over-rated double core CPU:s?

I'm looking at buying a new computer. I understand that double core is good for multi tasking and stuff, but what about straight gaming?

Is it just the latest fad that everyone wants or is there a justifiable means behind the double core CPU?

 

Straight gaming, you probably don't need. If the game is the ONLY thing you're running, you don't need dual core UNLESS, the producer releases a patch for multi threaded support, in which it will utilize both cores. However, lots of mobile systems seem to have dual core these days.

 

If you're going to be just straight gaming, a single core would be sufficient. I don't think there is any game out there at the moment that fully utilizes both cores of a dual core...but I'm not too well informed in that category, so don't take my word for it. But what MGS states is basically it, it's hard to find any laptop being manufactured these days that don't have a dual core in them.

 

the reasons specifically are that nobody does just gaming, you might in which case you could go for a single core cpu. the reason is that while people are gaming they have many background programs running, and often have aim or email or whatever other things going on. in these cases it helps to have a dual core cpu. think of it like this if you were to ask any 1 person to do 5 things simultaneously he would probably collapse... or lag at the very least... but if you had 2 people to do 5 different things it would be done a lot faster. in terms of gaming, its just doing 1 thing, so while dual core cpu's don't help gaming straight up, they help your system run faster at multi-tasking, like burning dvds, writing email, running virus scans, checking websites for map guides, strat guides, while playing the graphics and cpu intensive games. to do such an operation one would require a dual core cpu or have a very lagged performance in a single core cpu which could affect your gaming performance.

 

Yeah I noticed that. However I am in the process of buying a new laptop and building a new desktop.

I was wondering the importance of gaming on double core cpus when I read an article about Xbox 360 and the hardware performance is only as good as how the software developers utilizes it. Thanks for the input.

 

Ok ok.....thanks that cleared up some of my thoughts. I now understand...

 

I think Dual Core is not over rated at all. Its very effective and allows more tasks to be performed at the same time.

Maybe not while gaming, but otherise Dual Core is great.

 

Yeah, I just got my new HP NC8430 and compared to the 1st desktop with a 2ghz P4 and 2nd old one with a Celeron D, dual core is great. Feels very nippy in comparison just on normal office use - that's before I shifted over my video encoding programs

 

With gaming as always you need to be focused on the video card, not the processor. Laptops have lower-end graphics then desktops so it will be twice as hard for a laptop to keep up in very GPU intensive games like FEAR and Oblivion. Games are designed to offload most of the work to the graphics processor. The CPU has it's jobs as well such as physics and AI but most modern newer processors have no problem keeping up with the video card unless you have a high-end SLI/Crossfire setup. That said though dual core is definitely worth the price over a single core because there is life outside of playing video games.

 

Ok here's a question. For a Geforce Go 7600, what Double Core CPU would be equivulant that the CPU runs full out with out hinderance from the GPU? Why pay more for a faster CPU when the GPU is going to just slow it down right?

 

Any of the Dual Core, will not be a bottleneck for the 7600 or even a 7900GTX for that matter...

 

smart thinking, unfortunately i don't know of a table that says for this gfx this cpu is just slightly better than "limiting performance" hahaha, like for this gfx this cpu is bare minimum over the gfx card... with that said i think.. the dual core 1.66 or 1.83 are more than enough for these graphics cards... when it comes to 7900gtx sli 512mb you might maybe need more, i don't think so, but for the 7600 256mb (especially if in a compal its clocked down) you won't need more than a t2300 or t2400 or core 2 duo t5500,t5600, but would it be nice to have something that runs faster? yes! for reasons other than gaming... like i said, with multitasking, the 2.00 ghz (t2500 or t7200) will multitask your stuff a lot better than a t2050 or a t2300 or t5500... because we know that even when a system is gaming, it doesn't just run only 1 program. running windows and virus software and other background programs uses up a variable amount of cpu so its difficult to say. thats why people go with enough, so they don't have to worry about it. if you go with the bare minimum sometimes you will be over the gfx sometimes under, depends on the load you give it.

 

No because a more powerful CPU will not bottleneck during tasks that do not require much GPU power, like multi-tasking, video encoding, etc....

