x boards were never designed to run quads. It may work, it may not. The first 775 board I had was 975x based. It worked with my Q6600, but it was horrible for overclocking. If I remember correctly, I was only able to get it a little over 3Ghz with that board. I then went to a P35 based board as it made a world of difference.

After that, I went to a P45 board at it was even better.

Will the 45nm quads even work on a 975x based board? anybody have experience with that?
 
What I would do if I were you is try to prove this theory out.

Get yourself some kind of CPU usage monitor while you're gaming. The Logitech G15 and up keyboards let you do this off your keyboard LCD screen. If your cpu usage is close to 100% and maxed out most of the time or while you're lagging then this would be the cause obviously.

Next what you can do to help the stutter, or lag, try closing out unused programs to kill all the background noise that is utitlizing your CPU.

I can't see any game running bad just because it doesn't have enough cores, it's more like you don't have enough resources.
 
even if say all 4 cores arent being used %100, at least that is 4 threads open to process data vs 2 threads and possible data waiting in line to get processed.

i play BC2 with a 5850 @ 1920 x 1080 and 8x aa and af, and my total CPU usage avg around %80...
 
Despite the fact that it;s a 3.2GHz triple core on an older architecture, it actually has SMT (Intel names their implementation HyperThreading), so it can run a fair bit more than just "two theads" Nominally, it's not going to run them very fast :p

However, you cannot just smash two threads into one, not easily, anyways.

mutantmagnet said:
No they aren't changing at a decent pace. The big reason you won't see a move to support for quad cores is that the console market dictates how developers spend their time learning how to utilize multiple cores. MS is the leader among the HD systems and its cpu only has three cores, that's why slowly overtime the rule of thumb that 2 cores was enough became outdated two years into the 360's lifetime.

One minor reasons that holds back developers back is that coding for multiple cores is still very hard to do and not enough talent around to exploit the way it could be.

A possible secondary minor reason is proprietary software like PhysX being allocated to the gpu even though it was proven a few months back CPU would offer superior performance. It's not like such software couldn't be designed to run on the CPU but noone is terribly interesting in creating 3rd party tools that try to utilize the CPU for gaming. *Shrugs*
Click to expand...
 
Met-AL said:
For anyone living near a MicroCenter, they are $149.99
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1540538
Click to expand...

Awesome deal!! If you can get this, definitely go for it.... I have installed mine and it is great. Going from a E6600, I can see a huge difference in BFBC2. It now runs like really smooooooth.... (Next.... Windows 7 64-Bit)

Being in Pittsburgh PA, I am SOL for that deal. So TigerDirect was still good for me.
 
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