Quad Core vs Dual Core For Gaming

[Thanatopsis]

Well this thread has sparked quite a conundrum. Do you guys think a non-OC Q6600 is still good, or should I pass?

I had to answer that question when I built my new system in September. I was deciding between a E8500 and Q6600 since they were pretty much the same price give or take $5-10. I ended up going with the quad and don't regret it at all. My case has shitty cooling and I'm using the stock HS/fan, so thus far I haven't OCed other than to see what the temps would be like. I plan to get a better case and cooler, but I'm happy with it at stock speed now. I know the Q6600 is also very OC friendly with good cooling(as long as you have the G0 stepping which I'm sure you will now)

I can run pretty much every game I play with max detail@1650x1080(with 2x8800GT's in SLI). I assume also that most new games now are going to take advantage of it since pretty much every computer made now has more than 1 core.

Aside from gaming, I multitask quite a bit, which was one of my main deciding factors(that and future-proofing as much as possible, although I'm probably getting a Core i7 in another 3 or 4 months). The other thing I really like about having the quad is that I use VMware alot, I pretty much always have a VM running. It's nice to be able to have my 2 processor VM(either XP, Linux, or Solaris with either XP or Linux being the native boot) and still have the other 2 free for whatever OS I booted into.

So overall, I have no regrets at all about going quad over dual and recommend the same.

 

[gamerman4]

Well let's see.....
Alan Wake is supposed to eat CPU for lunch.
Quad cores are not made spifically for gaming, I bought mine for every reason other than gaming. Sure, since most games run with less than 4 main threads, a dual can perform just as well as a quad at the same speed but a quad open areas where duals can't touch and that is when you have a lot of things in the background, if game is using 2 threads then both of your cores are paying most attention to the game, giving less resources to background processes and eventually could cause a hiccup as the background programs start needing more resources. I often have a Ventrilo server, FTP server, RSS reader, media player, and utorrent, running while I play online with friends and my Q6600 handles everything with no problem.

The statement that the current quads will be outdated when games use them follows false logic when referring to a debate between buying a faster dual or a slower quad of similar price. In the future, you will either have payed for a dual or quad, both the same price (as is usually the case). A game that takes advantage of many threads will perform better on the slower quad than the faster dual because of the nature of multithreading so your futureproofing bang-for-buck would lean toward the quad, of course you lose no money from either purchase (dual or quad) if you are going to upgrade in the future since the initial prices were similar; you are just left with your new (probably) quad core and an old CPU.

My Q6600 is OCd, it work great and plays games with minimum effort, I suspect if I reset it to stock, it would perform similarly. I plan to keep it for another year when Intel releases next years batch of goodies and then upgrade then.

 

[ScOuT]

People that say games don't use all 4 cores are nuts. Run a CPU monitor program and play a game...all 4 cores will more than likely be used. I tested this just to see what games needed from my processor. The only thing running was AVG, Vista sidebar, Nvidia monitor and the game. The test was done on my sig computer with the Q9300 at stock speed, GTX 260 at stock speed and the RAM at 800MHz.

I did this test with three new games: Call Of Duty World at War, Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway and Far Cry 2.

All three games used all 4 cores the entire time. Normally one core will be almost maxed and the other three cores ran between 20% and spiking up to 60% load the entire time. Not once during the playing of a game did a core completely go to 0% usage.

I am not sying that one is better than the other...I am not a technical expert and I am not an engineer doing scientific research on processors. All I can say is that with my machine and the games I play...I will never go back to a Dual Core.

 

[bm23]

just wana give my opinion as a Q6600 user. i can pretty much max out most games (im playing on 1280x1024, max that my monitor can go) and im using a 9600gt. i believe if i had chosen the E8400 over the quad, i'd would probably have the same result now but the real advantage comes in when programs really make use of all 4 cores.

 

[Jozeorules]

What about.... TRIPLE CORES!!!~~~!!!

 

[Calibretto]

What about.... TRIPLE CORES!!!~~~!!!

