Anyone else failing to see a reason to go quad core?

SC already uses it (and hey I DID get my copy for free w/ my processor (or mobo/video don't remember honestly)), UT3 will use more cores (great up to 4), Crysis will use more... notice a trend? More games will take advantage of 4 because well.... 4 cores are available to the masses now at an affordable price.
 
In Canada, Q6600 (2.4Ghz x 4) =$320, E6850 (3.0 GHz x 2) =$330.

The speed of each CPU of the Q6600 actually is 80% of that of a E6850. So, for someone who OC moderately, Q6600 is a very good buy !
 
michaLcoughliN said:
like stated above. Games these days are defeintaly advancing from 10 years ago. Heck 5 yrs ago for that matter.

Ive been playing cs for the last 5-6 years now, and honestly, I can never get sick of this game. I have yet to buy CS source, reason : dontknow just heard its shit.

But what is true, Game developers are not putting time into gameplay rather then appearance.

You can have a game with sick friggin graphics but shitty game play, and would you play it? Not I personally. Granted cs for example. Shitty graphics, but the game is fun. You dont need high end detail to have fun, yes it would be better if they made it a tad mroe realistic. *cough 6 hits 50dmg* lol.

Anyways back to my point. Games as of NOW.. Do not require more cores, since games dont even benefit now off dual cores. Correct me if im wrong but.. Ide prefer a faster clocked chip then a bigger sized cached cpu..

IMO
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Personally, I think graphical and other non-gameplay advances have had an adverse impact primarily on multiplayer gaming. When I play a single player game, I will admit that gameplay and graphics are closer to even in terms of importance because it's a different kind of gameplay that I'm looking for. Good single player gameplay needs to be engaging and fun, and have replayability if possible. Good multiplayer gameplay requires that things like the netcode, framerate and hit detection are extremely tight, as near perfect as possible. Things need to be balanced well and there needs to be no easily exploitable bugs that give players willing to use them massive advantages. These are non-factors in single player gaming, so I really don't care if they exist there. Nowadays, developers seem to be overlooking the things that made CS 1.6, Q3A, UT99 and BF1942 the best online FPS games in history.
 
I said this before but it might have got lost in my long post:

My Core2Duo E6600 @ 3.4 GHz, always, I mean always, is the best performing processor in the Core2Duo only matches (3v3 and 4v4 Seaton's) that I host in Supreme Commander. It beats the Q6600 by a nice margin. If Q6600 is at -1, I am running +0 or +1. Clock speed beats multiple cores in Supreme Commander. The hardware specs of my teammates and opponents are always very similar. (8800GTX, 2GB ram, ect)

The quad core functionality of Supreme Commander is HYPE. Quad Core lags in a 4v4 just the same as the Core Duos. (The console command for CPU performance is ren_shownetworkstats).

Supreme Commander uses a max of 3 cores, and I believe only the music and sound is sourced to the third core.
 
You can't compare a heavily OCed chip (1ghz OC) vs unknown setups isn't a valid comparison.

How does stock vs stock compare? Or OC vs OC? People seem to get 3ghz with the Q6600 pretty easily, just like they get 3-3.2 on 6600s.
 
Honestly I don't really understand this whole debate, simply get what "YOU" feel that "YOU' need and can take the most advantage of, end of story, pretty simple really.........:eek: . Last I heard you are building your rig to fit your needs and wants, not what someone else thinks you need of wants. Be a man and get what you want and the hell with what other people think about it.
Like I said before, for me and what I like doing (OC'ing) a dual core is all I want or need right now. I don't do video, I don't game all that much and the games I do play don't make use of multi cores all that much. I'll switch to Quads when the 45nm cores are released later on, till then I'm just coing to continue OC'ing the crap out of dual cores just for the fun of it..............:cool:
 
Because having 4 cores makes you a man :D

I recently just got a Dual Core and I can see why people want Quad Core, which I will be getting in my next major system upgrade (Quad Core + SLI), though by then AMD will finally have there Quad Core counterpart out.
 
