No dual core love in 2015

[JumBie]

With the shocking requirements of recent games like Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age Inquisition and them requiring a quad core processor or a dual core with hyperthreading (i3) do you guys think this might be a continuing trend in new major releases?

I was shocked when I realized I would not be able to play either game with a dual core processor. G3258 owners must be disappointed as a lot of gamers actually purchased one on the basis of it being a cheap performance killer when it came to gaming. I understand the need to advance gaming by using more cores, but with these two games especially I feel as if us dual core users have been shafted. Its even come to attention that some gamers have disabled 2 cores on their processors and managed to play the game flawlessly. Which may lead us to believe that they run a true or false check on the processor itself before launch.

Anyone else think dual core may be on its way to the graveyard when it comes to gaming?

 

[cbn]

If Intel increases the IPC and frequency of future dual cores they will live on.

P.S. The requirements for quad core are often a generalization. There is no technical reason to have four threads. The processor just needs to have sufficient multi-threading capacity, and a strong enough dual core can do that.

 

[JumBie]

If Intel increases the IPC and frequency of future dual cores they will live on.

P.S. The requirements for quad core are often a generalization. There is no technical reason to have four threads. The processor just needs to have sufficient multi-threading capacity, and a strong enough dual core can do that.

They will live on but not for gaming. These two games actually require you have a quad core or a dual core with hyper threading. They will not run on a dual core processor period. Which means that if future developers implement this within their games the $70 dual core isn't going to look as tempting.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

With the shocking requirements of recent games like Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age Inquisition and them requiring a quad core processor or a dual core with hyperthreading (i3) do you guys think this might be a continuing trend in new major releases?

I was shocked when I realized I would not be able to play either game with a dual core processor. G3258 owners must be disappointed as a lot of gamers actually purchased one on the basis of it being a cheap performance killer when it came to gaming. I understand the need to advance gaming by using more cores, but with these two games especially I feel as if us dual core users have been shafted. Its even come to attention that some gamers have disabled 2 cores on their processors and managed to play the game flawlessly. Which may lead us to believe that they run a true or false check on the processor itself before launch.

Anyone else think dual core may be on its way to the graveyard when it comes to gaming?

I can't say I'm particularly surprised by this. 2C/2T is getting very long in the tooth, 4C/4C have after all been available to consumers for 8 years already. Even Atoms have moved to a 4C/4T design. For everyday computing 2C/4T is an acceptable compromise, especially for laptops were power consumption is at a premium.

I can of course see a justification for a cheap dual core for basic tasks, so long as there is sufficient performance available. I still don't think (and never have BTW) the G3258 is appropriate for modern games, its a cheap overclocking toy, nothing more and nothing less. Its more viable if you're running older games or emulators that are dependant on single thread performance, an area the G3258 really shines in with a good (4.5GHz+) OC.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Games refusing to start with dualcores is totally lame. If dragonage inquisition can run on a 2 Ghz intel quad it should run on a 4+ Ghz dualcore as well.

 

[MountainKing]

I was shocked when I realized I would not be able to play either game with a dual core processor. G3258 owners must be disappointed as a lot of gamers actually purchased one on the basis of it being a cheap performance killer when it came to gaming?

This is what tech sites made people believe. Everybody jumped into this OC the G3258 bandwagon and many of those tech sites were either paid (which is just an assumption I am making) or were not diligent enough to point out that at this price point a multi core AMD (>2 cores) might have made more sense in terms of medium term future proofing?

 

[ShintaiDK]

The quadcore requirements are fake and another hopeless attempt to make consoles look better than they are. And the games that does require a quadcore gets one patch after the other to enable dualcore mode. When crackers already removed the idiotic block that makes no sense.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

This is what tech sites made people believe. Everybody jumped into this OC the G3258 bandwagon and many of those tech sites were either paid (which is just an assumption I am making) or were not diligent enough to point out that at this price point a multi core AMD (>2 cores) might have made more sense in terms of medium term future proofing?

There is no > 2 cores amd at that pricepoint.

 

[Gikaseixas]

I still remember the fights in this forum about single vs dual core. Guess how that turned out? We're witnessing the exact same thing right now. Dual cores are ok for older games but for newer and more complex games we do need more than dual cores.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Dual cores are ok for older games but for newer and more complex games we do need more than dual cores.

But we dont, thats the issue. Had it at least been a legitimate requirement, but its purely artificial.

 

[bononos]

But we dont, thats the issue. Had it at least been a legitimate requirement, but its purely artificial.

I thought game publishers used to understate their hardware requirements not exaggerate them. Why on earth would they want to lock out potential customers with still ok cpus? Were they put up to this by the hardware industry?

