Soldato
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It is an interesting article, seems to me the sweet spot is 5 cores.
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How many CPU cores do games need? bit-tech article
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Soldato
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A quick summary of the results -
Crysis - No benefit from having more then 2 cores
Modern Warfare 2 - Slight benefit from having a 3rd core
BFBC2 - No benefit from having more then 2 cores
STALKER: Call of Pripyat – Immaterial benefit from having more then 2 cores
Dirt 2 - No benefit from having more then 2 cores
Dawn of War 2 - A good increase in performance for minimum frame rates with a 3rd core
This article really does confirm what I’ve been advising people who a re building rigs for games s for months that’s there no benefit from having anything better then a dual core CPU. Now if you take into account overclocking and hyper-threading this will further reduce the need for any extra additional cores, games tend to respond better to core clock increase rather then the number of threads available to it. So I say, if you’re a gamer and are building a new PC get a Core i3, a decent HSF and overclock it and your games will fly.
The only reason why I bought a quad core was because I do a lot of video work and the apps I use can make full use of multiple core CPU’s but if I spend 80% of time using my PC for games and internet Core i3 all the way for me.
Yes games that are popular or brand new. LOL, were going to see a lot posters now come on who feel the need to justify to themselves why they bought an expensive Core i7 when it turns out that all you need is a Dual core when all they do is play games. Seriously don't get annoyed by it, it's just that games are more dependant on the video card you have and besides some games like GTA 4 love quad cores.
Crysis - No benefit from having more then 2 cores
Modern Warfare 2 - Slight benefit from having a 3rd core
BFBC2 - No benefit from having more then 2 cores
STALKER: Call of Pripyat – Immaterial benefit from having more then 2 cores
Dirt 2 - No benefit from having more then 2 cores
Dawn of War 2 - A good increase in performance for minimum frame rates with a 3rd core
This article really does confirm what I’ve been advising people who a re building rigs for games s for months that’s there no benefit from having anything better then a dual core CPU. Now if you take into account overclocking and hyper-threading this will further reduce the need for any extra additional cores, games tend to respond better to core clock increase rather then the number of threads available to it. So I say, if you’re a gamer and are building a new PC get a Core i3, a decent HSF and overclock it and your games will fly.
The only reason why I bought a quad core was because I do a lot of video work and the apps I use can make full use of multiple core CPU’s but if I spend 80% of time using my PC for games and internet Core i3 all the way for me.
Yes games that are popular or brand new. LOL, were going to see a lot posters now come on who feel the need to justify to themselves why they bought an expensive Core i7 when it turns out that all you need is a Dual core when all they do is play games. Seriously don't get annoyed by it, it's just that games are more dependant on the video card you have and besides some games like GTA 4 love quad cores.
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Soldato
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Pity they didnt take into consideration HT.. Does a game that utilises 3-4 cores work just as well on a CPU that has 2 cores and 4 threads?
brand new or popular? lol right good choice for games then...
wheres resident evil 5? and the other pc games that are known to require a lot of cpu power.
mw , mw2 and dow2 are hardly known as a cpu intensive games
give some games that were developed after most people got 4 cores games devloped at a time when most people had duel core arent a great example
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat ? i found bc2 to have stuttering pausing etc on a core 2 duo soon as I went to quad (at the same clock speed) all that went.
They clearly have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to that game.
never liked bit tech anyway think their hardware reviews are shallower than a puddle.
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bit-tech didn't say that in the article...
The "BFBC2 - No benefit from having more then 2 cores" you quoted was the interpretation of the person who posted it...
From the article:
"Interestingly it seems Nvidia requires three cores to get going whereas ATI only needs two. We repeated testing on both cards and found the results to be consistent. That said, using an ATI card also seems to cause slight performance dents with triple and five cores versus four and six - something which doesn't happen with Nvidia."
What they are saying is the 5870 can reach reasonable frame rate with just two cores, whereas the GTX470 need 3 cores to push it to reasonable frame rate.
