So I'm looking at two Phenom II processors and debating whether it's really necessary at this moment in time to get a quad-core processor. I am only doing gaming and some basic web surfing on this box and if I can save about $60 bucks by buying a Phenom II X2 555 versus an X4 955 then that will help me out. I plan on replacing this box completely in another two or three years after this upgrade.
From what I understand most games are very serial in processing, and while they can thread out some basic tasks (AI processing) but are not asynchronous enough to fully thread out other tasks without having to block until completion (sound, physics) due to having synchronized rendering. I know that the only benchmark that seems to really love multi-core is the Valve particle demo, but I come from the school of thought that if it isn't a real game benchmark then it's worthless to talk about for a gaming machine.
I'm curious as to what you guys think.
Yep, more or less what I thought. For games, the difference is negligible in even the most demanding titles:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/defau...=88&p2=120&c=1
Other types of applications do benefit quite a bit like compression or 3D CG rendering apps (which I don't do enough to care).
Not so fast. Those results are from a few years ago...an innocent time before games were made to support four cores. So naturally the differences are negligible.
Try this benchmark comparison with similar CPUs as yours, but are versions that were tested more recently:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/defau...120&p2=102&c=1
Yeah the old games are pretty close, but check out Dragon Age's huge jump. Far Cry 2 also had a notable jump. Other tests I've seen showed GTAIV as having a substantial performance increase over dual core.
So it really depends on the game, but if your timeline is 2-3 years for this upgrade, definitely shell out the extra money for a quad core.
I noticed that not all CPUs on that list have been benched against Dragon Age, which is one of the games I would like to play with 1920x1080 resolution.
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...ores/Practice/
From this article, and the benchmarks on the Anandtech page that do exist, it looks like performance scales quite well over multiple cores. I think I will have to bite the bullet and go for a quad-core CPU. Although those benchmarks are not as good in methodology as I would prefer, they should have used no AA/AF to leave limiting to the CPU as much as possible. As it stands, I think their choice of GPU is too much the limiting factor so it is difficult to see the differentiation between the top tier CPUs.
Yeah there's no good comprehensive test, especially if you're looking at older vs. newer CPUs where the older ones just haven't been benched with newer games.
I think I will have to just suck it up and save more money for my upgrade now that the PEG slot is messed up. Once you are up into the quad-core price ranges it doesn't make as much financial sense to go the Phenom II route. There's only about a $40-50 price difference between an AM3 / X4 955 motherboard/CPU pairing and a LGA 1156 / i5-750 one.
Athlon X4 630 is cheap and equal to a Q9400 which costs ($2-300 more) (+$100 for mobo, +$100 for chip, +$100 for dwindling DDR2 stock)
For this much less cost, I'm willing to give AMD a try again according to techreport.com's March 2010 system guide after years of having trouble with AMD. The Intel C2D/Qs have just been smoother, more stable systems for me.
What is the most cost-effective price/perfomer in the overclocking realm? Years ago I got my Core-2 Duo E6600 (stock 2.4 GHz). I knew before buying I'd be able to clock it up to 3 Gig or more. I've now been running it at 3.3 GHz for over 2 years.
Are there similar overclocking champs in the Quad-core market?
It becomes trickier with more cores. I've given up on overclocking since it risks corrupt data. Then again, even with a stock Q9400 system I just found a bunch of my games to have failed integrity for some reason after restoring a backup (the backup checked out according to the software) so it could be a combination of hoarding games I never play and keeping a too-big 500GB backup image. So it could be my HD going. But that's neither here nor there.
Oh wow, that really stinks :(Originally Posted by rei
Should definitely go with Quad Core currently - there's a much bigger difference in performance vs Dual Core in games than there was a couple of years ago, and presumably that will continue to grow.
I can count on one hand the number of games that use more than two cores of my system, so a dual core is fine in that sense. However, newer chip architectures (i5 et al) are only in quad core varieties, and a 2.66ghz i5 is faster than a 2.66ghz Core2. So you're better off buying a quad core, but not for the reasons you think.
This only makes sense if you've already decided to never buy any future games. The performance difference between 2 cores and 4 cores in old games is negligible, sure, but the difference in demanding current games and virtually all future games is significant. Considering quad core CPUs can be had for less than $100 these days there is no reason to even pretend like dual core is a fine option.
I think it is a safe bet that by the time the majority of PC games you want to play become multi-core-aware, it will be time to buy a new processor anyway. That time isn't today, and I doubt it will be 12 months or even 24 months from now.
Related to this:
Intel wants to start using the PC processor to fill up your frame buffer instead of depending on purpose-built GPUs. They may have shelved consumer plans for Larrabee for now, but I think they're on the right track that customers want to get graphics for cheap price. If you can throw a dozen cores at the 3d graphics problem and come up with a solution cheaper and with comparable performance to an ATI Radeon or Nvidia GeForce GPU, I think consumers will follow their pocketbooks.
Last edited by Lunch of Kong; 03-01-2010 at 11:38 PM.
Read his post again.
Your "demanding current games", are there more than five? Because I count Supreme Commander 1 and I left a buffer of four more for others I don't know about.
No console game will use >2 CPUs. That's proven empirically, from all console ports which sit at exactly 2 CPUs utilization all the time.
If you're still on dual core it's a fine option for current games. You're better off waiting until it's actually a problem and spending $100 on a 2011 processor than buying a $100 2010 processor and using it next year.Considering quad core CPUs can be had for less than $100 these days there is no reason to even pretend like dual core is a fine option.
