Need help - CPU speeds, slower cores in quad cores.

I'm a little confused as to work out the speeds of various CPUs.

The i7s (quadcore) have slower speeds than the i5s / dualcores. I take it that this is due to the individual cores being slower in the quads but there are more cores to make up for it?

That seems pretty straight forward, but: When reading the system requirements for games it will list the processor speed it recommends or needs and in alot of cases it will list a faster speed than the speed of the quad core (unoverclocked etc), even if it's an oldish game it might say it needs a processor speed of 2ghz(?) and an example quadcore might have a speed of 1.7ghz per core. Does this mean I would need to OC my CPU to get it up to what is required or do I not require such fast speeds if I have 4 cores.

Sorry if this has an obvious answer

 

Old games never new something except solo cores
If game requires dual core 2Ghz it means that it needs 4Ghz. I have I7 1.73Ghz and I never (almost thought that my CPU will be below requirements)

But now when SandyBridge is 30-40% faster and consumn less power I really think that my CPU is slower my needs)

 

You need to look at more than just clockspeed; you also need to look at the processor generation that it mentions. For example, Starcraft II is listed as having a minimum requirement of a 2.6 GHz Pentium 4. Now, a Pentium 4 is a pretty ancient CPU by today's standards, so you could probably use, say, a 2 GHz Core 2, or a 1.6 GHz Core-i (these are guesstimated numbers, especially since Pentium 4s are single core, and there are no single core Core-i processors). You can't quite do the math the way James_D suggests; it can sometimes make for a reasonable approximation, but not all programs are coded to properly take advantage of multiple cores so it's not quite as simple as what he suggests. As well, thanks to the turbo-boost function of the quad-core i7s, they can run much faster as dual cores than their listed clockspeed suggests; in the case of the i7-720QM, its speed while using turboboost on 2 cores is 2.4 GHz.

 

You have to look at more than just the base core clock. Most old games don't take full use of all the cores, hence why they have a single core at like 2.4Ghz. A quad core>dual core is almost any situation, because if 4 cores are not needed, the computer will simply use 2 cores and up the speed.

For instance, an i7-640m runs at 2.66Ghz, an i7-940xm runs at 2.13Ghz. If the game calls for 2.4Ghz, and only dual core, then i7-940xm can turbo boost two cores up to well over 2.66Ghz. Anyways, quad core will become standard in a few years, when more applications and games will take advantage of all 4 cores.

 

I didn't want to write so many simple things so I wrote not much above but still it was right. I was not talking about Pentium 4 but I was about dual core CPU's. Games usually says that they need dual core CPU and frequency (because there are not only generations but different brands like AMD and Intel). Also nowadays on the one hand even I7 didn't do so big step in generation side of the question (not frequency) since core2duo (turbo boost, and HT not counting because ht influence nothing good in gaming and TB is easily counted). Faster cache, better performance per 1Hz (yes I know it exists but not so big one), temperature and other things I also won't count in APPROXIMATELY comparing games requirements. And talking about old games we should not even look at their requirements
I7-740 = 1.73 but = 1.86 per core with turboboost. Easy to count enough.
I can also talk about this for long but all every guy with I7 needs to know is that he doesn't need to bother about CPU frequencies in gaming performance in close 2-3 years AT ALL. That is what I wrote in my short but informative post above.
Only GPU really matters for games.

 

Starcraft II (the example I cited) is hardly an "old" game.

 

Game Farmer (2010) is also hardly old one but no one comes to mind checking its minimum requirements.

 

Is English your second language?

 

Yep, English is not my native language if you are talking about this. But it was not the reason of my short answer in 1-st post. The problem is that after Bubbletonic reads Judicator's post he will get more questions than answers. I can't call his post as an answer on the question at all and I can prove my words.

P.S. Excuse me if I made any grammatic mistake.
P.P.S. But if you noticed my location under avatar and want to tell me that my English is good - Thank you

 

Well, the problem is that the question as posted is too open ended. It's like asking "I have a recipe that asks for cane sugar, I don't have cane sugar but I have other kinds of sugar, how much of the other kinds of sugar do I need or can I use?" The answer will be "depends on the recipe." Sometimes you can substitute, and sometimes you can't. If there was going to be a definitive answer, we needed a specific question, such as "Starcraft II lists a minimum requirement of 2.6 GHz, so my i7-720QM can't run it, right?" The answer to that, is yes, the i7-720QM _can_ run it. Saying a game that requires a dual-core at 2 GHz means that it needs 4 GHz isn't correct, though, and if possible, I would like you to prove it. Using your i7 as "proof" doesn't work, though, because with turboboost, an i7-740QM can disable 2 of its cores and use only 2 cores that work at 2.5 GHz. A lot also at that point depends on the coding of the game; some games are coded well enough to take advantage of more than 2 cores (or come close to requiring it... GTA IV?). Minimum requirements are also often rather "loose", you can actually often run games on systems that don't even meet those minimum requirements.

I'm not actually trying to put you up as a target here, I'm just pointing out that the question (as put) has no simple answer.

 

^ ima have to agree with judicator about most of it. the i7 even though it runs at 1.73ghz the turbo boost gives the function of upping it. Though the i5 has turbo boost. Now saying i5 has 2 core 4 threads which I say is a fake me out quad core. Virtual cores are only 50% strong/fast as actual cores. The i7 has 4 cores 8 threads. the i7 can run at 4 cores running at 2ghz if im not mistaken while the i5 460 will run 2.53 ghz on all which will be as strong as 3 actual cores while the 4th core giving the boost over multi core rendering gaming which is not a long list.

edit: and dont forget the other 4threads on the i7
i like to compare everything to core 2 duo vs core 2 quad which of those cpus will give the best for gaming no matter what. Core 2 duo why? because most games only benefit from 2 cores.

 

Your answer is partly correct
HT doesn't necessarily equate to 50% of a real core as it also depends on the software coding. For example for a program that isn't multi threaded, HT may turn out to have a negative effect instead ie linx/linpack
But don't programs will use HT very effectively ie folding@home

It all really depends on what game or cpu your talking about
Faster ghz isn't always better
It also depends on architecture

 

Which games work on 4 cores?