3GhZ vs quad 2.33 GhZ

S

spock0149

New Member
Hey folks,

I'm kinda confused with the new technology and really need some guidance.

I currently have a Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz and I want to upgrade my system (memory, processor and graphics card) so that I can play far cry 2 and all the other cool games out there.

The recommended CPU requirements for this game is the Intel Core 2 Duo Family - which I've been reading about and by the looks of things the cheapest I could get would be the Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 which is four 2.33GhZ.

Now, here's my question.

Won't a game only utilize one of the processors at a time??

e.g. My 3.06 GhZ will play games faster than the Quad Q8200.

Am I a dum ass or is this right??
 
incorrect, more and more games are starting to take advantage of multiple cores. dual core and above has pretty much become the new standard for gaming. what you should do now is read around the forums and the rest of the web and do your research on quads vs duals for gaming. some believe buying a higher clocked dual is the way to go, because duals with higher clocks for the most part perform better in games right now. in the near future more and more games will start taking advantage of quads, and at that point having a quad will be the obvious choice over a dual. as far as what YOU should buy, no matter what anyone tries to tell you, there is no right or wrong decision, just different opinions. do your research and decide for yourself :good:

also, welcome to CF
 
The only time your statement will be true is when the game only supports one core.

Example

Far Cry 1
Diablo 2
Baldurs Gate
Half Life 1

Anything made before 2005 will use single core.
Even though a dual core is a much better quality/standard so you can't compare ghz to a single core. L2 Cache and better technology makes it better so clock vs clock doesn't work quite the same.

Example of such technology is a I7 quad-core @ 3.0ghz is suppose to be as fast as a Q6600 quad @ 3.6ghz.


I also agree with Dirty everyone here will only give opinions...research and decide what fits your budget then you can double check here.

And welcome.
 
Last edited:
^
Nice article btw :)


Another reason I like quad though is Vista will use the 4 cores to load programs @ boot up and any processes will use the spare cores while I am gaming freeing preventing any issues will gaming.
 
Spock, generally speaking graphics benefit from higher clock speeds and multitasking benefits from more cores. Thats a very general statement and whether it applies or not depends on the particular software in question.

I'm not a gamer, I'm a systems integrator. I'm not the person to give you advice on playing particular games since I don't play them. But my advice would be to go with a higher clock speed 2 core if you are building for today and for the 4 core if you are building for tomorrow. The reason is that software tends to follow technology. Programmers tend to take advantage of newer technology as it appears on the market place.

Personally, I try to steer people toward 4 core processors because they become more and more important as new software is released. I'll give you a solid personal example. Recently I had to manipulate a large database of about 20mb in size. It was in a text format and I wanted to load it into Excel - a spread sheet program. I started with my regular office workstation which has a 3 gz pentium 4 processor. I started loading the file and 3 minutes later, it still hadn't finished loading and I went and had dinner.

After dinner I went upstairs and fired up my Phenom 9550 - a 4 core running at 2.7 ghz. That same file loaded in 6 seconds. Obviously there are other factors that make the two systems different. But I can tell you that the 2007 version of Excel really likes the 4 core processor.

Would you get similar results? Yes, if you used the same software I used and worked on the same file. No, if you used some other software doing something else. So the answer to your question lies not so much in the processors themselves but in the software you intend to use and how long you intend to use that system until it is replaced.
 
Great, thanks for all the fantastic answers folks!

The article was interesting ScOuT, nice to see the pics of the processors all working. And thanks for the in depth answer fmw. I'm using my Dual 1.73GHz laptop for all my work related stuff but want to build a dedicated games machine using my old desktop as the skeleton.

Its been about 3 years since I upgraded my PC, and even then I was buying technology that was about a year old to get a good deal. :)

I'm thinking that I need a new'ish motherboard (my current one is AGP), a new'ish processor and a good graphics card. I think all this is going to run around $500.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top