If you really want it, get a dual core now and once the games that utilize quad core start to come out (and games that people actually play, unlike Lost Planet) then you can look into selling it and upgrading to a quad core.
 
Blackstone said:
I said this before but it might have got lost in my long post:

My Core2Duo E6600 @ 3.4 GHz, always, I mean always, is the best performing processor in the Core2Duo only matches (3v3 and 4v4 Seaton's) that I host in Supreme Commander. It beats the Q6600 by a nice margin. If Q6600 is at -1, I am running +0 or +1. Clock speed beats multiple cores in Supreme Commander. The hardware specs of my teammates and opponents are always very similar. (8800GTX, 2GB ram, ect)

The quad core functionality of Supreme Commander is HYPE. Quad Core lags in a 4v4 just the same as the Core Duos. (The console command for CPU performance is ren_shownetworkstats).

Supreme Commander uses a max of 3 cores, and I believe only the music and sound is sourced to the third core.
Click to expand...

Not the way I play SupCom... I play on huge maps with 1000unit caps and multiple AIs. I was able to bottle neck my CPU a couple times on my e6600. I ordered a Q6600 because my E6600 is a bad OCer to start off with and I have watercooling.
 
the gamer said:
though by then AMD will finally have there Quad Core counterpart out.
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which is by then Penryn is already mainstream and Nehalem is the proc to beat... you see all this waiting game is never ending...kudos to those who can wait and those who jumped to the q6600 (like myself) hope is not lost..if people in here are saying just sell your c2 e6xxx when quads are utilised, dont you think we can do the same too on quads sell them when new stuff comes out... i rest my case...
 
Native quad cores for the win.

Barcelona or intels counterpart" nahelem?
 
honestly. when penryn comes to pwn kentsfield then people will have the arguments over

OMFg is it better to have 8 vs 4 ? OMGHHH LAWL GAMES ggfggfgfg kkthnx..

We will have this same argument when PENRYN becomes available.

so honestly. Buy whatever the f**k you want. because we all know 6 months down the road. Something else will come out and limpdickkick the shiet outta it.

my 2 cents = $100
 
ne0-reloaded said:
lol, wow.....you know around here people build whole new pcs for one game right? him upgrading only his proc is modest.
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true, just before BF2 came out i went on a shopping spree, got a 6800LE, zalman cooler, Creative soundcard and a gig of ram, just to play BF2. If i hadnt gotten such a sweet deal on the 6800le i would have payed a lot more then a q6600 costs right now, as it is i payed enough to buy me a q6600 right now

michaLcoughliN said:
honestly. when penryn comes to pwn kentsfield then people will have the arguments over

OMFg is it better to have 8 vs 4 ? OMGHHH LAWL GAMES ggfggfgfg kkthnx..

We will have this same argument when PENRYN becomes available.

so honestly. Buy whatever the f**k you want. because we all know 6 months down the road. Something else will come out and limpdickkick the shiet outta it.

my 2 cents = $100
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AFAIK wolfdale and yorkfield (penryn is the mobile version) will just be a 45nm dieshrink with some modifications, yorkfield, just like kentsfield will be 4 core max, going octocore would still require a dual socket mobo
 
Blackstone said:
My Core2Duo E6600 @ 3.4 GHz, always, I mean always, is the best performing processor in the Core2Duo only matches (3v3 and 4v4 Seaton's) that I host in Supreme Commander. It beats the Q6600 by a nice margin. If Q6600 is at -1, I am running +0 or +1. Clock speed beats multiple cores in Supreme Commander. The quad core functionality of Supreme Commander is HYPE. Quad Core lags in a 4v4 just the same as the Core Duos. (The console command for CPU performance is ren_shownetworkstats) The hardware specs of my teammates and opponents are always very similar.

The best test of how well a system runs supreme commander is to join a 4v4 where the host weeds out laggers (older AMDs, pentiums) and then look at the network stats every 10-15 minutes or so. The quad people (they often have SLI systems) never have a significant advantage.

