The great dual vs quad vs hex gaming benchmarkapalooza

[sm625]

That's nonsense. There is no evidence showing me that ANY phenom x4 is insufficient for 1080p gaming. Since you can actually buy a decent amd cpu WITH an upgrade path for ~$100, it makes a whole lot more sense than paying twice as much for power you dont need, plus twice as much for a motherboard that will most likely not accept the new chip right when intel releases the next chip you actually would want. (the one after IB.) Tell me you actually believe you wont have to buy a new mobo for that. lol

 

[toyota]

That's nonsense. There is no evidence showing me that ANY phenom x4 is insufficient for 1080p gaming. Since you can actually buy a decent amd cpu WITH an upgrade path for ~$100, it makes a whole lot more sense than paying twice as much for power you dont need, plus twice as much for a motherboard that will most likely not accept the new chip right when intel releases the next chip you actually would want. (the one after IB.) Tell me you actually believe you wont have to buy a new mobo for that. lol

did I say the the X4 was insufficient? the 2500k is much faster and is better suited to pushing high end gpus now AND in the future. go ahead and save a little money building an X4 system but it will need to be upgraded much sooner. its funny when even the dual core i3 with HT can beat the X4 while using half(125w vs 65w) the cpu power.

 

[Bryf50]

That's nonsense. There is no evidence showing me that ANY phenom x4 is insufficient for 1080p gaming. Since you can actually buy a decent amd cpu WITH an upgrade path for ~$100, it makes a whole lot more sense than paying twice as much for power you dont need, plus twice as much for a motherboard that will most likely not accept the new chip right when intel releases the next chip you actually would want. (the one after IB.) Tell me you actually believe you wont have to buy a new mobo for that. lol

Judging by your delusional sig, it is apparent you are an AMD fan in denial.

 

[AdamK47]

One thing I just noticed by looking at the Lost Planet 2 shots is the frame rate scaling with the GPU utilization. Dual core doesn't max the utilization out. Moving to quad core maxes out the utilization in scene 1 and most of scene 2 of the test, but not scene 3. Moving to hex core provides more utilization in scene 3. There is only a couple FPS difference in scene 1 and 2, but the framerate jumps another 22 FPS in scene 3. Capcom codes their games well.

 

[classy]

That is old skool, top shelf stuff. That's the kinda review that made Anandtech and many others the sites they are today. You deserve some serious kudos for this. That is good work.

Its also interesting to see how games are utilizing multiple core processors today. We would probably see similar results with AMD Hex core stuff as well. Clearly it looks like going forward, a quad is a minimum for a game machine or at least one that can process 4 threads.

Nice work, real nice work.

 

[Mr. President]

Excellent work. I've always found it a shame how few professional sites do proper research like that.

For what it's worth, the images show up fine on the four browsers I have on my two computers. Same goes for IE7 at work. Chances are that the issues are network based for those with problems.

Edit:

One thing I just noticed by looking at the Lost Planet 2 shots is the frame rate scaling with the GPU utilization. Dual core doesn't max the utilization out. Moving to quad core maxes out the utilization in scene 1 and most of scene 2 of the test, but not scene 3. Moving to hex core provides more utilization in scene 3. There is only a couple FPS difference in scene 1 and 2, but the framerate jumps another 22 FPS in scene 3. Capcom codes their games well.

If memory serves correctly, Capcom's Framework engine scales all the way to 8 or 12 cores. I would be interested to see the results at lower resolutions if you find the time.

 

[AdamK47]

That's a good idea, but I went in a different direction. I decided to see how well CPU scaling was with SLI off. To my suprise there was none. The games tested are Crysis 2 and Lost Planet 2. Both showed good CPU scaling with 3-way SLI enabled. Turn it off and there is none.


Crysis 2

Dual:

Quad:

Hex:

Lost Planet 2

Dual:

Quad:

Hex:

I can see why some people always say anything over a dual core makes no difference. It doesn't if your video processing is maxed out. These people haven't seen results like the ones posted at the start of this thread.

 

[Borealis7]

so you're GPU limited with tri-SLI 580? ha!

 

[snarfbot]

crysis 2's minimum frame rate decreased as the amount of cores increased with tri-sli.

with a single gpu though, at least in the central park benchmark it increased substantially.

it would be interesting to test wolfdales at 1, 2, 3, and 6mb l2 and see how they perform on the same benchmark.

 

[yottabit]

Thanks for taking the time to put this thread together OP

I'm honestly pleasantly surprised at the few instances where the hex core DOES seem to offer a benefit

 

[AdamK47]

crysis 2's minimum frame rate decreased as the amount of cores increased with tri-sli.

with a single gpu though, at least in the central park benchmark it increased substantially.

it would be interesting to test wolfdales at 1, 2, 3, and 6mb l2 and see how they perform on the same benchmark.

I wouldn't put too much faith in the minimum shown in the Crysis 2 benchmark tool. It counts the minimum during the loading period between runs, so it doesn't matter much. Look at the framerate graph for the true minimum.

 

[AdamK47]

so you're GPU limited with tri-SLI 580? ha!

In a few instances. The Capcom games, RE5 and LP2, seem to hit that wall. STALKER CoP does many times. Crysis 2 inches closer to the max with hex core. AvP gets maxed out with just the dual core. Mafia 2 seems to scale well from dual to quad to hex and has plenty of GPU left.

 

[Makaveli]

I also cannot view these from my work connection with firefox and add block disabled.

However if I RDP home and view it on chrome the pics come up fine.

 

[flexcore]

Awesome work AdamK47! Thank you for your time, I've wondered how well games scale with cores. REP!!!

 

[guskline]

Adam47, great job. I opted for an Intel 2500k@4400. However your Gulftown 980X rig is a gaming BEAST!

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Can you bench with just one gtx480? That would do more to reflect real world performance, since most people don't even have that much horsepower, let alone tri sli, but most importantly 2 cores could be a serious bottleneck for triple card setups, which is probably why you get those big gaps in fps between switching the no. of cores.

Coming across various reviews, in some instances it seems multi GPUs are more reliant on CPU cores than single CPUs. The drivers are most likely playing a part in this. So that is yet another variable.

 

[AdamK47]

DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 are also supposedly more multi-core friendly when compared to DirectX 9.

 

[Bman123]

Nice work man

 

[Seero]

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

nuff said

 

[AdamK47]

Apparently two people don't like this thead for some reason. They voted it a 1. Oh well, can't win them all.

 

[ydnas7]

the fictitious 2120k (expect it to be released during IB's first year) would perform pretty similar to the dual core above.

great thread, best yet.:thumbsup:

 

[Marty502]

What an impressive piece of work man!

Don't mind the negativity. Gotta be jealous of your hardware or something.
Not that I'm not jealous but you know what I mean!

 

[spinejam]

Great work Adam! Ignore the knuckles 'round here -- you'll never please 'em.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Turn off HyperThreading when running on two cores and you'll see the performance lowered by a good 10-15% on most games from two years ago to now. Turn off HyperThreading when running on four cores and you'll be hard pressed to see a difference.

This is the exact reason why most people buy the 2500K instead of the 2600K for gaming.

Like I've said many times, the min you want nowadays is a dual-core/quad-thread CPU for gaming.

Thanks for the benchies.

 

[dualsmp]

ABT has done similar review. I think the general conclusion was with a single GPU a dual core was enough. Jump to SLI/Crossfire a quad is necessary.