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Forums - PC Discussion - Quad Core vs Dual Core

jefforange89 on 07 January 2010

GTAIV, Dragon Age, Shattered Horizon, RE5 all recommended quads. Those are just off the top of me head, probably are others as well.



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Garcian Smith on 07 January 2010
jefforange89 said:
GTAIV, Dragon Age, Shattered Horizon, RE5 all recommended quads. Those are just off the top of me head, probably are others as well.

Dragon Age: "Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz or AMD Phenom II X2 Dual-Core 2.7 Ghz Processor or equivalent"

RE5 and Shattered Horizon both recommend quads, but both run fine on my Athlon II X3 435 gaming PC at max settings. Many PC publishers will recommend specs that most people don't need just so the few gamers who try to run their game at some insane resolution like 2560x1600 with 4xAA won't complain.

GTAIV PC, as mentioned before, is just a shoddy port all around.



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adajio on 07 January 2010

http://dragonage.bioware.com/game/

Look on the right hand side of the page under "Recommended Specs"

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz Processor or equivalent
RAM: 4 GB (Vista) or 2 GB (XP)
VIDEO: ATI 3850 512 MB or greater
NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater
AMD Phenom II X3 Triple-Core 2.8 GHz or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

Be sure to notice the "QUAD" written there.



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Xelloss on 07 January 2010
Garcian Smith said:
jefforange89 said:
GTAIV, Dragon Age, Shattered Horizon, RE5 all recommended quads. Those are just off the top of me head, probably are others as well.

Dragon Age: "Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz or AMD Phenom II X2 Dual-Core 2.7 Ghz Processor or equivalent"

RE5 and Shattered Horizon both recommend quads, but both run fine on my Athlon II X3 435 gaming PC at max settings. Many PC publishers will recommend specs that most people don't need just so the few gamers who try to run their game at some insane resolution like 2560x1600 with 4xAA won't complain.

GTAIV PC, as mentioned before, is just a shoddy port all around.

http://dragonage.bioware.com/game/

Bioware disagrees.

Anyhow, I do not see why you are so vehement. Quad adds a lot to multitasking as well. Especially heavy duty work, plus you can run multiple VMs and etc.. if we were talking a 200$ price difference, that would be one thing. But we arent, we are talking small differences in price.. sure it is not needed by everyone, but my experience says that it is very nice to have.

Plus you mentioned next year regarding more threaded games... if you are not building a PC with at the very least a 2 year service period in mind, well lets just say I think most people intend for their PC to last longer than a year when they build one. I know I do. My PC is 2+ year old, and with a simple GFX upgrade still plays anything @ 60fps+ @ 1080p. I do not plan to upgrade until 2011, barring massive hardware failure.

But it all comes down to personal preference, its great that you are having good times with your dual core. I still recommend Quad for those building a PC today.

 



SnesTea on 07 January 2010

Didn't we have this thread like 3 months ago?



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jefforange89 on 07 January 2010

Furthermore: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,698761/Dragon-Age-Origins-CPU-benchmarks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/



Wii/PC/DS Lite/PSP-2000 owner, shameless Nintendo and AMD fanboy.

My comp, as shown to the right (click for fullsize pic)
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T @ 3.2 GHz
Video Card: XFX 1 GB Radeon HD 5870
Memory: 8 GB A-Data DDR3-1600
Motherboard: ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3
Primary Storage: OCZ Vertex 120 GB
Case: Cooler Master HAF-932
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64		 Extra Storage: WD Caviar Black 640 GB,
WD Caviar Black 750 GB, WD Caviar Black 1 TB
Display: Triple ASUS 25.5" 1920x1200 monitors
Sound: HT Omega Striker 7.1 sound card,
Logitech X-540 5.1 speakers
Input: Logitech G5 mouse,
Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 keyboard
Wii Friend Code: 2772 8804 2626 5138 Steam: jefforange89
Vexxmania on 09 January 2010
jefforange89 said:
Furthermore: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,698761/Dragon-Age-Origins-CPU-benchmarks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/

If more games really are starting to utilize quad-core tech, then I  change my advise (if on a budget) to getting an Intel Core i5 750. This one is sure to satisfy all his gaming needs and more.



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Deneidez on 09 January 2010
Soleron said:
You might as well get a quad, they are very cheap now. If you want to compromise, you can get a tri-core too. I would say about half of newer games benefit from 3 threads and a little less from 4.

But if you have any money in the budget you should preferentially spend it on the GPU; framerates will benefit more.

In terms of CPUs, the best value from low to high are (in my opinion) the Athlon II X2 250, Athlon II X3 435, Athlon II X4 620, Phenom II X4 925, Phenom II X4 955, Core i5 750, Core i7 860. Anything beyond that isn't good value. At sub-$200 you can see AMD is better value, there are Intel options but they are overpriced; at $200 and over there are only Intel options.

I would wait until January 7 when Intel's Clarkdale comes out; I don't expect it to change the market much because it's priced high (3.2GHz dual for the same price as AMD has a 3.2GHz quad for a lower price), but you can look at reviews (I recommend techreport.com and anandtech.com ) to see which CPUs perform well in the games you want.

I am quite sure that games in the future will use some automatic threading and they will be able to use n cores easily. So basically more is better of course. :)

One example is intel threading building blocks,

http://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/



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Soleron on 09 January 2010
Deneidez said:
Soleron said:
...

I am quite sure that games in the future will use some automatic threading and they will be able to use n cores easily. So basically more is better of course. :)

With 6-core desktop chips this year (Gulftown/Thuban) and 8 core ones next (Zambezi), developers will have to use more cores or see their games look and respond inferior to those that use double or quadruple what they do.The low-end chip of 2011 will be a quad-core with on-die graphics (Llano). How will games developed starting then not try and use 4 cores?

So I agree. Even if n-threading technology is inefficient at using new cores well it will be worth it.