- Joined
- Jun 11, 2008
- Location
- San Diego, CA
You know what I noticed?
A lot of people still recommending quad cores for gaming builds. The funny thing is, I remember in January 2007 when the Q6600 barely surfaced, a lot of people were getting it, saying things like, "Well I won't have to upgrade my CPU for 3-4 years because in 2 years when games are quad core optimized, my processor will be ready!"
The funny thing is, in about 2-3 weeks, it'll have been 2 years since the Q6600 came out and still, the majority of games are barely even dual core optimized, let alone quad core optimized.
The problem with a lot of the reviews we see for quad core or dual core processors, is that they only over-clock the processor being reviewed. For example, an E8500 review will have the E8500 over-clocked to 4 ghz or something, but they won't over-clock the quad core processors it's compared to. The other problem is that the majority of people running their own benchmarks, use unrealistic measurements. I mean, who plays 3dmark 2006 or vantage?
I just saw a thread where someone said the i7 wasn't worth it, and someone replied saying, "An E8500 will play today's games and yesterday's games well, but a quad core will play today's high end games and tomorrow's games better".
That's funny. Because that's the EXACT same thing people said to me 2 years ago. The truth is, games are not quad core optimized. They're just L2 Cache and Architecture optimized. If you had 8 Pentium 4 cores, it wouldn't best a Core 2 Duo in Source games or the like. Why? Because it's not the cores that makes the frames fly, it's the architecture. What I'm saying is, that basically games today love three things:
1) Architecture
2) L2 Cache
3) Speed
I wish we could have a review, maybe we could request it from Brollocks. The same video-card, settings, motherboard, memory and everything. But the only difference is the processors and they're both maxed out. I want to see a 4.2ghz E8500 versus a maxed out Q6600 (3.6ghz or so). I want to know what provides the best results in REAL games and not 3dmark 06, so I can know fully well what to recommend here on the General Hardware forums, because I'm losing faith in recommending quads when a $120 dual core can hit just as high of a speed and get just as much performance.
A lot of people still recommending quad cores for gaming builds. The funny thing is, I remember in January 2007 when the Q6600 barely surfaced, a lot of people were getting it, saying things like, "Well I won't have to upgrade my CPU for 3-4 years because in 2 years when games are quad core optimized, my processor will be ready!"
The funny thing is, in about 2-3 weeks, it'll have been 2 years since the Q6600 came out and still, the majority of games are barely even dual core optimized, let alone quad core optimized.
The problem with a lot of the reviews we see for quad core or dual core processors, is that they only over-clock the processor being reviewed. For example, an E8500 review will have the E8500 over-clocked to 4 ghz or something, but they won't over-clock the quad core processors it's compared to. The other problem is that the majority of people running their own benchmarks, use unrealistic measurements. I mean, who plays 3dmark 2006 or vantage?
I just saw a thread where someone said the i7 wasn't worth it, and someone replied saying, "An E8500 will play today's games and yesterday's games well, but a quad core will play today's high end games and tomorrow's games better".
That's funny. Because that's the EXACT same thing people said to me 2 years ago. The truth is, games are not quad core optimized. They're just L2 Cache and Architecture optimized. If you had 8 Pentium 4 cores, it wouldn't best a Core 2 Duo in Source games or the like. Why? Because it's not the cores that makes the frames fly, it's the architecture. What I'm saying is, that basically games today love three things:
1) Architecture
2) L2 Cache
3) Speed
I wish we could have a review, maybe we could request it from Brollocks. The same video-card, settings, motherboard, memory and everything. But the only difference is the processors and they're both maxed out. I want to see a 4.2ghz E8500 versus a maxed out Q6600 (3.6ghz or so). I want to know what provides the best results in REAL games and not 3dmark 06, so I can know fully well what to recommend here on the General Hardware forums, because I'm losing faith in recommending quads when a $120 dual core can hit just as high of a speed and get just as much performance.