HD5870: 2 cores min 48fps, average 71fps
HD5870: 3 cores min 45fps, average 73fps
GTX470: 2 cores min 37fps, average 54fps
GTX470: 3 cores min 42fps, average 62fps
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Soldato
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There not known as CPU intensive games because most games need a good video card not a roadrunner of a CPU the bottom line is if you have a modern day dual core you simply don't need for 4 cores for gaming, it's a waste (for games).
I'm not too sure about this you know. I've just gone from an E6600 (was running 400x9 for 3.6ghz) to I5 750. Using the same video card and same amount of RAM as I was before and the difference is nothing short of astounding. All the games I've tried so far have been much better, much smoother and much higher average frame rates.
For me 4 cores are working much better than the 2 I had before. Perhaps the difference with the newer dual v quad is not as apparent as it was for me. The E6600 is a fairly old chip but it did me proud. Suppose it'll be different for everyone!
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I think the "modern day dual core" that Freddie1980 was referring to are highly overclocked (i.e. 4.0GHz+) E8000 series and i3 530, not slower Core2Duos.
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...nom-strong-Update-Lynnfield-results/Practice/
resident 5 begs to differ so why didnt they use it? its well known as a cpu intensive game
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Well, I think frame rate gap for the the results would shrink between Dual vs Quad, if the CPUs were overclocked to their air-cooled max (i.e. E8400 at 4.5GHz) instead of comparing at stock speed (i.e. E8400 at 3.0GHz).
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Soldato
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Yes it look like RE5 loves the Nehalam architecture I would love to have seen how some of the newer I5’s and I3 stack against the Core i7’s but it does look like you hit the video card bottleneck at 2.6Ghz on Nehalam. What’s interesting is looking at E6600 and Q6600 since both are from the same architecture its worth noting that twice as many cores resulted in 40% increase. This isn't unusual though, a lot of games ported from the console to the PC do rely on the CPU to do a lot of the work (Assassins Creed and GRID being good examples of this).
I suspect the reason they didn't use is because it's not as popular or as currant as the other games on the list. You can gauge what games people are playing by just going into forums and seeing what games are proving popular discussions points.
True, at 3Ghz the E8400 is getting more or less the same results as the Q6600 at 2.4Ghz so once again this shows games responed better to clock rate increases then they do core counts (actually architecture is also important as the results show).
The argument that they used modern games is surely defunct. They tested Crysis and, of all games COD4? They tested MW2 as well! It's the same engine, how did they think they'd scale. Oh yes, very similarly...
Stick GTA IV in there, and the conclusion would change - it's nearly unplayable on a 4GHz dual core, whilst a breeze on a 3.2GHz quad...
I would like to see some i5 dual core results though - would hyperthreading make a difference in quad-optimised games?
Stick GTA IV in there, and the conclusion would change - it's nearly unplayable on a 4GHz dual core, whilst a breeze on a 3.2GHz quad...
I would like to see some i5 dual core results though - would hyperthreading make a difference in quad-optimised games?
Surely this is all down to most game engines being multi platform and the xbox has 3 cores so game engines won't be coded towards that as opposed to the smaller market of anything over that. Take a look at GTAIV although its cross platform they seemed to make the game require 3 cores, anything else then its just horrid and laggy.
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For GTA IV, from what I read about the GTA IV...the PC port was poorly optimised for using two cores or less, rather than the game being demanding.
So is it really fair to say the dual-core are incapable because of poor coding/porting? Just wondering.
Edited: Didn't they later released a patch, and then dual-core works fine afterward?
So is it really fair to say the dual-core are incapable because of poor coding/porting? Just wondering.
Edited: Didn't they later released a patch, and then dual-core works fine afterward?
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Complete tosh, GTAIV very playable on my rig at 1920x1200.
Soldato
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So you are suggesting that a professional writer who is paid money for this sort of thing went into this review with his mind already made up and was biased from the start?
like that never happened before?
hey we will give you this really expensive cpu to review , but you must make it a dual core vs quad, dont say 3 cores is best because we dont make 3 core cpus.
use these games..
theres a good lad
Shocks me someone would think people paid to write are unquestionably unbiased.