clarksfield & SLI for gaming (sager np8760 used for examples)

hi guys!

ok so...i was looking at the newest sager notebook and it raised some questions regarding gaming ability:

a) the clarksfield model that goes at 2ghz naturally overclocks to ~3ghz when needed..i believe when they shut off another core or 2 so what does this mean for a game like dragon age origins where it recommends a 2.4ghz quad core? will the models notice this and start overclocking itself to 2.4ghz to play the game if i "stress" it by changing the settings one the game to high/ultra/premium/whatever the "highest" setting is? or will i have to get an overclocking software?

b) on SLI...the p8760 uses a gtx 280m with 1gb dedicated to it so how powerful would 2 graphics cards have to be to be stronger than that one graphics card? if i had 2 graphics card at half the power of the p8760's and SLI'd those 2 weaker cards would it be as strong as the 280m or would it be weaker?
also how important is SLI for gaming? i understand the power output marginally but is it just better to go for the 1 powerful graphics card or the 2 weaker cards which can be SLI'd.

these questions revolve around games like dragon age origins only because it was the first high recommended game that i thought of.

 

1) It only OCs to the point where the maximum amount of cores needed are used and as long as it doesnt exceed its maximum TDP ( though each set of cores has a limit, I believe 4 cores is limited to 2.26Ghz )

2) Depends on the game and the setup youre looking at. Some games scale really well with SLI/Xfire, so dual 260s could beat out a single 280m, other games youll see 0 improvement at all.

3) SLI being important is subjective. IMHO, in its current stage its near useless, and only has benefits for high resolution/heavy detailed/heavy textured games. IMHO, 1 GPU > 2 weaker GPUs.

 

thanks for the reply!
so essentially...
unless your on a desktop or have a desktop i7 you wont be able to run a game like dragon age origins on its highest resolution + settings + details?

now back on SLI since it does run some games better with the heavy detail (probably most RPG/shooters/adventure games currently out)

is it "worth it" to buy a second video card, if you have the choice between the 260m standalone or dual 260m for like $300 more?

if the cores max out at 2.26ghz for all 4 cores running at once, how about 3 cores? 2 cores? i assume the 1&2 core both max out at the 3.2ghz limit?

can you forcibly "close" a core to make the others run faster or is it only an automatic detection type of deal?

 

The GTX260M alone is a great performer by itself. Now SLI is combining two, giving a maximum possible improvement of around 50% over a snigle one, when SLI is supported.
Is it worth it? That depends on you.
And the i7 Q920XM with the 4 cores at full only runs at 2.0GHz, and a maximum of a single core to 3.20GHz

Now, fadingxero, remember i7 supports Hyper Threading, so 2 cores can run 4 threads, and 2 cores and Turbo Boost will reach up to 2.8GHz for both, and the 4 threads. You can find more info on this matter in the lbigger link in my signature. Hope this is helpful.

 

on the SLI, now if a game recommends... say a gtx 270m (made up name) which would be only slightly stronger than gtx 260m (if the 270 were around 10% stronger than the 260) would the SLI'd 260m go "above" the recommended settings since the output can go up to max of 150% compared to the single card?

i looked through your guide which was quite informational however im still a bit confused. a big part of the i7 is hyperthreading and in your guide a thread is basically a "command". however, what exactly constitutes as a "command"? i assume running an antivirus' scan calls upon a large amount of the computer's power so i assume its running more than 1 command... the same goes for running a game, wouldnt it call upon multiple "commands" or is a "command" more of "open application, load, launch"

is hyper threading part of the idea behind the "ghz numbers are not the only thing that matter" on the cpu? i recall reading an old article a while back about a 800mhz processor outperforming a 1ghz processor or something like that.

again using dragon age origins as the example: does that mean i can play that game on the highest settings (on the cpu part of it only), are do numbers actually matter when the gap can be 400 mhz large?

 

For SLI: According to NVIDIA, SLI can only give a maximum boost of 50% when two equal graphic cards are running together and SLI is supported by the game/application. In your example, lets say the game recommends something a tad higher than what you have, first off, recommendations normally are to run with good graphics and high FPS (I can run on my IGP most games on low graphics, and low FPS, but still run them..lol), but if the game supports SLI, and you happen to have two GTX260M, which each one is 10% less than the recommended, if the SLI is supported then you are above the recommendation, and will run with no problems, allowing higher FPS and/or higher settings on the game.

