speaking of a high performance machine like a sager ...

I was going to say - does most games these days benefit from a second or fourth core ???

what I am trying to say is - should we consider getting a quad over a dual for games of today ???

would these games even know how to use the second or fourth core ???




A Falling Cat named Spangky

9 Lives only ...

 

I think games are now starting to grasp that concept, but the major bottlenecks are still the GPU for graphics rendering and the HDD for loading times. I wouldn't invest in a quad core unless you know you really need it.

A good way to estimate whether you would need a quad is to use a process manager program (like Process Manager or even the default Task Manager) to log the CPU usage while playing your favourite games. If the usage rarely gets past 50-70 %, the game almost doesn't use the second core and therefore getting a quad is wasting money and generating more heat, fan noise etc.

For example, I use MATLAB for work and I would benefit from a quad because I could run three number crunching programs at the same time and still have a responsive laptop (I could also change my programs to parallelize the number crunching properly, I will do that at some point). Currently I only run one at a time while working with the other core.

 

dual core is a must but quad core isn't nessary right now ...few games use it ( gta 4 and couple others)

 

I have been saying that games coming out now and being developed with for multi-threading will recommend having a quad-core CPU for best performance.

Games like:
- GTA4
- Unreal Engine 3 games (UT3, Bioshock, Gears of War, Brother's in Arms: Hells Highway, The Last Remnant, etc...)
- Supreme Commander and other CPU intensive RTS's
...etc....

Trust me, I have been apart of the game industry for a while now... cant tell you where specifically, but I attend almost all E3's and industry-only/invite-only events.

the dawn of multi-threaded gaming has arrived... and the more cores you have the better.

why did you think I bought the world's first dual core notebook... my D900K... over the other high-end Centrino (single-core Pentium M's) and Pentium 4 notebooks.

I was ahead of my time, but I knew that it would last longer.

Three years later.... and still outperforming most notebooks.

 

so is it true if I say - it is better to invest in a 2.9 Ghz dual core over a 2.0 Ghz quad ???

true ???




A Falling Cat named Spangky

9 Lives only

 

a Q9000 (2.0GHz) will outperform a high-end dual core like T9800 in a multi-threaded environment.... app or game.

easily.

 

This is true. The million dollar question is: how multi-threaded are current apps and games? As far as I know, not that much.

Still, I agree that a quad-core is much more future-proof. 4x 2.0 = 8.0, 2x 2.9 = 5.8, so there's a game or app that uses multi-cores well will have an extra 2.2 GHz of CPU power available.

 

there are actually many multi-threaded programs out there.... most of which are programs most people know and use... just make sure to get the latest versions which would usually be multi-threaded.

Off the top of my head, I use:
- WinRAR
- Video editors and encoders like TMPGEnc and QuickTime Pro
- Graphics and Web programs, like Adobe
- Audio editing/converting/mixing programs
- Games that I usually play: UT3, Battlefield Heroes, Left 4 Dead, The Last Remnant
...etc...

 

quad core FTW my desktop (overclocked to 3.0ghz) is smoking any dual core cpu out there on video encoding times

 

Well, it seems I was wrong. Had no idea there were so many apps already out which used multi-core well.

Thanks for correcting me guys!

 

but how about non multi-threaded games ... is there a possibility that Q9000 could be a bottleneck in some games???
How about those ATI GPUs which are more processor dependant than nvidias ... which would work better for example 3870s in crossfife with T9600/T9800/X9100 or with Q9000???
I'm still considering myself if i'm gonna go with quads or duals

 

Shouldn't this thread be closed?

This question has been answered in a myriad of threads on this forum alone.

It basically boils down to the same arguments made by dual-core supporters vs quad-core supporters.

Or perhaps a sticky explaining both sides might be in store.

 

This...and not it