Quad-core or Dual-core ? Which one do I pick ?

[jcmolina]

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: munky
A lot of modern games are multithreaded. It doesn't necessarily mean they will benefit from more than 2 cores, but they definitely use more than one core. Some games I tested are Bioshock, Mass Effect, COD 4, Oblivion, and Stalker CS.

Add GTA 4, Company of Heroes, Riddick Dark Athena and Nfs Pro Street, which was unplayable for me on dual cores, just like GTA 4.

Unplayable? Should I really worry if I intend to run GTA4/Mass Effect/L4D on a X2 550?

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: jcmolina

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: munky
A lot of modern games are multithreaded. It doesn't necessarily mean they will benefit from more than 2 cores, but they definitely use more than one core. Some games I tested are Bioshock, Mass Effect, COD 4, Oblivion, and Stalker CS.

Add GTA 4, Company of Heroes, Riddick Dark Athena and Nfs Pro Street, which was unplayable for me on dual cores, just like GTA 4.

Unplayable? Should I really worry if I intend to run GTA4/Mass Effect/L4D on a X2 550?

GTA 4 is far from unplayable on a C2D, I'm not sure if people who act like you have to have a Quad to play it, have actually even played it. My GF has a C2D and GTA IV runs great for her, it never dips below 30 fps and is typically in the 35-40 range. Yeah, 60 fps would be a lot smoother, but it's still very very playable. I can't speak on the other games mentioned.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: jcmolina

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: munky
A lot of modern games are multithreaded. It doesn't necessarily mean they will benefit from more than 2 cores, but they definitely use more than one core. Some games I tested are Bioshock, Mass Effect, COD 4, Oblivion, and Stalker CS.

Add GTA 4, Company of Heroes, Riddick Dark Athena and Nfs Pro Street, which was unplayable for me on dual cores, just like GTA 4.

Unplayable? Should I really worry if I intend to run GTA4/Mass Effect/L4D on a X2 550?

I originally played Mass Effect on an Opteron 165, and it was definitely playable. Multithreaded games don't necessarily benefit from 4 cores, in many cases they could run just as well on a dual core cpu.

 

[Luddite]

Would Adobe InDesign and QuarkXpress be better suited to quad, or a higher clocked C2D?

 

[itisaniceday]

you can have a look at this AMD Phenom II x4 940 3GHz Processor + ECS AM2+ AMD 780G ATX Motherboard.

 

[aigomorla]

Add winrar 3.90 -> confirmed multi threaded.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
Add winrar 3.90 -> confirmed multi threaded.

Really? Why can't I get more than 60% utilization when doing the best (slowest) compression?

 

[NaOH]

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: n7
UT3 utilizes all cores on a quad, no question about that.

It shows in reviews where slower clocked quads beat higher clocks duals, & i've done lots of testing myself; minimum fps is better with four cores than two.

For UT3 & actually most UE3 games, i'd recommend a quad.

I went from a 2.8Ghz Dually to a 3.4 Quad and my UT3 frame rates had a massive improvement. Went from going between 30 and 60 frames(very annoying when things got intense) to never ever ever going below the maximum of 62 in an online game.


Winrar is multi threaded. I am pretty sure Crysis is multi threaded.


As for the thread itself. I think it's silly to recommend a dual over a quad because of individual games and programs someone runs. Benchmarks do not reflect real world performance most of the time. They are run on fresh install machines with nothing at all running in the background, sometimes sound is even disabled. Real people have things like winamp or media player, an antivirus, and a few other apps open at the same time as their game.(Web browsers, etc..)

For one thing, if you play a game that uses both the cores of your dually, you will already be at the limit of what your machine can do without reduced performance. Forget running torrents, virus scans, making a dvd or pretty much any of that jizz or your game will studder. Dual core users pretty much have to stop doing anything stressing(such as gaming)if they want to do anything productive on their pc. A quad user could run a virus scan, encode some movies and burn them to dvd, and play a game at the same time.

