Which CPU is better for gaming?

[Boomer0909]

Am i missing something but i was under the assumption that @ higher rez more often than not you are gpu limited anyway like my setup struggles w/ cod4 @ 1680*1050 but its not my quad (2.9 GHz) thats hurting me am i wrong here? why would you be gaming @ 1000 * 768 or what ever

 

[OldSkool]

Why don't you quit assuming and leave the test at stock speed and the dual core wins.

Because the clocks aren't equal. so it's not an accurate gauge. And I never once assumed anything. I clicked your link and looked at the tops of the list at the processor that showed the best results. Although I disagree with the chart, I simply stated what it said.

 

[wingman99]

While your arguement is valid, Albuquerque you are definitely borderline on pushing your own opinion on others. I posted facts and evidence and personal knowledge from gaming, nothing more.

From what i read he is stating vary good facts clock speed is better and he explained much better than me. If you read through all his postings I really have learned allot from Albuquerque. I have old school programing from college and i can understand what he is talking about things need to change vary drastically before all cores can be loaded fully in most windows applications. No more c++ language.


People here want to know the absolute best CPU for gaming and it's the duals best price best performance.


If you have the money for over $1000 Quad go for it and get the best of everything.

 

[wingman99]

Because the clocks aren't equal. so it's not an accurate gauge. And I never once assumed anything. I clicked your link and looked at the tops of the list at the processor that showed the best results. Although I disagree with the chart, I simply stated what it said.

In real life there not equal clocks, you need to face the facts.

 

[OldSkool]

No, you are correct, but you can clock them to be, and thus, make an accurate comparison.....

 

[Albuquerque]

While your arguement is valid, Albuquerque you are definitely borderline on pushing your own opinion on others. I posted facts and evidence and personal knowledge from gaming, nothing more.

Except that you haven't posted facts.

"There are plenty of benches out there that state quads are faster per clock cycle. Windows and directx will not have to change anything"
Wrong. DirectX is not capable of multithreaded interfaces. And Windows does not load balance for you or the app, the APP must do the work to spread itself across the multiple cores available.

Most of the higher resolutions, the q6600 pulls away even at only 3.6ghz.
Wrong. The Q6600, at higher resolutions, matched the E8400 when it became GPU bound.

"UT3 doesn't use four cores, go and google it"
Wrong. Sweeney himself said it does.

It is YOU who are pushing your opinions onto others as if they were fact, when instead you are doing it for no other reason than to push quad cores due to your own bias.

Here are the facts:
You have multiple benchmark sites telling you that duals are better for gaming.
You have multiple game developers telling you that duals are better for gamin.
You have multiple cases of people claiming "multitasking" like AV, IM and the like necessitate a quad -- when faced with the reality that, no, those services take up less than 1/10th of 1% of your CPU time while running.

I currently own, use and overclock a penryn quad at 3.6Ghz, and my very last processor was a penryn dual at 4.2Ghz. And using the exact same motherboard, ram, video cards, drivers and operating system, games went faster on the dual core without question or fail.

Those are the facts, your suppositions and opinions are not.

 

[wingman99]

No, you are correct, but you can clock them to be, and thus, make an accurate comparison.....

There is not much of a point in that, when there not made that way. Usually a E8400 will clock to 4.0

The only thing it show is how much the two extra cores are doing, from what i see it's not much in gaming now.

When windows changes and direct x changes it will be huge and there will be no arguing.

 

[OldSkool]

There is not much of a point in that, when there not made that way. Usually a E8400 will clock to 4.0

The only thing it show is how much the two extra cores are doing, from what i see it's not much in gaming now.

When windows changes and direct x changes it will be huge and there will be no arguing.

I certainly agree with that assessment

 

[Albuquerque]

I too agree with that assessment.

Quads will have their day, and once we start making that transistion, it will only get better for all of us. But let's stay realistic: how many years ago did AMD start producing their Athlon X2's? It's been a VERY long time in the making, and we're only now getting to a point where most games get something out of having two cores.

The adoption of quads will be faster than duals, but they're only now getting into the mainstream. We have a solid 18 months or more before they really start to take off like we'd want...

So, perhaps if you plan on never upgrading your rig for the next two years, a quad may indeed be the way to go. But take it with the grain of salt knowing that your performance will not be what it could until the software catches up, and right now, the software simply isn't there yet.

 

[prime81]

Except that you haven't posted facts.

"There are plenty of benches out there that state quads are faster per clock cycle. Windows and directx will not have to change anything"
Wrong. DirectX is not capable of multithreaded interfaces. And Windows does not load balance for you or the app, the APP must do the work to spread itself across the multiple cores available.

Most of the higher resolutions, the q6600 pulls away even at only 3.6ghz.
Wrong. The Q6600, at higher resolutions, matched the E8400 when it became GPU bound.

"UT3 doesn't use four cores, go and google it"
Wrong. Sweeney himself said it does.

It is YOU who are pushing your opinions onto others as if they were fact, when instead you are doing it for no other reason than to push quad cores due to your own bias.