When I ran Sandra on my 3.4Ghz E6600 machine, it showed the reference Q6600 and Q6700s as having a significant performance advantage at stock speeds over my chip. But that is theoretical performance because the benchmark is number crunching that clearly was fully optimized to use more than 2 cores. So the question isn't whether Q6600 is better or not--of course it is--the question is whether games will really tap into what quad can do this Fall and in 08.

Here is the issue as I see it--there is a lot of incentive for game developers to claim that their engine takes advantage of quad core. It makes their product look more forward looking and futureproofed. But in reality there is a difference between taking advantage of multiple cores and being optimized for multiple cores. I'm sure these games will tap into multiple cores like Supreme Commander does, but the real question is whether they are optimized for more than two cores.

I highly doubt that HL2: Episode 2 is fully optimized for four cores. I don't see anything in videos of this game that would lead me to believe that a quad core will add that much. Then again, they might have optimized it because they will want to do it anyway for Episode 3. I just find it hard to believe that the source engine, which is pretty easy to run, is going to max out a dual core, let alone become an argument for quad core.

The same goes for Bioshock and Epic games has pretty much said that dual core is the sweet spot for UT3. You have to look at the videos of these games and ask yourself what you need the four cores for. There isn't THAT much going on in those games other than some serious graphics. Are you telling me a Core2Duo is going to choke on two first person shooters (both of which feature indoor environments extensively). NOT A CHANCE. Neither of those titles will come close to the CPU utilization of Supreme Commander in a 4v4 match.

The real issue is Crysis, because of the fully destructable environments and the sheer number of elements on screen. Physics seems to play a larger role in this game than the others and they are also marketing the engine bigtime, so futureproofing is important. This is the only game right now that gives me some pause about quad core, because the game itself is just so ambitious that I wouldn't be surprised if it is the first to really take advantage of what quad can do. When you look at all that grass and all those trees swaying in those videos, and the water modeling and what not, a quad core advantage seems more likely.

But all of these games have been in the pipe for a long while--and there is absolutely no install base for quad core right now to make it worth the extra effort. Are quad owners even 1% of all PC owners? Quad core is so far from the mainstream right now that I find it hard to believe this fall's games are going to really tap into it. I think it will be another year minimum before you really need one. Developers will hype quad core functionality to generate interest in the game engine but I think the benchmarks will show a negligible performance advantage. The games will be GPU bound in any event.

All this is speculation, of course.
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However, you're still comparing OC vs. stock (you yourself said that most QC systems are stock; your E6600 certainly isn't). Most games (and here, SC is no different) take more advantage of clock speed vs. core numbers (put another way, they take advantage of clock speed *before* taking advantage of adding cores); it's why, at the same clock speed, an LGA775 Celeron (single core, no HT, etc.) will still get smoked by even a Northwood-C, all other conditions being equal (and that is entirely due to the second virtual core that Northwood-C brings to bear). However, multi-core-aware games (or even applications) are few and far between (partly because until the earlier price drop, quad-core processors were not priced affordably for the mainstream). Now, we can safely say that quadcore is mainstream processing (the typical retail Q6600 CPU price is where the E6600 was less than one year ago); this will, of course, only accelerate the push of multi-core applications and games into the mainstream either by ground-up development or via patches for existing games and applications. (The sub-$2K quad-core computer that's actually buyable exists today, and from several companies.) The only truly *fair* comparison would be E6600 vs. Q6600, clocked identically and in the same configuration (the only difference being the number of cores), as everything else leaves too many variables to chance.
 
cryptonomicon said:
Since you're only one of about five people who bought SC, we can only hope for Chris Roberts' sake he got Intel to subsidize his development efforts.

Intel might want to consider sending SC out free with all their quads too to help boost adoption, and use your testimony on the box. :rolleyes:
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Five people? Excuse me; just where are you getting such seriously silly sales numbers from?

