Okay honestly I am not sure but, from the gaming aspect I see quad core as a marketing thing for gamers... in otherwords really overrated, and I kind of find it weird that it took me this long to figure it out on my own, I probably was blinded by all the marketing of manufacturers like alienware. Just take a look at their systems on their website http://alienware.com/product_pages/desktop_all_default.aspx ... they're all mostly quad core.
I haven't heard of many games that are optimized to run on Quad Core Processors hell even 8 core systems. In fact I beleive alot of games run better on Dual Core processors as opposed to Quad and so forth.
Its kind of like spending money on a Ageia physX card that only is designed to run with a handful of certain games.
I can get a powrful gaming system for the price of some of these Quad Core proccesors.
Does anyone disagree or agree?
or know any games that are optimized to run with a 4 or 8 core CPU? - I only know one or two.
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Anonymous2008-06-02 23:38
Quake 5
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Anonymous2008-06-03 0:33
At this point in time, it's not value for money to get something more powerful than 2 core CPUs. It may be better value in the future when we read news of games taking advantage of multicore support.
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Anonymous2008-06-03 2:46
>>3
Two-core CPUs are a waste of money as well. There are about as many games optimised for two as there are for four or more. You're better off with a single-core 3 GHz CPU than you are with a dual-core 2.6 GHz one, for gaming, due to the way the Windows scheduler works.
Right now, multi-core gaming is a joke for all but a handful of games. It's marketing hype, nothing more.
Oh, and buying Alienware is a retarded thing to do either way. They're just uglier, overpriced Dells.
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Anonymous2008-06-03 7:40
>>4
Dual cores are fine if you intend to get an investment machine that will last up to four years. If you intend to update your machine every 12-18 months, then it's probably better to get the single cores.
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Anonymous2008-06-03 17:56
dual and quad cores were made for servers and running virtual machines pretty exclusively
>>6
They're useful for multithreaded applications as well, but there are far fewer of those around than many people realise.
I write a lot of scientific simulations, and dual-core machines are handy for those because a dual-core 2.6 GHz CPU has less overhead than a cluster of two 2.5 GHz machines.
For the average code-blind consumer, though, yeah.
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Anonymous2008-06-04 1:12
What about a second video card, do games have to be optimized for that?
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Anonymous2008-06-04 2:29
>>4
>Oh, and buying Alienware is a retarded thing to do either way. They're just uglier, overpriced Dells.
Oh lawd.
I bought my Alienware mainly because Dell didn't have anything below $2,000 with DDR3 memory although I do agree that they are way overpriced just because they slap their gay chassis on the thing.
And why the fuck wouldn't you just buy some DDR3 SDRAM separately and save like a thousand dollars?
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Anonymous2008-06-05 0:25
OP here, got a beginner's question, if you are running a resource demanding game like BF2 and got Ventrilo in the background... would that be using both cores on a Dual Core processor?
All I know for sure is... if you are running BF2 and transferring like 40GB file at the same time it would.
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Anonymous2008-06-05 0:49
>>11
Yes but the improvement in performance would hardly be noticable.
As for transferring a huge file in the background, another core doesn't help much here. You'll still get huge stutters whenever the game's disk IO is blocked, say if you transfer a file from or to the drive where the game sits and the game wants to load some data.
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Anonymous2008-06-05 5:05
Well I have looked for a single core CPU... and the best one out there I have so far found is the AMD Athlon 64 4000... not sure if its 4ghz...
Unfortunately I can't find any motherboards that have a 939 socket and a PCI express 2.0 slot, not that I want SLI, but, not sure what's the fastest graphic card I could combine with that... 6800 ultra?
Also another question... does the chipset ie. the 790i ultra make any huge difference in gaming performance compared to older chipsets? or is that another marketing scheme?
ie. 790i ultra chipset only adds support for quad sli.
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Anonymous2008-06-05 5:18
>>11 All I know for sure is... if you are running BF2 and transferring like 40GB file at the same time it would.
If your operating system is cancerous, maybe. The CPU should only barely be called on for file transfers.
Would the older chipset and DDR ram on the board be slower than a newer chipset, PCI 2.0 and DDR3 mobo?
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Anonymous2008-06-05 14:35
You guys do know the difference between AMD and Intel processors don't you?
AMD processors run at a lower clock speed, but do more operations per clock cycle, so an AMD Athlon 64 4000 would run at 2.6GHz, but would be the equivalent to a 4GHz Intel processor.
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Anonymous2008-06-05 14:51
>>17
It's true the clockspeed isn't the only thing you should look at when considering the power of a CPU, but that's just wrong. Painfully, horribly wrong.
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Anonymous2008-06-06 22:30
So what would be more powerful in gaming, a P4 HT @ 3.8ghz or the AMD FX-57?
OP I spent 400 dollars on my PC tailored to gaming during the Holidays and thought I'd play so many games! Turns out I just beat a couple then started playing cs 1.6 and other games I was already able to play on my AMD Duron/Nvidia 6200 PC. So I wouldn't spend too much on that PC unless you know for sure all you wanna do is game. Build a cheap one and decide if you play a lot that you wanna upgrade your PC from there. I might upgrade my processor soon but that's not because of gaming at all.
>>1 Quadcore is the minimum I would buy today. There are 6core, but I think they are just a hype, barely any games use 6core and the ones that do, the extra performance is unnoticable unless you want to score really well in benchmarks I guessµ.
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Anonymous2011-05-04 11:10
if you plan on gaming seriously, buy a quadcore at least (but dont forget about a decent GPU too! it's as much, if not more, important that the cpu in modern games on high settings).
P.S. dont buy overprices PCs, buy and set up all the components by yourself, should be at least 40-60% (!!!) cheaper (in case of alienwares and macs you overpay by 80-250%...)
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Anonymous2011-05-04 14:43
Gaming = waste of time and money. Buy a console for the cost of a video card that will last you many years and just play it when you get the urge or need a tad bit of relief from pursuing meaningful endeavors.
Building your own PC won't be 40-60% cheaper either, maybe a tad bit, if that.
Logic: Large computer manufacturers deal in high volume and receive lower prices on their components, you don't
The main savings that come in when people build their own PC is from pirating their OS and shit like that.
Alienware is vastly overpriced though. Macs aren't, they are priced low-mid range.
I used a core2duo to game and recently switched to a Core i5. Gains in performance were humongous. But maybe that's because of the 4GB I have now, instead of the 2 I had before.
It's not that overrated, maybe a little, but the better the rig, the better the gaming.
>>30
Some people just rather play on PC. As of me, there's no Starcraft and Diablo (them whole series, not just a game) on consoles, so that leaves me no choice at all but to invest on a good rig.