Here are the facts:
You have multiple benchmark sites telling you that duals are better for gaming.
You have multiple game developers telling you that duals are better for gamin.
You have multiple cases of people claiming "multitasking" like AV, IM and the like necessitate a quad -- when faced with the reality that, no, those services take up less than 1/10th of 1% of your CPU time while running.

I currently own, use and overclock a penryn quad at 3.6Ghz, and my very last processor was a penryn dual at 4.2Ghz. And using the exact same motherboard, ram, video cards, drivers and operating system, games went faster on the dual core without question or fail.

Those are the facts, your suppositions and opinions are not.

Your right... your absolutely right, congrats.

 

[EchoTheDolphin]

I always argue for quads, seeing as even at the highest stable clock I ever got to (4.2) on my Q6700 SupCom still brings my comp to it's knees in terms of processing power. It's really weird, my FPS is fine, but units are really sluggish and more than 30-45 mintues in a game with 4 AI's or more and it can sometimes crap out on me.

 

[Evilsizer]

looks like the hard core sup-com players are going to want server neha then.... hmmm 16 thread excution goodness!

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

question.,. i asked it somewhere else but cant find it

at what point does it mater if you have a 3ghz q6600 vs a 4ghz e8500... when you are GPU bound anyways above 1680 x 1050 most likely with lots of eye candy..?

i would love to see some tests (if they are out there) of say

e8500 stock @ GPU bottleneck res
e8500 @ 3.2ghz @ GPU bottleneck res
e8500 @ 3.8 or something @ GPU bottleneck res


you get my point....

and do the same with a q6600.. to see JUST how much difference the kick arse dual cores are really shining...

even if the q6600 is slower by 5FPS - i would rather have it because everything else i do will be smooth and pleasant.

 

[wingman99]

even if the q6600 is slower by 5FPS - i would rather have it because everything else i do will be smooth and pleasant

What would you do that would be smooth pleasant on a quad that would not be on a dual.



And you should not look at Gpu bottle necks, you should be looking at minimum FPS that is what counts, who cares about GPU bottle necks on peek usage, I game and it's all about minimum FPS when playing for the win.

People that really play don't want a slide show when it gets busy!!!!

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

true, never thought of min FPS

for me, i do alot, and that is just me, why i would go a quad any day for all the multiple things i do, i hate my computer taking an extra second to do anything when i know it could do it faster and better if i can make it.

 

[marketpantry]

I would suggest going for as many cores as possible. Of course right now most games dont use morethan 2 cores but to better futureproof yoursystem 4 cores for the minimal price increase may just be the answer. I found out a few month ago that intel plans on going to 6 core at the end of the year. It may havebeen delayed because ofthe recession but tyou get what i am saying. when companies are offered more cores they will begin to utilize them. not more than a year ago quads were REALLY expensive so itsno wonder that few games make full use of them. You can always overclock but you cant add more cores.

 

[wingman99]

I would suggest going for as many cores as possible. Of course right now most games dont use morethan 2 cores but to better futureproof yoursystem 4 cores for the minimal price increase may just be the answer. I found out a few month ago that intel plans on going to 6 core at the end of the year. It may havebeen delayed because ofthe recession but tyou get what i am saying. when companies are offered more cores they will begin to utilize them. not more than a year ago quads were REALLY expensive so itsno wonder that few games make full use of them. You can always overclock but you cant add more cores.

Or you could just save your money and buy a dual core for now and wait for a 8 core with HT 16 to come down to $200 and by that time more games and programs will actually use 4 cores.

 

[marketpantry]

Or you could just save your money and buy a dual core for now and wait for a 8 core with HT 16 to come down to $200 and by that time more games and programs will actually use 4 cores.

the price difference isnt that much. if you want to use programs thatll translate video that you can burn and waych a movie on your tv from itll take you 20 minutes instead of 80. and im not pulling that out of my *** my moms q6600 mnakes it so quick and easy compared to my p4 3ghz

 

[Albuquerque]

...my moms q6600 mnakes it so quick and easy compared to my p4 3ghz

Uhhh... That's not really a fair comparison In fact, if your mom's Q6600 is only 4x faster than your P4 3.0Ghz, then something is wrong with that quad.

But yes, a five year old Netburst-architecture single-core symmetric-multithreaded processor is going to be slower than a one year old, Core-architecture, quad core processor. "Hyperthreading" was not dual cores and never was, it was a way to re-use exection resources on the chip that were sitting idle.

Which meant that if you were doing nothing but integer math, the chip would never go faster. If you were doing a mix of integer and floating point math, the individul INT and FP units on the processor could run in parallel so long as the code allowed. Except that, for register size reasons, the memory requirement of performing these sorts of tsaks actually reduced performance when it was used.

 

[wingman99]

Except that, for register size reasons, the memory requirement of performing these sorts of tsaks actually reduced performance when it was used.

Just wondering what memory was the the reduction and why?