Dual Core Bad For Gaming?

[MielkeHBP]

i was told dual core is bad for gaming? is it true? why is it bad? or why is it good for gaming?

 

[Electric Amish]

I don't know why it would be bad. It would be really good if the game were programmed to take advantage of the multiple cores. Most current applications are not programmed to use this advantage.

 

[Baked]

Slap the guy who told you that.

 

[lifeblood]

I play City of Heroes and Everquest 2 and last week upgraded from a 3000+ to a X2 3800+. As far as game performance I've seen some improvement probably due to the increased core clock rate (2.0 GHz vs 1.8 GHz). The biggest benefit has been in multitasking. I frequently play games while talking with friends on Skype and having Firefox open with a map of the zone I'm in displayed. In that situation I've seen a huge increase in performance.

 

[phile]

Originally posted by: MielkeHBP
i was told dual core is bad for gaming? is it true? why is it bad? or why is it good for gaming?

Only the most ardent AMD fan-boy would claim such nonsense.

-phil

 

[Munky]

There were some stuttering issues caused by dual cores, most of which can be fixed with the AMD driver. However, some older games still have problems with dual cores, so I have to manually set them to run only on one core. The other issue is that most games dont take advantage of dual cores, so you'll see no improvement in those games. To answer the question - dual cores aren't "bad" for gaming, but you'll get much better results by getting a high end video card than dual cores.

 

[Muzzy]

Um, who told you that? Since upgrading to E6400, my fps in DoD doubled. No more studdering during a fight, everything is now smooth like butta!

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: Baked
Slap the guy who told you that.

And steal the Conroe he's probably got in his rig

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Muzzy
Um, who told you that? Since upgrading to E6400, my fps in DoD doubled. No more studdering during a fight, everything is now smooth like butta!

When I upgraded from a single core A64 to a dual core Opteron, I had stuttering issues in some games that werent there before. There was a long thread about dual core stuttering here - a lot of people had the same problem. Installing the AMD driver fixed most of the issues.

 

[hennethannun]

why would an AMD fanboy say that dual-core was bad for gaming?

until July 25th, AMD had the best dual core processors in the world, and the only really good retail dual core solution.

 

[NuAlphaMan]

As most have stated, this is not true. The only problem is that most of the current games dual core ready. However, games are being programmed to take advantage of all that dual cores have to offer.

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: phile

Originally posted by: MielkeHBP
i was told dual core is bad for gaming? is it true? why is it bad? or why is it good for gaming?

Only the most ardent AMD fan-boy would claim such nonsense.

-phil

Ridiculous.
:roll:

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: Avalon

Originally posted by: phile

Originally posted by: MielkeHBP
i was told dual core is bad for gaming? is it true? why is it bad? or why is it good for gaming?

Only the most ardent AMD fan-boy would claim such nonsense.

-phil

Ridiculous.
:roll:

More like bloody stupid.

Dual core is incredibly bad value for gaming, but just flat out bad for it? Hayel no.

 

[gobucks]

basically, the only way it's "bad" is that for the same price, you can get a faster single core rather than a slower dual core (like a 3800+ is 2.4GHz, while an X2 3800+ is 2.0GHz) which means that in single core games the 2.4GHz will run faster. However, both will likely overclock around the same, so if you're not afraid of OCing, you can get the best of both worlds. also, most games currently in development will offer at least some multithreading. Oblivion is an example of a current game that uses both cores. Also, if you do other stuff while gaming (i.e. downloading torrents, DIVX encoding, whatever) then you won't lose much gaming performance with a dual core system.

overall i'd say get a cheap dual core and overclock. in the long run dual core will go obsolete much less quickly and will eventually perform much better as well. A core 2 duo is a good candidate for this (my 2.13GHz e6400 can hit over 3.2GHz) and an X2 3800+ isn't bad either.

 

[deadseasquirrel]

If you're gaming with the rig in your sig, you'd be MUCH better off upgrading the ATI x700 GPU and leave your 2.2ghz Z64 alone.

 

[drifter106]

Might as well put in my 2 cents...Am running a 3500 winnie and a opteron 175 (both at stock). The opteron has proven to be a better solution for what we do. After putting the driver in from AMD, the opteron provides for a quicker, snapper response in whatever your doing. Thinking about swapping out the winnie for a 3800 or even a 4400. Not really excited about changing platforms. I must keep in mind that when I built these, emphasis was placed on the idea that at some point in time I would possible upgrade the cpu and/or other components. Might take on a different attitude if I had a Conroe to play with but for now it seems only prudent to stay the course.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel
If you're gaming with the rig in your sig, you'd be MUCH better off upgrading the ATI x700 GPU and leave your 2.2ghz A64 alone.

If you'd spend $100 or more on a video card, your framerates would come close to tripling, with the processor you have now. If you could afford to spend $200 on a video card, it would be twice that.

@drifter: The increased "snappiness" comes from the increases L2 cache. Besides a few applications that can actually take advantage of the increases L2, snappiness is most of the benefit from having a 1MB L2. It isn't coming from having a dual-core.

 

[Dribble]

Originally posted by: myocardia
@drifter: The increased "snappiness" comes from the increases L2 cache. Besides a few applications that can actually take advantage of the increases L2, snappiness is most of the benefit from having a 1MB L2. It isn't coming from having a dual-core.

Rubbish! - more cache doesn't not make a cpu "snappy", it'll just go a little faster.

His increased snappyness occurs because he's comparing a single core to a dual core machine, and the dual core not suprisingly feels more responsive because there is a second core to help handle situations where multiple programmes want cpu time at the same time.

 

[Griswold]

Originally posted by: phile

Originally posted by: MielkeHBP
i was told dual core is bad for gaming? is it true? why is it bad? or why is it good for gaming?

Only the most ardent AMD fan-boy would claim such nonsense.

-phil

You're quite the idiot, arent you? Or did I miss some weak sarcasm? Or did it escape your narrow mind that AMD also pushes dual cores as the hottest thing since the invention of sliced bread? Or do you associate the words "dual" and "core" only with core (2) duo? :disgust:

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Dribble

Originally posted by: myocardia
@drifter: The increased "snappiness" comes from the increases L2 cache. Besides a few applications that can actually take advantage of the increases L2, snappiness is most of the benefit from having a 1MB L2. It isn't coming from having a dual-core.

Rubbish! - more cache doesn't not make a cpu "snappy", it'll just go a little faster.

His increased snappyness occurs because he's comparing a single core to a dual core machine, and the dual core not suprisingly feels more responsive because there is a second core to help handle situations where multiple programmes want cpu time at the same time.

When I upgraded from a single core to dual core, I saw no increase in snappiness whatsoever. My single core felt snappy already, but when it was non-responsive right when the PC boots up, the dual core is now also, probably because of POS Windoze.

 

[Dribble]

Originally posted by: munky

When I upgraded from a single core to dual core, I saw no increase in snappiness whatsoever. My single core felt snappy already, but when it was non-responsive right when the PC boots up, the dual core is now also, probably because of POS Windoze.

When you boot up you must be mostly bottlenecked by the speed of your hard disk as windows loads and runs the long list of processes it requires these days :roll:

While the way you work doesn't require dual core it does for some people and there's no way that increasing cpu cache is going to make a system much snappier (other then adding 5% or so to cpu performance). I suspect myocardia is taking his experiences from increasing system memory (which can make a system feel much snappier if it was having to use swap before) and wrongly assuming it would have the same effect on cpu cache.