 

[Gikaseixas]

But we dont, thats the issue

For simple tasks or instructions requiring resources from only one thread.
Plus recent game tests disagree with you too

 

[ShintaiDK]

Plus recent game tests disagree with you too

Do they? COD AW is a perfect example that dualcores are fine. Yet had an artificial quadcore requirement. And all the quadcore games gives 45-60fps with an old obsolete dualcore with HT. It doesnt take much imagination to see how a more modern dualcore with higher clocks and no HT could easily do the same. Well above the "cinematic" 30FPS.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I thought game publishers used to understate their hardware requirements not exaggerate them. Why on earth would they want to lock out potential customers with still ok cpus? Were they put up to this by the hardware industry?

Seems its by MS and Sony, to somehow make their consoles look better than they are.

 

[jpiniero]

But we dont, thats the issue. Had it at least been a legitimate requirement, but its purely artificial.

The only 2T chip that might be able to run it decently would be the Pentium AA oc'ed though. Granted it was max details but the SB i3 was pretty close to being at 100% on all 4 threads on the one CPU benchmark I saw.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The only 2T chip that might be able to run it decently would be the Pentium AA oc'ed though. Granted it was max details but the SB i3 was pretty close to being at 100% on all 4 threads on the one CPU benchmark I saw.

How much is HT adding? Even if we talk about 50% increase per thread. Its equal to 3 3.1Ghz SB cores. Not exactly something wild and cracy. And they handle 45-60fps with that.

In reality its much less that HT adds.

 

[jpiniero]

The SB i3 also has AVX, remember.

From looking, it's not that DA:I is actively blocking dual cores, just that it crashes at the title screen.

 

[nenforcer]

There is no > 2 cores amd at that pricepoint.

The Pentium G3258 (Haswell) Anniversary Edition currently retails for $69 at NewEgg while the AMD Athlon X4 750K currently retails for $73.

Many people are building quad core gaming Mantle machines at this price point. The onboard video of the G3258 is negligible for gaming and clearly the quad core AMD chip is going to have a better future for games as evidenced by this thread. Only CPU dependent games like Starcraft 2 / WoW are going to see a benchmark improvement on the Intel chip.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

The Pentium G3258 (Haswell) Anniversary Edition currently retails for $69 at NewEgg while the AMD Athlon X4 750K currently retails for $73.

Many people are building quad core gaming Mantle machines at this price point. The onboard video of the G3258 is negligible for gaming and clearly the quad core AMD chip is going to have a better future for games as evidenced by this thread. Only CPU dependent games like Starcraft 2 / WoW are going to see a benchmark improvement on the Intel chip.

The X750 being a quadcore is debatable. The 2 cores per module share a lot.

http://techreport.com/review/26735/overclocking-intel-pentium-g3258-anniversary-edition-processor/3

And when overclocked the pentium easily beats it in crysis 3.

 

[Fox5]

The writing has been on the wall for a while for dual cores without hyperthreading. I3 is the min for a gamer machine.

However, just due to Intel's stupid market segmentation with disabling instructions on their lower end cpus, the lower end AMD cpus do make a lot of sense. They're still "full" cpus, just slower.

 

[Berliner]

I understand the need to advance gaming by using more cores, but with these two games especially I feel as if us dual core users have been shafted. Its even come to attention that some gamers have disabled 2 cores on their processors and managed to play the game flawlessly. Which may lead us to believe that they run a true or false check on the processor itself before launch.

I have waited a long time for game designers to actually make efficient use of 3+ threads, but if what you write is true, it might just be shameless, paid for marketing.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Games refusing to start with dualcores is totally lame. If dragonage inquisition can run on a 2 Ghz intel quad it should run on a 4+ Ghz dualcore as well.

I totally agree. According to game.gpu, the game runs fine on an i3, in fact almost as well as an FX 8350. I am sure it would run ôn an overclocked 3258. Either it is lazy porting, or they are deliberately nerfing dual cores. It is especially lame on dragon age, since the Frostbite 3 engine scales extremely well on lower end hardware.

 

[Eric1987]

Games refusing to start with dualcores is totally lame. If dragonage inquisition can run on a 2 Ghz intel quad it should run on a 4+ Ghz dualcore as well.

Nope but nice try. Even if it did start it wouldn't run well. Games are designed to run with 4 cores because 80% of CPU's have at least 4 cores.

 

[john5220]

Look how all those review sites claimed the unlocked pentium was king and you should buy it over any AMD quad core like the 760k etc which is the same price.

Turns out they were full of sh!t, many games will give an error if it detects you have a dual core. A quad core AMD is so much better than the best over clocked intel dual core.

Such a lie spread by intel fan boys now when you have a G3258 and you go cry how the game will not start up on that chip, people laugh at you and say is this 2006? get a real quad core CPU.

Funny thing is AMD quad cores run games just fine. Just look at Battlefield 4 online on 64 player maps, runs better on any AMD quad core over any intel dual core.

 

[witeken]

Funny thing is AMD quad cores run games just fine. Just look at Battlefield 4 online on 64 player maps, runs better on any AMD quad core over any intel dual core.

Pentiums aren't made for gamers.