How many CPU cores do games need? bit-tech article

[Freddie1980]

Shocks me someone would think people paid to write are unquestionably unbiased.

I'm not saying that writers don't have their favourite brands for personal choice but when it comes to doing this sort of thing i.e. you profession any personal preference is put aside.

Also the fact that they have/were given an £1000 6 core Intel chip suggests to me that it would have paid the reviewer to show a more favourable opinion towards a buying a CPU with 6 cores. The fact that all the games they tested showed little or no benefit of buying anything better then a Core i3 kind of kills the argument that there’s some sort of bias going on here (which is a ridiculous and laughable accusation anyway, Bi-tech is proper site run under a proper company with skilled and paid writers).

The fact some of you are hitting out against blind facts is also comical, seriously what's gives with the insecurity its simply not justified. For those who own expensive Core i7’s and X58’s you have a super fast CPU that’s going to keep you going for years to come and murders every other chip in non gaming applications so just deal with the fact that dual cores are just as good for games as any quad core (from the same architecture).

 

[sxndy]

Its not uncommon for me to be running 3 instances of an online game while decoding an AVI plus lots of other stuff going on. So, i suppose more cores can sometimes help out.

 

[Cold_And_Miserable]

I'd rather have a 5Ghz single core than a 6-core chip.
All the best games are single-core: Age of Empires 3, X3 Terran Conflict etc.

If someone could invent reverse hyperthreading then multicore would be useful.

 

[Dark_Angel]

I'd rather have a 5Ghz single core than a 6-core chip.
All the best games are single-core: Age of Empires 3, X3 Terran Conflict etc.

If someone could invent reverse hyperthreading then multicore would be useful.

So you'd rather have a single 5GHZ core than 4 or 6 cores running at 3 GHZ+ ? O.o

 

[Geckovich]

I'd rather have a 5Ghz single core than a 6-core chip.
All the best games are single-core: Age of Empires 3, X3 Terran Conflict etc.

If someone could invent reverse hyperthreading then multicore would be useful.

Then buy and overclock an old p4 extreme edition

 

[wannabedamned]

Yeah thats a bit daft.

personally I'd like a standard to be introduced that developers work with. Most games are more than 1 core these days, Assassins Creed, Force Unleashed and mass effect 2 all need a dual core minimum. But what happens when games start being 3\4\5 core minimum. It's going to happen, developers like to push games to reach their biggest potentional and that will result in hardware to suit. My upgrade is going to be a 6core with overclock potentional, Maybe the clocks arent as high as some of the dual and quads but the extra cores I believe will keep the Processor useable for longer in the future when it comes to new releases.

 

[Dark_Angel]

Yeah thats a bit daft.

personally I'd like a standard to be introduced that developers work with. Most games are more than 1 core these days, Assassins Creed, Force Unleashed and mass effect 2 all need a dual core minimum. But what happens when games start being 3\4\5 core minimum. It's going to happen, developers like to push games to reach their biggest potentional and that will result in hardware to suit. My upgrade is going to be a 6core with overclock potentional, Maybe the clocks arent as high as some of the dual and quads but the extra cores I believe will keep the Processor useable for longer in the future when it comes to new releases.

Then again, by that time, 8 core CPU's will likely be out, and 6 cores will cost the same as a tin of beans.

I think really it's an interesting argument, I used to argue with many that the 8400 was worse for games than the Q6600... long term, I think it likely is / was.

 

[arknor]

people are still gaming with oc'ed q6600 and not really beeing held back.

more games will be segmented over cores with each core doing 1-2 parts of a game.

1 for ai
1 for physics
1 for sound/gfx processing.

in the real world duel core wont cut it when you have stuff on your os taking cpu cycles which doesnt happen on a free install for benchmaring purposes.

load up all the background programs people have running and im sure the results would differ a bit more

 

[Marine-RX179]

personally I'd like a standard to be introduced that developers work with. Most games are more than 1 core these days, Assassins Creed, Force Unleashed and mass effect 2 all need a dual core minimum. But what happens when games start being 3\4\5 core minimum. It's going to happen, developers like to push games to reach their biggest potentional and that will result in hardware to suit. My upgrade is going to be a 6core with overclock potentional, Maybe the clocks arent as high as some of the dual and quads but the extra cores I believe will keep the Processor useable for longer in the future when it comes to new releases.

I do agree that since most games are using 2 to 3 cores, so it's best to get a decent Quad and overclock it.

However, I don't think it make sense to buying Hex core now, simply because by the time that games (and I don't mean one or two games, but like at least 30% of the games) are actually require the processing power of 6 cores (could be 5 to 10 years later), the current Hex core CPU, or even the i7 980X could be considered old and obsolete by then, and history will repeat itself and people will be buying 8-12 cores CPU dispite games only need 6 cores

 

[arknor]

I do agree that since most games are using 2 to 3 cores, so it's best to get a decent Quad and overclock it.

However, I don't think it make sense to buying Hex core now, simply because by the time that games (and I don't mean one or two games, but like at least 30% of the games) are actually require the processing power of 6 cores (could be 5 to 10 years later), the current Hex core CPU, or even the i7 980X could be considered old and obsolete by then, and history will repeat itself and people will be buying 8-12 cores CPU dispite games only need 6 cores

i bought a 1055t so i can game and still do other stuff.

i can play a game and transcode some of my missus cam corder footage at the same time and not even notice it while gaming

 

[Marine-RX179]

i bought a 1055t so i can game and still do other stuff.

i can play a game and transcode some of my missus cam corder footage at the same time and not even notice it while gaming

That make sense. I guess it really down to how the users use their PC. If gaming only and not really doing other demanding tasks in the background at the same time, then a decent Quad would be enough, however if having other semi-demanding tasks/applications running in the background while gaming (like your example), then I guess Hex core CPU would be a good idea.

 

[Sash]

I decided to buy the 1055t mostly due to having my gaming pc as a server and media streamer.

I can do all this and game at the same time. Happy days.

 

[Rhys-M]

I really dont understand why they choose those games.

Resi 5
GTA4

All missing

Hell, even Unreal 3 engine game.

 

[wolvers]

Games like BC2 that are heavy on CPU driven physics are going to need more and more cores I reckon in the future.

 

[ebilcake]

Complete tosh, GTAIV very playable on my rig at 1920x1200.

Agreed, I went from E6600 to Q6600 and didn't any massive difference in GTA IV like some claim there should be.

 

[Troop]

Arma Arrowhead uses this............ i7 @4GHz

 

[Saxon]

Agreed, I went from E6600 to Q6600 and didn't any massive difference in GTA IV like some claim there should be.

GTA IV is an odd thing. I have it via steam and it's unplayable on my current system. Even on the lowest resolution, lowest graphics settings it is still unplayable.

Hopefully my Hex core will play it better

 

[Ryan-3]

Maybe the 8800gtx isn't very good with that game in a driver way. But its a funny pc game really.

 

[Saxon]

Ah well I actually have a 5770 running in this for now. I've seen people on the steam forums with high-end systems complaining about the same thing.

I'll test it again next week when I've built my new system.

 

[Corasik]

Arma Arrowhead uses this............ i7 @4GHz

Thats lots of pretty bars, but most of them arnt even at 50% cpu load. Thats just windows scheduling perhaps 3-4 active threads at the most. Probably the game would work just fine without a cpu bottleneck on a tri core.