As for the Hyper Threading: a thread is a set of commands, a single order that goes into the CPU to be processed. Running an AV is one command, running Word is another, viewing a movie is another, and so on. But these commands have sizes and requirements of resources, that is why opening Word and running it causes no problem, it is a "light" command, "Open Word, Keep Word Open", running an AV is heavier, since it requires more resources to run (and that is why the CPU usage goes up to 70% or so, depending on your CPU), teh command would be "Run AV, Search For Files, Search For Objects, Compare to Database, Show Count of Items, etc" It is a more complex command, but only one nonetheless.

Commands are set into the CPU by queue, normally, you give C1, C2, C3, C4,...,Cn. The commands go in order and stand by while the one in front is done to commence the second, the third, the forth, and so on until there are no more. What HT does is take those threads in queue and run two at the time by core, and all those Cx can be distributed around the cores to finish faster. (am I complicating things too much??)
To simplify it, a thread is a set of things to do. Referred to it as command. (should I update that on the Guide?)

About the GHz numbers: well, other things come into play, when loading the HDD or SSD plays a very important role in the thing. When gaming the GPU and HDD are more responsible than the CPU. When crunching numbers or dealing with databases, the CPU is more important. The speed of the CPU, when going from 2.40 to 2.53 is negligible on real life, and in daily basis. More cores only imply you can do more things at the same time, instead of doing to things very fast, and then 2 more, a quad core allows to do 4 things at a good speed, and that is why there were thousands of threads with the P9700 or Q9000. Intel tried to eliminate this by making a core that either runs few threads fast or tons of threads at a reasonable speed, depending on the user's needs.

Could you post the link to that article? I am sure more components were implied there, such as RAM amount, HDD speed, GPU, and what was being done.

About dragon age origins, I cannot say, I do not know the game, nor the requirements, and even worse, what the game supports. But I hope this was helpful.

 

The GHz rating of a processor is the clock rate, which measures how many clock cycles per second that the processor can manage. A clock cycle is how quickly the the processor can change from a logical 0 to a logical 1, so at it's basic level, the GHz rating is how quickly the processor can process a command. You can think of this as the horsepower level of an engine. However, due to differences/improvements in instruction sets and architecture, newer processors like the i7 series (based on the Nehalem micro-architecture) can process more information within a single clock than previous generations. If you like, you can think of this as the transmission of an engine: a more efficient transmission (newer processor architecture) lets you get more out of a given engine horsepower (clockspeed) than a less efficient transmission (older architecture).

Hyper-threading is, in a way, based on that sort of advance. Hyper-threading works because oftentimes a thread being executed on a processor core isn't actually using the core's processing resources, often because it's waiting for something else (data to be read from a HD, information returned from a graphics card, etc.). So, while the one thread is stalled, hyper-threading allows another thread to be run on that core, using what would otherwise be unused and wasted resources. This allows one core to act (almost) like 2 cores.

As for Dragon Age Origins, the only the highest 2 of the mobile C2Qs meet the recommended CPU requirements of a 2.4 Ghz Quadcore processor. I think an i7-920XM should meet the requirements with a self turboed 2.26 GHz overclock and newer architecture, and an i7-820QM might with a self turboed 2 GHz quad overclock. Basically, the recommended requirements for Dragon Age Origins are well beyond "normal" notebook limits, and would probably be best managed on a desktop system.

 

thanks for the answers guys

yes i think you should define a thread/command a bit more clearly in your guide, it should only take a couple comparisons (the Word vs Antivirus is a good one) and how some commands are "tougher" than others. i think i understand now.

heres the article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2002/feb/28/onlinesupplement3
it was either this or a wikipedia link named megahertz myth or something like that

 

IIRC the new i7 goes better than the previous hyperthreaded Intel P4 CPU. Instead of a thread is stalled, now, even if a thread is not stalled, if a FPU or ALU is not in used, the CPU can process the next thread if it only requires the unused FPU or ALU.

 

uh.. does that mean that if only one thread is being used,the second thread can help make the first thread complete a command faster?

 

Faster than previous hyperthreading Intel CPU.