| Xelloss said: IME, more never hurts when it comes to CPU. I honestly never advise people who seriously want to game, to cut any corners on their CPU purchase just to save a few $$. It comes down to personal preference and need of course, but from what I have seen over the years - people who spend the extra few $$ where it counts on things like CPU and video card usually seem to end up happier in the long run than those who dont. Just one minor example was GTA4 launch on PC... up until that point many had been saying that dual core was enough or even better due to higher clock speed... with GTA4, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth so to speak amongst folks who did not have at least a tri-core and wanted to play GTA4. Games that make good use of two threads will benifit from more cores, especially if you set thread affinity to cores that are not being used by system and background processes. Its true that quad is not a total necessity, but I know I personally would not go back to fewer cores willingly. Quad is worth it in many, and often subtle ways. |
Except more DOES hurt - when it comes to your wallet. Especially when you'll never, ever use that extra processing power for anything if the most CPU-intensive thing you do is game. Also, GTA4 on PC is a poorly-ported mess and is the exception rather than the rule.
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
