Quad or Dual on a gaming machine?

S

Soyo13

Gawd
Joined
Mar 18, 2006
Messages
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I'm debating this with myself... My current set up is listed in my signature... I recently got an XFX 8800GT and I want to upgrade my mainboard, cpu, motherboard. But I can't decide whatever to go the Quad or Dual core.

This PC is my gaming machine. I might go SLI once I get an 1900x1200 capable LCD.

Dual Core path
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16813131013
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16819103773
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16820231122

Quad Core path
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131142
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16819115017
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16820231122

I am currently running Window XP not Vista. Planning on upgrading when money permits.
 
The Q6600 is really the best value, since it is easly over clock well past 3ghz on the G0 stepping. Other then the 790G motherboards from AMD there is no reason to even concider them at this point.
 
Forget the AMD system altogether. Your choice should be between a Q6600 and an E8400. Which one you pick really depends on what you do outside of gaming, since CPUs don't have that much of an impact at higher resolutions. If you do a lot of multitasking and use multi-threaded applications, the quad will be better. If you don't do a lot of multitasking and you use mostly single and dual-threaded programs, the E8400 will be faster due to its architecture improvements and the addition of SSE4.1.
 
I'm on a Quad Core. It feels like 95% of the time 3 of the cores are doing jack shit. I could be wrong. It runs any game at max setting except Crysis, however, I don't think app's games or even Windows OS's are capable and optimized to taking advantage of 4 core technology ATM.
 
Dual core will save you money for the most part. Quad core, to my knowledge, is not utilized by any games or any planned games.
 
Soyo13 said:
I want to upgrade my mainboard, cpu, motherboard. But I can't decide whatever to go the Quad or Dual core.

Dual Core path
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16813131013
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16819103773
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16820231122
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WoW! ^ that is the exact set up I have.
Mobo, ram and processor. Identical.

Mine has been holding up fine.can run all games at maximum settings with smooth framerate @ 1680x1050 (excluding crysis)

The only difference is I have an 8800GTS 640mb.
I have a minor overclock on the processor to 3.2ghz.

This set up is fine for gaming.
Quad core will yield you better performance in the future once programs and more games are optimized for them.
But for now the dual core set up is still great for what you chose though.
 
Symon14 said:
Dual core will save you money for the most part. Quad core, to my knowledge, is not utilized by any games or any planned games.
Click to expand...

Quad core is the future. If you think they cannot code games to take advantage on quad core then read the following article from Hard Forums own website.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTMwNiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Also, Valve games take advantage of quads. I also noticed major load time improvements and slight FPS improvements in FSX when I upgraded to quad core.
 
Druelt Vas said:
Quad core is the future. If you think they cannot code games to take advantage on quad core then read the following article from Hard Forums own website.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTMwNiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Also, Valve games take advantage of quads. I also noticed major load time improvements and slight FPS improvements in FSX when I upgraded to quad core.
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It isn't that games are not capable of being coded for 4 cores, it's just a tedious process to thread the code for multiple cores and most game developers do not bother with it due to the amount of work required.

How often do you upgrade your computer? Grab a quad if over 1-2 years +, grab one of the new e8X00 dual cores if you upgrade more often than that.

Also, if you overclock, the dual cores will have a higher overclock ceiling. Since most games only take advantage of 2 cores max - they will have better game performance from the same hardware.

See Valve's Hardware Survey results here
 
defy said:
It isn't that games are not capable of being coded for 4 cores, it's just a tedious process to thread the code for multiple cores and most game developers do not bother with it due to the amount of work required.

How often do you upgrade your computer? Grab a quad if over 1-2 years +, grab one of the new e8X00 dual cores if you upgrade more often than that.

Also, if you overclock, the dual cores will have a higher overclock ceiling. Since most games only take advantage of 2 cores max - they will have better game performance from the same hardware.

See Valve's Hardware Survey results here
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I personally only upgraded because my friend bought my 6 month old e6600 and zalman 9500 for 200 dollars. I then spent that 200 dollars on the q6600. I did have to buy another heat sink, so the net loss was $35 for me to upgrade, and since I do not upgrade that often, it was worth it to go for the quad.

I am a EE guy, so I think of stuff from a hardware stand point. CS guys better start going multi-threaded beyond two cores. That is the future because hardware is bumping up against physical limits that we can do nothing about. Instead of going faster, we have to just start putting in more cores in the not too distant future.
 
Assassin's Creed for one utilizes quad core. This issue is actually a lot more important than the SLI vs Quad-SLI question. Quad SLI right now does nothing, as evidenced by the [H] testing. Quad core processors on the other hand don't do much for older games, but because they are becoming more and more common to have multiple cores (like consoles) then games are starting to program for that from the outset. I would definitely do the q6600 as has been suggested since you have overclocking room and still have plenty of performance. Your video card is more important than the processor for games anyway right now.
 