Cliffs:

*A quad will run a game that doesn't benefit directly from a quad core + windows and other apps at the same time better than a dual core will.

*A quad will run future games significantly faster than a dual core will. I do not buy the "Your quad will be obsolete before that happens." It didn't take too long for the Pentium D 820 to beat the Athlon 64 FX55 in games.

The argument was the same as it was before about dual vs single. It was almost completely unanimous back then. If you can afford a dual, there is absolutely no reason to buy a single. The same goes for quad vs dual, assuming performance is the only concern.(Low power/low heat machines have reason to run a dual or less) The whole clock speed argument is silly too, a stock Q6600 is fine for any game, and the average OC of a Q6600 is fine for any game as well. Future games will stop running well on a 4Ghz Duo before they stop running well on a stock Q6600, let alone an overclocked one.

The day you can rip, burn DVDs and play games without having your hdd as a bottleneck, let me know.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: NaOH

The day you can rip, burn DVDs and play games without having your hdd as a bottleneck, let me know.

And yet still, with the HD as a bottleneck, quad out-performs dual in gaming

As an example, World-In-Conflict is not playable due to FPS in the teens on a 4.25GHz dual core with a 4870 TriFire whereas it is completely playable on a 4.0 GHz quad - and this is at 19x12 resolution with all the in-game details fully maxed and with 4xAA/16xAF

forget dual unless you are on a budget

 

[tomster2300]

The i7 920 is a hyper threaded quad core. i7 = win...

 

[TheRyuu]

Xvid (version => 1.2) is multi-threaded.
x264 has frame based threading (i.e. it is multi-threaded).

There is a multi-threaded version of Lame out but no one (respectable) would use it. It disables the bit reservoir in order to get threaded.

It's better just to open up 2 or more instances of regular Lame and encode side by side then to use Lame MT. Plus with the --vbr-new setting, encodes aren't horribly slow anymore :/ (at least with vbr).
I don't know of a audio encoder that is multi-threaded.
NeroAacEnc, vorbis (oggenc2), and lame are all sinlge threaded.

Your "converting media" is too generic I think. There is a mix of both threaded and non-threaded software when it comes to "converting media".

Furthermore, adding onto your list of games, Empire: Total War recently received multi-threading in one of it's patches which improves performance a lot (uses 3+ cores on my q6600).

 

[gizbug]

I have an e6600 on a P45 mb. I am thinking of going QUAD over i7, as then I don't need new ram/mb

 

[MODEL3]

From my experience with games only World-In-Conflict and UT3 had significant difference from 2 cores to 4 cores but they are not using 100% the 4 cores.

If You compare a Phenom II X3 720 (2.8GHz) and a Phenom II X4 920 (2.8GHz) there is no difference in these games, so no difference between 3 and 4 cores.

My understanding about core utilization is:
Since most developers have 2 (or more) years cycle between their games the number of cores in 100% utilization should be:

2011 4 cores
2009 3 cores
2007 2 cores

There may be some games in 2010 with 4 core utilization (Rage?), like Oblivion had 2 core utilization in 2006.

The thing is that with the current prices it is not a good period to purchase a very high performance dual core

 

[NaOH]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: NaOH

The day you can rip, burn DVDs and play games without having your hdd as a bottleneck, let me know.

And yet still, with the HD as a bottleneck, quad out-performs dual in gaming

As an example, World-In-Conflict is not playable due to FPS in the teens on a 4.25GHz dual core with a 4870 TriFire whereas it is completely playable on a 4.0 GHz quad - and this is at 19x12 resolution with all the in-game details fully maxed and with 4xAA/16xAF

forget dual unless you are on a budget

I'm not arguing that, that is very possible. Just not the assumption that just because you have 4 cores means you have the power of 4 computers in one and can multi-task doing hard drive intensive things all at once.

 

[freaky123]

hi,

take a look at here:

Multicore scaleability

there are a lot of older, midaged and current cpu's there, intressting.

cu

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Originally posted by: freaky123
hi,

take a look at here:

Multicore scaleability

there are a lot of older, midaged and current cpu's there, intressting.

cu

Very interesting.