*I* own a copy of SC (and I'll be buying the Forced Alliance expansion as well), and I don't own a Q-series processor (in fact, I own a mere P4 Northwood-C). While you may not like SC (for whatever reason), that's no reason to flame those of us that do. While SC has indeed been heavily bundled (in particular with Intel's QX and X-series processors), in what way is this different than other pack-in titles over the years, except that it's Intel doing the bundling?
 
DrFreeze said:
true, just before BF2 came out i went on a shopping spree, got a 6800LE, zalman cooler, Creative soundcard and a gig of ram, just to play BF2. If i hadnt gotten such a sweet deal on the 6800le i would have payed a lot more then a q6600 costs right now, as it is i payed enough to buy me a q6600 right now



AFAIK wolfdale and yorkfield (penryn is the mobile version) will just be a 45nm dieshrink with some modifications, yorkfield, just like kentsfield will be 4 core max, going octocore would still require a dual socket mobo
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Modifications that make it significantly faster than the current quad cores clock for clock. And it's also going to be priced cheaper than even the currrent Q6600 prices on release.
 
CoW]8(0);1031310757 said:
Modifications that make it significantly faster than the current quad cores clock for clock. And it's also going to be priced cheaper than even the currrent Q6600 prices on release.
Click to expand...

link?
 
potatoes / potatato . I mean you cant base buying a processer on everyone elses opininons either.

Yes people obviously vouch higher for the Quad. I was actually all for the Quad about a month ago. "couldnt wait couldnt wait" but then I was like. WTF would I need a quad for.

Personally ide prefer a faster cpu then having more cores. Like stated a million times.

Quad is necessarily only used for multi tasking aplications, rednering, encoding . ETC ETC ETC. so if your not big into photoshop, DVD ripping, winrar ,zip , ace ETC. Then why do quad. hmm Yes games will take advantage of multi cores sooner or later. But as of now no..

Quad is selling cheap as stink $<300 and 6 months ago $1000.. I mean unbelievable right?

That only leads me into one more comment about E6850 vs Q6600. Doesnt matter what your going to purchase. Just keep in mind that 6 months down the road from now, your going to have the same headache saying "ERRR OCTO" and we will have threads stating

"OCTCO Vs QUAD??" wtf is better.. omglawlbbqkittens!! kk??

Like. Its a never ending upgrade path to hell. If you have money, just upgrade. If you feel you dont have money for a few yrs until the next big build. Buy what you think youll need until then given information throughout these forums. Plenty of inofrmation given to have a killer system costing <$1500
 
There is a review up today on OC'ing the Q6600 and compared it to a ton of other non-OC'ed CPU. The results were pretty much what I expected to see, in the games and setting that I and most people play at, the OC'ed Q6600 was only slightly faster than the NON-OC CPU's that most of us non-Quad users are running. Even Supreme Commander with the version 3223 patch applied, at 1600x1200, the OC'ed Quad was only 4 FPS faster than the NON-OC'ed E6750..........:eek: OC the E6750 to a easy 3.8 GHz and it should easily beat the Quad Q6600 that was already OC'ed to 3.348 GHz.

In all the rendering tests the Quads exceled as expected, but I could care less about that, I don't mess with anything of the sort.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/07/25/overclocking_intel_core_2_quad_q6600/1
 
Bio-Hazard said:
There is a review up today on OC'ing the Q6600 and compared it to a ton of other non-OC'ed CPU. The results were pretty much what I expected to see, in the games and setting that I and most people play at, the OC'ed Q6600 was only slightly faster than the NON-OC CPU's that most of us non-Quad users are running. Even Supreme Commander with the version 3223 patch applied, at 1600x1200, the OC'ed Quad was only 4 FPS faster than the NON-OC'ed E6750..........:eek: OC the E6750 to a easy 3.8 GHz and it should easily beat the Quad Q6600 that was already OC'ed to 3.348 GHz.