There is actually a number of games that benefit greatly from having at least three cores, owing to their origins on, or kinship to the triple core 360. GTA4, Dragon Age are good examples where having at least 3 cores gives a big boost. I think Unreal 3 engine games tend to do well with only 2 cores, but we've gotten into an era where if you want the good physics in those games nVidia is going to demand you run them on a GPU no matter how many idle cores you have. Metro 2033 is going to be able to use lots of cores. I'll be curious to see how Assassin's Creed 2 performs. Sadly, when new games come out the hardware sites fall all over themselves to check the GPU performance, but it's much harder to find current CPU comparisons on current games.
That's getting less true all the time, but I agree in principle. I do think it's irresponsible to advise anyone looking to buy now to get anything with less than four cores.If you're still on dual core it's a fine option for current games. You're better off waiting until it's actually a problem and spending $100 on a 2011 processor than buying a $100 2010 processor and using it next year.
Given "NVidia physics" aka PhysX still fails hard on ATI and the CPU I'm not expecting it to matter any time soon.where if you want the good physics in those games nVidia is going to demand you run them on a GPU no matter how many idle cores you have
True, at least if that dude Digital Foundry interviewed knows anything.Metro 2033
Yeah, as far as computer advice goes "it will be better in a year" is quite useless really.That's getting less true all the time, but I agree in principle.
I'm off to test DAO. I'll return triumphantly if it uses less than a steady 37.5% worth of CPU, otherwise I won't bump again :).
Yeah, I'd have thought most 360 console ports would use at least three cores on PC as they should have already gone to the trouble of setting up the hardware threads for the 360. Plus 360 to PC is generally a closer mapping than PS3 to PC. At Codies the threading architecture was pretty much platform abstracted so we certainly would have been making use of at least three cores on PC just by virtue of maxing out the 360.
Having said that I wasn't involved in setting up the threads so I could be completely wrong :)
I wish I had the resources to do testing myself, because I'm really curious how the number of cores effect games like The Saboteur, Star Wars: Force Unleashed, Mass Effect 2, Assassin's Creed 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, etc. Sites don't do it because it's a much bigger hassle to juggle CPU testbeds than it is to test a variety of GPUs in the same system. Many of these games also don't have convenient benchmarking utilities built in. Major CPU releases happen so infrequently that we don't get good, new data very often.
Mass Effect 2. Spikes hit 28% sometimes (ie >2 cores) so there you go.
Stalker: Call of Pripyat. As bad as the Digital Foundry interview suggested - one core.
Left 4 Dead 2. Using two and a half cores.
Empire Total War. PC only game(?). Two cores.
OK, that's all the modern engines I have on hand.
For me the only interesting question is "how many cores does it use?". For the record, you can probably do quite well with simple CPU affinity restrictions for benchmarking if you care about the FPS vs. available cores.I wish I had the resources to do testing myself, because I'm really curious how the number of cores effect games like The Saboteur, Star Wars: Force Unleashed, Mass Effect 2, Assassin's Creed 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, etc.
EDIT: this is an '8 core' aka i7 CPU
Last edited by chequers; 03-02-2010 at 06:26 AM.
Two cores plus some extra makes perfect sense for a 360 game if they are using some kind of update/render split architecture (updates on one thread, render calls on another) with the third core being used for probably less intensive systems that don't want interrupting like sound streaming. I expect something like Modern Warfare or FarCry 2 makes good use of three cores.
Do you have an 8 core processor checkers? Or is it some kind of split four core technology that I haven't been following.
EDIT: Tried out Dragon Age myself and it sits at around 63-66% CPU usage on my quad core system so I guess its making use of three cores as you'd expect from a good technical 360 port.
Last edited by Dan Lawrence; 03-02-2010 at 05:12 AM.
Actually, the new Clarkdale CPUs are Nehalem-based dual-cores with Hyper-Threading using the LGA 1156 socket. So, technically can execute four threads simultaneously, but not as good as a true quad-core.
That said, unless you're on a really tight budget, I see little incentive not to get a quad-core these days. Sure, the number of games which benefit is still fairly small, but it is growing; and the price difference between dual- and quad-cores has shrunk a lot. And of course extra cores help you with everything else you do with your PC. If you're cheap, you can buy an Athlon II x4 for under $100 or a Phenom II x4 for $135; if you're willing to spend a bit more, a Core i5 750 is under $200.
I think the issue for a gamer is where you put the dollars. Yes, the difference between a dual-core system and quad core might be $100. But, are you better off spending that $100 on upgrading your video card choice?
For the foreseeable future, I think spending it on the VC is a better bet, for pure gaming. This is particularly true of you're making the big leap from a $100 VC to a $200 one.
Maybe not, it totally depends per application if you are CPU or GPU bound. I suspect being CPU bound is becoming a lot more common these days.
People encode video right? For portable devices like iPhones and to console media extenders? A quad core would help.
Totally true if you're the 1% (made this up, but you're a small, geeky minority--most buy set top boxes or buy from itunes) of the computer population that mucks around with video conversion. The difference between a quadcore and dualcore for transcoding can be about 30%, and that's substantial enough to matter.
I agree that it's becoming more common, but I highly suspect that the VC will be a bigger bottleneck than the CPU for the vast majority of games.
Even for most games where CPU can create a bottleneck, I think greater performance will be seen with the dual core and $200 VC than the quad core and the $100 VC.
You mean 100%.
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