 

[sticks435]

Toms just did a article on how many core's you need.

http://www.tomshardware.com/re...-performance,2373.html

General conclusion was that dual core was a minimum(duh) and that power users could defently benefit from quad core's if running multiple apps at the same time.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Originally posted by: sticks435
Toms just did a article on how many core's you need.

http://www.tomshardware.com/re...-performance,2373.html

General conclusion was that dual core was a minimum(duh) and that power users could defently benefit from quad core's if running multiple apps at the same time.

Finally an article from Toms that was perfectly understandable and showed absolutely no bias. Best writeup I've ever seen on that site.

I like how they actually ran a simulated multitasking test with WiC and an anti-virus running in the background. Nobody ever does this.

 

[Nemesis 1]

45 days ago I would say 4 cores . Today I will be very pleased to own a 2 core 4 threaded Clarkdale cpu . This chip will be great until 2012. Both Intel /AMD have fast good cpus. I really like clackdale alot. Its going n my main gamer when I get A retail version.

When online I use a p4c and I really don't need more . I have lost alot of interest in gaming . Age, But I have my grandson and for him . I will stay up to date . Not for self.

My daughters plan in the PC business is better than mine was. I think more like Steve Jobs than PC users . Dar is selling lianLi PC. Cheap and fast . Making more $$$ per year but less per unit = more work . Plus the fact anyone can buy a lian Li case . She sells 20 lian li to one of my designed cases. But mine are pure class and really expensive . These customers are her best customers. Free upgrades and a 6 month(5 years) in home check up and cleaning has made them return customers. All parts are retail with retail warranties.

Dar was getting alot of calls for my design but price scarred most away . Than she started offerring cheaper Lian li cases and things are good for her. She still makes better money casting jewelery. She almost stopped the PC business that broke my heart. But Ma tal;ked her into sticking with it.

All I am saying here is until you see real benchies and O/C with Clarkdale 2 core 4 threaded cpus don't make judgement something I quickly learned. These Clardales are Monsters and the Devil to AMD. Just wait a little while longer and your patients shall be rewarded. Did I say these are well priced.

 

[CyraNose]

Hi. This is a very basic question: Let's say I'm considering a 3.2 GH quad-core. Are EACH of the CPU's 3.2 GH? Or do they ADD UP to 3.2 GH? Thanks.

 

[Ben90]

Originally posted by: CyraNose
Hi. This is a very basic question: Let's say I'm considering a 3.2 GH quad-core. Are EACH of the CPU's 3.2 GH? Or do they ADD UP to 3.2 GH? Thanks.

Each core is 3.2 Ghz

 

[CyraNose]

Thanks! I thought as much, but wanted to be sure.

 

[JimmmyD]

Yeah each core runs at the same speed and the same goes for when you overclock it as well..

 

[jimhsu]

One thing I'm slowly noticing - the rise of the SSD finally justifies moving "general use computing" into quad core. That is, for multitasking programs that are not specifically multi-threaded, a good SSD simply gets that much more utilization out of a quad core or higher than a dual core, etc. The easiest test is to simply start up windows - with the Intel X25-M, I'm officially CPU limited during Windows startup (both cores stuck at 100%) - that's how much faster the storage I/O system became. Antivirus scan with NOD32 is also essentially CPU limited.

Plus, with the i7's Turbo feature (revolutionary in its own right), unused cores can now be shut off to further bump up clockspeed, which completely erases the dual-quad core performance gap for single-threaded apps. My current build is a dual core (E8400) because I needed a small form factor (heat is critical) and there were no 45nm quads at that time, but I certainly noticed the times where a quad would help (e.g. trying to run something in the background with a game that uses dual cores, doing render export from After Effects, doing an SVN commit while compiling code, etc)

 

[overclocking101]

A dualie will get you higher mhz overclock but a quad will out perform a dualie even at lower speeds, but i'd get a dualie as nothing is really fully multi threaded except benchmarks

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