In all the rendering tests the Quads exceled as expected, but I could care less about that, I don't mess with anything of the sort.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/07/25/overclocking_intel_core_2_quad_q6600/1
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The supcom numbers aren't all that telling, FPS speed is not the same as simulation speed. With the quads you can run alot more units, bigger maps, without it getting sluggish. That wont show on FPS charts. Also, supcom is actually pretty poorly written when it comes to 4 cores, with a mod made by MadBoris, it actually spreads the load around better to the cores and performance is vastly improved.

This thread should die though, its just SMP versus single, HT versus w/o HT, dual core versus single, etc, etc. People rant and rave about their own opinions. Whatever. Im happy with my purchase, even if it was uber expensive.
 
LOL......don't really matter, I don't play the game let alone play games with user built mods....................:eek: My E6750 will be here this morning, I was just posting the info for other folks info.................:D
 
Nope, just don't trust the folks making them............:eek:
And like I already said, I don't play the game, never will, and I do not game online whats so ever, I think that's plain enough, maybe. I've got other things to do during my normal day, things like real life and Over Clocking.
 
Seriously like half the games on the market today are nothing more than licensed mods anyways.
 
CoW]8(0);1031310757 said:
Modifications that make it significantly faster than the current quad cores clock for clock. And it's also going to be priced cheaper than even the currrent Q6600 prices on release.
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extra L2 cache, tweaked execution units, yeah i know

i was commenting more on the whole idea some people seem to have that we will see octo core cpus with yorkfield/wolfdale, which i dont think

id say AMD will be the best candidate to deliver octo core single socket CPUs, mainly because i doubt intel would make a four die MCM (which would be an instant cooling nightmare, not to mention get totally FSB crippled), and because a while back AMD admitted not making a MCM quad core to stand up against intel with a quick K8 based bodge job was a mistake.

Im expecting the first octo core CPUs from intel no earlier then nehalem, putting 8 cores on their traditional FSB is asking for trouble and would yield a die surface close to nvidias G80, which doesnt sound like a good idea to me


on another topic, im really starting to wonder when yorkfield will launch. I plan to "soldier on" with my e4300 (it needs more squeezing, thats what it needs) till years end at least and at that point probably go quad core (crysis, UT3 :eek: ), but i wonder if that means ill be getting a kentsfield, or wether yorkfield will come and crash the party
 
Yorksfield is probably going to be right up your alley, hopefully for you anyways. Lets just hope for you that supply and demand doesnt nip you in the ass.
 
The point I was trying to make by comparing an overclocked E6600 to a stock Q6600 was that higher clock speed, in some situations, yields better performance than more cores.

The comparison is vital because from an enthusiast standpoint, because if the 6850 is a great overclocker and the Q6600 is not, it is the 6850 that will show better performance. I suspect this will be the case until the NEXT wave of games comes out.
 
Blackstone said:
The point I was trying to make by comparing an overclocked E6600 to a stock Q6600 was that higher clock speed, in some situations, yields better performance than more cores.

The comparison is vital because from an enthusiast standpoint, because if the 6850 is a great overclocker and the Q6600 is not, it is the 6850 that will show better performance. I suspect this will be the case until the NEXT wave of games comes out.
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Again, as Blackstone pointed out (and which I concurred with) most games (and applications) simply aren't designed to thrive on additional cores. However, there are several reasons for that:

1. No real mainstream availability of multicore desktop and portable processors (until recently). Despite Netburst (and virtual multicore) and even Core Duo/Core2Duo, the vast majority of in-service desktop (and portable) CPU product has remained single-core: look at the sheer number of Celerons and early Centrinos (all single-core) that are still in service.

2. The ubiquity of multiplatform development (especially games). Few games have been developed either primarily or strictly for the PC; even fewer are written to take advantage of multiple processors *or* cores (real or virtual). In fact, it took until 2002 for the primary gaming flavor of Windows to be multi-core aware (and it took XB360 and PS3 for consoles to be truly multi-core). That means that the mainstream development target (whether console or PC) will almost certainly be single-core.

