Is it time for Quad Core?

dirtydog · 13 Dec 2008 at 15:49

If you were building a gaming system from scratch, would you buy dual or quad today.

gurusan · 13 Dec 2008 at 15:50

Dual for sure. It clocks higher and is cheaper. The 2 or 3 games that show a few % gain on a quad core at some ridiculously low resolution are not worth the increase in price.

dirtydog · 13 Dec 2008 at 15:54

gurusan said:
Dual for sure. It clocks higher and is cheaper. The 2 or 3 games that show a few % gain on a quad core at some ridiculously low resolution are not worth the increase in price.

Games like GTA IV show a big increase regardless of resolution

gurusan · 13 Dec 2008 at 15:54

1 game.

A very crappy one at that.

If I were building a new gaming pc a dual core would be the way to go, the money saved would go to a better GPU, something that does make a noticeable difference in ALL games.

RizlaKing · 13 Dec 2008 at 15:54

If it were purely for gaming given that many of the top titles that are being released soon apparently can use quads to advantage then a quad would seem to be the way to go. But it all comes down to what the person does and what budget they have as to what they will get what we would all buy if budget wasn't a concern and what we would on a budget are two different things. No one is wrong whichever way they go and if they are happy with what they bought thats the end of the argument.

dirtydog · 13 Dec 2008 at 15:58

RizlaKing said:
No one is wrong whichever way they go and if they are happy with what they bought thats the end of the argument.

People can be happy until they try and run a game like GTA IV on a dual core and then realise their mistake.

I am as tight with money as anyone but still bought a quad because I realised that dual cores were a false economy and old tech which would soon be obsolete, just like single core CPUs are.

1kiwi · 13 Dec 2008 at 15:59

pastymuncher said:
It's still going to make little difference, if any, in games due to the simple fact that there are hardly any games that make use of multi cores. I was "persuaded" this time last year to get a Q6600 by certain members of this forum and while it clocked to 3.8Ghz most of the time it had two or even three cores doing nothing but suck up vast amounts of power and chuck out enough heat to make a Prescott P4 look like a cool running chip.

Maybe in a couple of year's games dev's will have got off their backsides and program games to use the extra cores it will be worth it (and i don't mean two or three games, that's hardly mainstream). Until then unless you do rendering, encoding and stuff like that, no, it's not really worth it. By then we will all most probably be on new sockets to.

Thats not strictly true - more and more games are coming out with quad core support such as FarCry, GTA4, Devil May Cry etc etc. If i was to say buy a E8600 it would just feel like i was downgrading tbh.

1kiwi · 13 Dec 2008 at 16:05

rypt said:
Because 45fps is "soo" good.

We're going to need to use dual cpu i7 systems soon just to max out GTA

Not true - is runs really well on my machine. I did the benchmark @ 1680 * 1024 with a view distance of 19 and got 58FPS average. I'm not sure why there is so much banter about GTA4 it runs fine on 775 tech and is a really decent game.

dirtydog · 13 Dec 2008 at 16:09

I have a Q6600 (two years old) and 9600GT (barely a mid range GPU) and GTA IV runs decently. Both of those running at stock speeds.

C64 · 14 Dec 2008 at 12:04

No because 99% of games are more than fine on a dual core.

One or two games are no reason to get a quad, what happens when you are bored with GTA IV ? that's right you are using a quad which is no better than a dual clock for clock in games.

The current prices are a bit daft really, I wont be paying over £100 for a q9450.

dirtydog · 14 Dec 2008 at 12:10

It isn't just games which make use of multi cores. Check out how WinRAR performs on a quad for example. They are strong in all areas whereas dual cores are only strong in some.

C64 · 14 Dec 2008 at 12:13

Well extracting a rar 30 seconds faster is not worth £150 more.

Leebone · 14 Dec 2008 at 12:25

I think if i want more FPS, a better GPU is in order

gurusan · 14 Dec 2008 at 12:26

extracting rars has much more to do with HD read/write speeds anyway.

hardc0re_tid · 14 Dec 2008 at 12:27

ive my q6600 at 3825 on air, tuniq tower

dirtydog · 14 Dec 2008 at 12:30

gurusan said:
extracting rars has much more to do with HD read/write speeds anyway.

Encoding RARs is mostly about CPU performance. WinRAR has a built-in benchmark, try it on a dual and quad clocked at the same speed and see what I mean. IIRC you need to clock a dual 50% higher than the quad to keep up. It's the same story with multi-threaded video encoding.

Also to C64, I wasn't aware a Q6600 was £150 more than dual core chips. Mine wasn't.

gurusan · 14 Dec 2008 at 12:32

I have used the benchmark on my quad setups and the numbers are impressive....especially with my Q9650 @ 4.4ghz

but..how often do most gamers need to encode massive rar files? The majority of us just unrar things from time to time.

MumboJumbo · 14 Dec 2008 at 12:38

why is everyone tellign him to get a Q6600? seriously. The people on this forum dont actually think about the true benefits. They just think ooo another 2 cores and you can overclock it that extra 200mhz. DEFO SPEND 100QUID.

Rediculas. No you dont need a quad. I have one as u can see and i think i only get benefits in supcom from it. Total waste of money for you to upgrade, especialy with new stuff coming which will be substantialy better.

dirtydog · 14 Dec 2008 at 12:41

8igdave said:
why is everyone tellign him to get a Q6600? seriously. The people on this forum dont actually think about the true benefits. They just think ooo another 2 cores and you can overclock it that extra 200mhz. DEFO SPEND 100QUID.

Rediculas. No you dont need a quad. I have one as u can see and i think i only get benefits in supcom from it. Total waste of money for you to upgrade, especialy with new stuff coming which will be substantialy better.

What new stuff, you mean i7? Because on the S775 platform the Q6600 - two years old though it is - can be clocked to perform at levels approaching the fastest 45nm quads. Its weaknesses are higher power consumption and the absence of SSE4, but its significantly lower price compared to the 45nm quads balances that out.

C64 · 14 Dec 2008 at 13:05

dirtydog said:
Encoding RARs is mostly about CPU performance. WinRAR has a built-in benchmark, try it on a dual and quad clocked at the same speed and see what I mean. IIRC you need to clock a dual 50% higher than the quad to keep up. It's the same story with multi-threaded video encoding.

Also to C64, I wasn't aware a Q6600 was £150 more than dual core chips. Mine wasn't.

I was talking about q9450 I'd advise anyone to still get 8*** series duals over a q6600.

My 6420 can do about 3.6ghz if I pump enough volts through it but i just don't need 3.6ghz makes little difference over 3.2 ghz as said above gpu is more important in most games.

You could buy an xbox 360 for around £100 and GTAIV second hand and that would make more sense than about £100 for a quad after you sold your current cpu.