A quad core is better than a triple core....

 

[Twist86]

What about.... TRIPLE CORES!!!~~~!!!

Triple cores are failed quad-cores with the original TLB bug so they killed 1 core to make it a tri-core to avoid that issue...or so I was reading.

If the game requires can use a quad it SHOULD use the 3 cores just as effectively.

 

[tlarkin]

Games are using them, developers aren't that dumb, and I know for a fact that even HL 2 uses them. When I play CSS on line and the map changes I am almost always the first one in the new map. This is because my computer can crunch the data to load the map way faster than most other computers I am playing on the server with.

After discussions with the people that run the server, other people who also have quads notice that as well, and the times I play with the people who have quads they load up right there with me.

I almost always have that 5 second first round by myself or with myself and like 2 other players while everyone else is still loading the map.

 

[ThatGuy16]

Games are using them, developers aren't that dumb, and I know for a fact that even HL 2 uses them. When I play CSS on line and the map changes I am almost always the first one in the new map. This is because my computer can crunch the data to load the map way faster than most other computers I am playing on the server with.

After discussions with the people that run the server, other people who also have quads notice that as well, and the times I play with the people who have quads they load up right there with me.

I almost always have that 5 second first round by myself or with myself and like 2 other players while everyone else is still loading the map.

I get the same thing. Though i think internet speed and ping could impact this as well?

 

[tlarkin]

I get the same thing. Though i think internet speed and ping could impact this as well?

Well, everyone has broadband and an average ping of 30~50ms and you aren't downloading the map from the server you are loading it off the machine locally, unless you don't have the map, then you download it off the server. There is some sort of authentication process when a client connects, but if it re-authenticates every map change I have no idea.

That is why my machine is faster because a quad-core and load, decompress, compress, encrypt, etc files faster. Point in case, my dual core iMac at work versus my quadcore PC at home when I unrar a large archived file, the quad core spanks it, both processors are relatively new.

 

[Dystopia]

Like said, right nowa quad doesn't do you too much good in gaming, but down the road it will. But I don't give a damn, I won't be able to afford one!

 

[tlarkin]

Like said, right nowa quad doesn't do you too much good in gaming, but down the road it will. But I don't give a damn, I won't be able to afford one!

Please back up this claim with facts, because I think quads do help, they just may not be as over clockable as a dual core.

 

[smoothjk]

People that say games don't use all 4 cores are nuts. Run a CPU monitor program and play a game...all 4 cores will more than likely be used. I tested this just to see what games needed from my processor. The only thing running was AVG, Vista sidebar, Nvidia monitor and the game. The test was done on my sig computer with the Q9300 at stock speed, GTX 260 at stock speed and the RAM at 800MHz.

I did this test with three new games: Call Of Duty World at War, Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway and Far Cry 2.

All three games used all 4 cores the entire time. Normally one core will be almost maxed and the other three cores ran between 20% and spiking up to 60% load the entire time. Not once during the playing of a game did a core completely go to 0% usage.

I am not sying that one is better than the other...I am not a technical expert and I am not an engineer doing scientific research on processors. All I can say is that with my machine and the games I play...I will never go back to a Dual Core.

I wonder if this is true, as well. I've read a review where a guy went from a dual core 6000+ I think (3.0 or 3.1), and when he went to a Phenom 9950 (2.6), he said that everything felt smoother.

Now, I'm thinking maybe the higher frequency of the dual might score higher average FPS in benchmarks and such, but maybe the quad helps smooth things out? Whenever I play games with my current rig, I never have any problems with low framerates. The problem is some of the stuttering and framerate drops. Maybe it's also due to having only 1mb of L2 cache--does this affect framerate stability the same way having more VRAM on a graphics card might?

If quads help smooth that out, then you could argue that it's better for gaming (at least among AMD chips). It's all theory though, and I'm really curious to test it out. The local Micro Center is selling the 9850 for $154.99 ... but the Phenom IIs are on their way. GAH! If only the 940 wasn't close to $300...