quad core performance boost

will a game not optimized for a quad core processor see a performance boost, or will the higher clocked processor do better? (ex. core 2 duo 2.5 Ghz vs core 2 quad 2 Ghz) and what games are optimized for quad core?

 

the Dual core will obviously run better because a non Quad optimized games only uses 2 cores...

GTA 4
COD 5

all i know off the top of my head

 

dual core won't run better. it will run the same or marginally worse given an equivalent cpu otherwise.

edit: nevermind, he is comparing a higher clocked dual core to a lower clocked quad core.

the dual core would be faster, again assuming they are from the same processor line.

a slightly lower clocked core i7 quad core might run faster than a core 2 duo...

 

This is not a clear cut situation because it all depends on what resolutions you play at, where the bottlenecks are, what type of game you are playing etc

In most cases you won't see a performance boost from playing games on a Quad that have not been optimised for it but you won't lose performance either but again, it all depends on what I just mentioned.

I have noticed that many games scale to the Quad CPU's multiple cores instead of just using two, even older games sometimes do this but as to whether this actually makes a difference to performance is not clear.

Take a look at the link in my sig to get an idea of the performance of my 2.0 Ghz Q9000.