3. The continuing perception of MP/MC support as a *niche*. Even though Quake (a hit first-person shooter) has been SMP-aware in every PC iteration (including the current Quake 4), the SMP support (though it's been part of the core code from the beginning) remains characterized as a *niche filler* (primarily due to the reasons I pointed out above). I can only hope that mainstream desktop quad-core (starting with Kentsfield) will change this perception.
 
PGHammer said:
Again, as Blackstone pointed out (and which I concurred with) most games (and applications) simply aren't designed to thrive on additional cores. However, there are several reasons for that:

1. No real mainstream availability of multicore desktop and portable processors (until recently). Despite Netburst (and virtual multicore) and even Core Duo/Core2Duo, the vast majority of in-service desktop (and portable) CPU product has remained single-core: look at the sheer number of Celerons and early Centrinos (all single-core) that are still in service.

2. The ubiquity of multiplatform development (especially games). Few games have been developed either primarily or strictly for the PC; even fewer are written to take advantage of multiple processors *or* cores (real or virtual). In fact, it took until 2002 for the primary gaming flavor of Windows to be multi-core aware (and it took XB360 and PS3 for consoles to be truly multi-core). That means that the mainstream development target (whether console or PC) will almost certainly be single-core.

3. The continuing perception of MP/MC support as a *niche*. Even though Quake (a hit first-person shooter) has been SMP-aware in every PC iteration (including the current Quake 4), the SMP support (though it's been part of the core code from the beginning) remains characterized as a *niche filler* (primarily due to the reasons I pointed out above). I can only hope that mainstream desktop quad-core (starting with Kentsfield) will change this perception.
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I agree. I would go one step further and argue that, for these reasons, it is highly unlikely that any of the high profile PC game titles coming out this fall will be optimized for more than two cores.
 
Blackstone said:
I agree. I would go one step further and argue that, for these reasons, it is highly unlikely that any of the high profile PC game titles coming out this fall will be optimized for more than two cores.
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Crysis and UT3 are both optimized for quad. They are the two games that most people are looking forward to as well.

Q. How will Unreal Tournament 3 use multiple cores on a CPU? Does it take advantage of Quad Core CPU's? If so, how/what task is assigned to each core?

A. Unreal Engine 3 is a transitional multithreaded architecture. It runs two heavyweight threads, and a pool of helper threads.

The primary thread is responsible for running UnrealScript AI and gameplay logic and networking. The secondary thread is responsible for all rendering work. The pool of helper threads accelerate additional modular tasks such as physics, data decompression, and streaming.

Thus UE3 runs significantly faster on CPUs which support two or more high-performance threads. This includes dual-core Intel and AMD PC CPUs, the Xbox 360 (which sports 3 CPU cores and 2 hardware threads per core), and PlayStation 3 (with 1 CPU core running 2 high-performance hardware threads per core.)

Beyond two cores or hardware threads, UE3 performance continues to scale up, as the additional threads accelerate physics and decompression work. However, not all scenes are performance-bound by such things, so there are diminishing returns as you go beyond 4 cores. By the time CPUs with large numbers of cores are available – thinking 16-core and beyond – we’ll be on the start of a new engine generation, with some significant changes in software architecture to enable greater scaling.
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http://www.evga.com/gaming/gaming_news/gn_100.asp

There will be a lot of developers using the UE3 engine as well, so thats even more games designed for Quad.
 
There is no way a developer is going to release a game which performs poorly on a C2d and only runs well on a quad. It may have extra features ('optimized') but C2D is mainstream now and thats where the money is.

That said, multiple cores are the future. Both Intel and AMD are looking into 16/32 cores as the next big leap. Slowly but surely compiler and OS technology will advance and in a few years 4+ cores will be standard.

So the decision is quite simple really - if you only build once every ~3 years, get a quad. If you spend any significant time with encoding, dev work, 3d renders etc, get a quad. Everyone else, get a E6750 and OC the hell out of it (assuming you are ready to upgrade next year). And if you got the monies, get a QX6850 :)
 
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