How long will C2D's be good for gaming?

tomanders91 · 23 Apr 2007 at 19:22

How long do you rekcon it will be till games start needing 4 cores? Because im just wondering how long my E6400 (which i will be overclocking soon) will last me for.

J86 · 23 Apr 2007 at 19:25

one and a half years maybe before you will NEED quad core for high settings

man_from_uncle · 23 Apr 2007 at 19:45

I reckon 2 years before Quad becomes a must, but in 18 months 3.0-3.2ghz of C2D just won't be enough to run things at highest settings. A new generation of C2D that can get up to 4ghz without water will be where it is at.

Cupra · 23 Apr 2007 at 19:58

im thinking 12 months before games start really using quad core and about 18 months before there is a 4ghz dual core @ stock

lsg1r · 23 Apr 2007 at 20:04

I'd say 18 months from when all games are getting multithreaded so they can use more than one core. So probably about 2 years from now. I doubt that your chip would be unplayable though, it would just limit the res/features/quality you could play it at.

w3bbo · 23 Apr 2007 at 21:20

This was asked a lot when dual core cpu's were new (x2 & Opti) and we are still yet to see many multithreaded games that take advantage of 2 cores yet alone four.

gurusan · 23 Apr 2007 at 21:48

w3bbo said:
This was asked a lot when dual core cpu's were new (x2 & Opti) and we are still yet to see many multithreaded games that take advantage of 2 cores yet alone four.

multithreaded games take advantage of 2 or more cores......once more multithreaded games are out the more cores you have the better.

man_from_uncle · 23 Apr 2007 at 22:00

w3bbo said:
This was asked a lot when dual core cpu's were new (x2 & Opti) and we are still yet to see many multithreaded games that take advantage of 2 cores yet alone four.

True, I can remember considering getting a second PII when quake 3 (or was it 2?) got modded to use more than 1 core. Very glad I didn't. That said once the industry gets its collective head around multithreading, it'll be a small step to utilise 4 core or more.

Cupra · 23 Apr 2007 at 22:02

so as far as we all can tell nobody really knows as the computer world chanes all the time.. you should be good for a while

martianrobot · 23 Apr 2007 at 23:55

What games actually truly madly deeply do take advantage of dual-core?

artaxerxes · 24 Apr 2007 at 00:09

Supreme Commander aparently.

Valve's Source games happily utilise both cores.

Jleo · 24 Apr 2007 at 00:11

Err none?

As Artaxerxes states I have also noticed some impressive core use on Valves HalfLife 2 deathmatch though its not a source game.

lsg1r · 24 Apr 2007 at 00:13

quake 3 arena and any running on the current quake 4 engine, so thats doom 3 as well iirc

ut2k7 should be multithreaded, I seemed to get a small boost from ut2k4 with my dual athlon for some reason (now dead so cant check and it doesnt really stress my x2) :confused:

I think some flight sims are too

The Laughing Ma · 24 Apr 2007 at 00:19

Won't the shift to multi-core systems within games console for this generation drive the multi-core need within PCs?

Big.Wayne · 24 Apr 2007 at 01:13

tomanders91 said:
How long do you rekcon it will be till games start needing 4 cores? Because im just wondering how long my E6400 (which i will be overclocking soon) will last me for.

Don't worry about it Tom

w3bbo said:
This was asked a lot when dual core cpu's were new (x2 & Opti) and we are still yet to see many multithreaded games that take advantage of 2 cores yet alone four.

Amen.

martianrobot said:
What games actually truly madly deeply do take advantage of dual-core?

Deep Fritz (chess program)

Apparently its very hard indeed to code a game to take advantage of multi-core.

Don't buy hardware that has no software to back it up?

Bizarre · 24 Apr 2007 at 01:24

Jleo said:
I have also noticed some impressive core use on Valves HalfLife 2 deathmatch though its not a source game.

Are we talking about the same HL2 deathmatch, as in HL2 deatmatch: Source ?

Gethzemane · 24 Apr 2007 at 06:48

tomanders91 said:
How long do you rekcon it will be till games start needing 4 cores? Because im just wondering how long my E6400 (which i will be overclocking soon) will last me for.

With dual core becoming more the standard processor in PC machines and not just the realm of the hardcore upgraders combined with PS3 and 360 (both multi core driven machines) I think you'll find a lot more games 'starting' to take advantage of multi-core architecture to 'some' extent, esp in the case of developers who are working on 2nd generation 360 games and alike.

To the question of how long will your core-duo processor last you? how long is a piece of string tbh. Based on how little current PC games truely use multi core cpu's and how little most of the in final development games do, then i think the length of string in this case maybe longer than you think.

w3bbo · 24 Apr 2007 at 07:14

gurusan said:
multithreaded games take advantage of 2 or more cores......once more multithreaded games are out the more cores you have the better.

Yeah, I'm aware of that but my point was dual core has been around long enough now and multithreaded games are still a novelty - why would it be any different with quad core? I personally wouldn't upgrade to quad core for gaming purposes alone as dual cores are not being utilised enough at this moment in time and I don't see them being pushed to the max in the very near future either. A better upgrade would be a faster GPU.

dbilsborough · 24 Apr 2007 at 10:38

writing anything multithreaded is a nightmare, testing anything multithreaded is almost impossible as timing issues might mean the failure only happens once every X number of times where X can be a large or a small number. Most programs just use pure procewssing "grunt" in a linear fashion.

Zipping / unzipping a file or encoding a video file are relitively simple operations and can be subdivided across as many cores as are available. Games on the other hand are far more complex, espacially as the interaction of external variables (the player / players) makes it virtually impossible to predict what will be happening and therefore pre-defining the split of work.

The areas where quad / octo cores might come into their own would be in physics and other graphics areas, but graphics cards are getting pretty good at that too

We might find that in 2 years time a completely new type of chip is developed maybe a load of cores all tied into one interface that enables a programmer to program against one "core" whilst the processing is split internally on the chip; a bit like a duck gracefully swimming along while under the surface of the water it's legs are going mental

keybaud · 24 Apr 2007 at 13:34

Everyone was shouting that SMP would take over the world in the late 1990s, but it never did. Dual Core is the same idea and the shouting has started again. The only difference now is that the chip manufacturers can make more money selling a chip with 2 slow cores instead of a single chip with a faster core.

I know that dual core will make things more responsive, but very few games (and applications) actually multi-thread properly. Most people would get better performance from a faster CPU than from 2 cores, but that's branding for you.

If 2 processors was that much better, why didn't all the gamers run SMP systems before the dual core explosion, especially as it was the same price to buy a dual core CPU as it was to buy 2 separate CPUs?

Regards,

Former Abit BP6 owner

:-)