Only in gaming, but otherwise a CPU will not bottleneck the GPU most of the time, unless its older.

 

Not really. What if I told you that "today, you have to update the display in the game, oh, and when you have a moment, see if we have received any emails or if anyone are writing on MSN.
Are you saying that the two latter tasks would cause you to collapse? Over an entire day?

It'd be a lot more accurate to say that it takes ~1-2% performance away from the "main" game task.
Yes, while gaming there are many background processes running, but
- Half of them literally use no CPU (They're placed in a wait queue where they are only activated when a certain event occurs, and
- The other half use ~0.1% CPU each.

So your performance in a game that doesn't exploit multicore CPU's, you'll gain at most 1-2% performance by buying a dualcore CPU. The background tasks just don't take more than a fraction of the available cpu time.

Do you usually play *while* searching for a strategy guide though? I usually play, then if I need a strategy guide, I alt-tab out and/or pause the game, in which case the game performance doesn't make a scrap of difference.

 

I never have tons of programs open when I play games. I usually have one program open at a time. I'm only one person, I can only do one thing at a time anyways.

I was at Tom's hardware and compared the X2 3800+ to the single core 3800+ and was interested to find on the F.E.A.R benchmark for both was almost the same. However, Call of Duty time demo wasn't but then again it shows the Duo core optimal performance also depends on how the software developer uses the technology.

 

It's true it's up to software developers to code for dual core, and more and more are beginning to do so. If you wanted to play games today and before today I'd say it won't matter very much (would still go DC though). But if you plan to play games coming out in the future, go with Dual Core.
As for tasks, it's not only about having your email running in the background.
You can have one core handling the physics while the other is doing the rest (as an example) and this is where DC truly shines

 

For sure I will be getting a Duo Core CPU but I was more curious than anything how necessary it really was if someone really didn't want to shell out the extra dough for a duo.

 

In theory, yes, as soon as it actually becomes common in games. But at the moment what happens in 99.8% of all games, is that one core sits idle, while the other runs the game. So for someone who's worried that it's worth the extra cost *right now*, I'm not so sure dual-core is the best option. 3 year from now, we'll see. But at the moment, it's certainly not neccesary, and for most games, it doesn't make more than 2-3% difference in performance.

 

While it is true that a lot of background services don't require a lot of CPU resources there are many tasks you run that do and on a single core CPU it would hurt the performance in-game to try and run them at the same time. Anti-virus software or other scanning software is one good example. There is over a million things you can do with a laptop outside of gaming and any time you are running more then one task at once it's going to go faster on a dual core processor. Encoding for example is one area where the difference is completely night and day. A lot of people like to rip DVD's to their hard drive so they can re-encode them and burn a backup. The time is roughly cut in half with a dual core processor. As cheap as the upgrade is to a dual core processor there is no reason to skimp and go with a single core unless you're just counting pennies on your new purchase.

 

The time is only cut in half if the program is able to parallelize what it's doing so that two threads can execute independently and the IO subsystems/memory bandwidth can keep up.

 

More and more games are taking advantage of dual core CPUs, Quake 4 and Oblivion are two very noteworthy examples that show real life gains with a dual core CPU. Crysis for instance is rumoured to have a dual core CPU as its recommended requirement due to its heavy reliance on physics and AI. The fact that two of the next generation consoles require multi threaded code to generate good performance is only ever going to increase this knowledge base among developers on how to write effective multi threaded code.

All this adds up to to more and more games taking advantage of dual core CPUs and, in many circumstances (such as Crysis), to allow for gameplay that may not have been possible before. The current benefits aren't huge but they are there, even in single threaded games where one core can take care of all the background tasks. Given the current price of dual core CPUs being so low (you can buy £500 notebooks with a Core Duo and the great performing desktop X2 3800 is less than £100) I just think it makes little sense to stick with a single core CPU. The tiny cost increase is already giving you real world benefits in games and the benefits are only ever going to become greater and greater. Factor that in with the fact that the benefits for everyday computing are great as well, and I think the choice is simple.

 

the dual core is in no way overrated. for people who actually do work on their computer, and whose sole purpose is not to play games, the dual core is a god send.