Pretty much no games right now make good use of quad core, a couple use maybe 3 cores and some use all 4 but don't push them very hard. So you're unlikely to see any real difference with a quad core over a dual core right now.

Having said that it looks like there are some games on the horizon that may benefit and even require quad core, so it may be a good way to future proof your machine, if you're able to stretch to a pretty decent quad core budget wise, i'd do that.
 
Druelt Vas said:
Quad core is the future. If you think they cannot code games to take advantage on quad core then read the following article from Hard Forums own website.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTMwNiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Also, Valve games take advantage of quads. I also noticed major load time improvements and slight FPS improvements in FSX when I upgraded to quad core.
Click to expand...

According to Valve's Hardware survey, Quad core is only the future to a quarter of the market. 50% are still on single core.
 
KillaChaos said:
According to Valve's Hardware survey, Quad core is only the future to a quarter of the market. 50% are still on single core.
Click to expand...

Just because people don't upgrade their computer every 6 months doesn't mean that they don't plan on upgrading to Quad core with their upgrade. You are basically saying that because their processor in the present isn't quad core that their processor in the future won't be quad core...
 
Supreme Commander definitely takes advantage of quad core. Most other games it seems to only make a small difference.
 
Right now Supreme Commander is the main quad core game. 4 cores and beyond is definitely the future though.
 
Go with the faster dual core for gaming right now. By the time games actually use more than 2 cores, you'd need another upgrade anyways.
 
Here's my thoughts. The difference between the dual core that will be faster for gaming and the quad core that will have more potential for better performance later on down the line will not be significant. So go with the quad core. If I do spend my economic incentive check on computer parts I'm going to an Intel quad core build.
 
debello_64 said:
The Q6600 is really the best value, since it is easly over clock well past 3ghz on the G0 stepping. Other then the 790G motherboards from AMD there is no reason to even concider them at this point.
Click to expand...

Consider this spelling mistake and you will be wiser because of it!
 
Druelt Vas said:
I am a EE guy, so I think of stuff from a hardware stand point. CS guys better start going multi-threaded beyond two cores. That is the future because hardware is bumping up against physical limits that we can do nothing about. Instead of going faster, we have to just start putting in more cores in the not too distant future.
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Oh I agree, we're hitting the limit of how fast we can push processors. Instead of pushing higher clocks, we're pushing more cores together.

However, I don't think most games will take advantage of this for years - when their consumer base upgrades to it. This is a gaming market, developers cater to the general publics' computers. Spending time/money for multi-threading when only 4.31% of your users has a 4 core machine is just a waste.
 
Well with any luck developers will realise the trend here (more cores over time) and start building their games to work with n cores so the engine scales based on what hardware you have.

Valves survey can bugger off, we all know that the vast majorety of people in that survey are CS1.6 players because that game has more players than everything else on steam added together, and they're running off an engine which is now 10 years old (yes HL was released in 1998). There is a unbelievably huge number of players who primarily play CS1.6 and have no reason to upgrade because they won't let that bloody game die!

I'm not suggesting they make games like Crysis which require everyone and their dog to upgrade, just that they don't let the hardware of bunch of CS newbs dictate what sort of games we all get.
 
If you will OC go with quad (3+ Ghz on it will be plenty)
If you don't go dual since they offer better value at stock.
 
Frostex said:
Well with any luck developers will realise the trend here (more cores over time) and start building their games to work with n cores so the engine scales based on what hardware you have.

Valves survey can bugger off, we all know that the vast majorety of people in that survey are CS1.6 players because that game has more players than everything else on steam added together, and they're running off an engine which is now 10 years old (yes HL was released in 1998). There is a unbelievably huge number of players who primarily play CS1.6 and have no reason to upgrade because they won't let that bloody game die!

I'm not suggesting they make games like Crysis which require everyone and their dog to upgrade, just that they don't let the hardware of bunch of CS newbs dictate what sort of games we all get.
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my dog won't upgrade no matter how I try to explain it to him.

the thing is these 'cs newbs' make up the largest percentage of online FPS gaming, thats why the stat is relevant.
 
If you could do a survey of people buying newer games (past 2 years) the quad core population would probably be much higher (obviously dual core would still dominate).

I always heard, if you have a dual core already, just stick with it. But....

If you do not own either and are choosing between the two, go with quad core.

It also depends are how much you like to overclock. I am a "weenie" so I only take my q6600 to 3200 MHz (400*8).

The quad core population (this is obviously a guess), I am willing to bet has gone up a ton in the last couple of months with $200 and cheaper q6600s. When Microcenter first went with $200 in-store sale that made up my mind on what I was going to get.

If you play, or plan on playing Supreme Commander or FSX and you have not yet purchased, then DEFINITELY go for the quad core.
 
what res do you plan to game at and what vid card? because that would determine if you need afaster CPu - if your gaming at like 1280 and lower, a faster cpu would help, after that, your not likely going to see massive FPS gains between a 4Ghz e8400 and a 3.3ghz quad core... (overclocked)


with the quad as well your over all windows will be faster, be able to do more at once, while gaming and such. say a game uses 2 cores, great, your 2 cores are getting used and now windows has to do something, now it is cutting into one of your cores, OPh now your spyware app kicks in too, or your antivirus, or Xfire, or ventrillo.... see where i am going?

quad core you have plenty of cpu cyclkes to spare for all the other crap you may run while gaming
 
I max out everything with TF2, WoW, and Second Life. using a 22" LCD at 1680x1050. Planning to try out Oblivion again. I also would like to play game like Assassin Creed and upcoming games.

Planning to upgrade to Westinghouse 37" soon and run it at it's highest resolution. 1900x1200 if I recall correctly.

And yeah I most defiantly plan to over clock on air only. Water and those sort of thing just an hassle for me.
 
One thing thats HUGE about quad core..

Multitasking.

Even with heavy load games. I can be running any game at max setting 1900x1200res with several apps in the background and can alt-tab between them all instantly with no delay, and get back into the game in one second.

My last rig it took YEARS if I wanted to alt-tab in games.

For that reason alone I say go quad-core it's worth it. even if many games dont fully support it.
 
Quad definitively !!
eventually game developers are gonna code their games to take fully advantage of quad cores.

u know what they say, once u go quad u never go back :p
 
Dual Core. By the time most games utilize four cores we will be on a different socket anyway.
 
Draax said:
Dual Core. By the time most games utilize four cores we will be on a different socket anyway.
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RIght on, and the Dual Core people will have to upgrade when the games run like crap, and the Quad Core people can hold out longer for better deals. Until then, the Dual Core people get to play games at 5fps faster if they keep using 1024x768 resolution, grats!

This is going to be no different than when people were buying fast single core chips instead of new (at the time) dual cores. The people who stuck with single cores because they were "faster in games" hit the limits of those chips much faster than the dual core people did. Its just stupid to keep buying dual cores based on game performane when games are GPU limited anyway.
 
Zero82z said:
Forget the AMD system altogether. Your choice should be between a Q6600 and an E8400. Which one you pick really depends on what you do outside of gaming, since CPUs don't have that much of an impact at higher resolutions. If you do a lot of multitasking and use multi-threaded applications, the quad will be better. If you don't do a lot of multitasking and you use mostly single and dual-threaded programs, the E8400 will be faster due to its architecture improvements and the addition of SSE4.1.
Click to expand...

From what I have seen, current apps that take advantage of SSE 4.1 will be true multithreaded, and the 4 cores in the Q6600 outweighs the advantage of having SSE 4.1 on two cores. Quad wins again.
 
ocellaris said:
Its just stupid to keep buying dual cores based on game performane when games are GPU limited anyway.
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World of Warcraft is CPU limited.

Everytime I upgrade my CPU my framerate increases, and load times decrease. There's a lot going on in that game when you're in heavily populated areas, and MMOs in general are known to be very CPU intensive. Using the same 8800GTX I've gone from an Opteron 170 @ 2.75GHz, to a E4300 @ 3.15GHz, to a Q6600 @ 3.2GHz, to a E8400 @ 3.8GHz. I noticed a performance increase in Warcraft every single time. The biggest jump was moving to a C2D from Opteron.
 
Go with Dual-Core (2.8 - 3ghz) for today's games.

Go with Quad-Core (2.4ghz, overclockable to 3.4 - 3.6ghz on air with a good cooler) for 3D rendering, video encoding, multi-tasking or future games.
 
I think it just depends on your budget, dual core seems to work great for most games..wouldn't say quad core is necessary yet for gaming..so it just depends on if your likings
 
Go quad, no REAL reason not to....

(I was an early adopter of the A64 X2 and caught a lot of flack at the time. Who's laughing now? heh)
 
I've been trying to decide between an E8200, E8400, Q6600 or Q9300.

I'm heavily leaning towards the E8200 or E8400 for now though. The E8400 looks like it'll overclock very nicely with just a nice air cooler.

I game and do a lot of photoshop and other desktop publishing. Right now it seems higher clocked dual core do well for all my tasks.
 
TheGardenTool said:
I've been trying to decide between an E8200, E8400, Q6600 or Q9300.

I'm heavily leaning towards the E8200 or E8400 for now though. The E8400 looks like it'll overclock very nicely with just a nice air cooler.

I game and do a lot of photoshop and other desktop publishing. Right now it seems higher clocked dual core do well for all my tasks.
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You realize that Photoshop will use all four cores on a Quad right? Its laughable to see that you came to the conclusion that a Dual Core would be better for you.
 
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