Dual core/single core for games?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob
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B

Bob

What do I want? I hear the dual core is great, except for games.
95% of my computer is used for games and I want max. eye candy.
Thanks, Bob
 
Dont ask me why though...
Click to expand...

Because the games they used are not coded to use dual core. Falcon 4.0
(flight-sim) is coded to use dual cpu/cores and will be faster than
running it on a single core cpu.
 
RIght. Games not coded to utilize dual cores wont be any faster with
them. But check out the link. What I dont understand is why are the
dual core benchmarks SLOWER than the same speed single cores, I would
have thought they would have been even. They arent.
 
Crushedalot said:
RIght. Games not coded to utilize dual cores wont be any faster with
them. But check out the link. What I dont understand is why are the
dual core benchmarks SLOWER than the same speed single cores, I would
have thought they would have been even. They arent.
Click to expand...

Single threaded apps are slower with dual core processors since each
core runs at a slower speed. For example, a dual core Athlon X2
3800+ runs at 2.0GHz so it's as slow as an Athlon64 3200+ in
single threaded apps.
 
In that case, the Video Card is the heart of a gaming PC, along with a nice
keyboard and mouse................and other optional accessories.
 
Bob said:
What do I want? I hear the dual core is great, except for games.
95% of my computer is used for games and I want max. eye candy.
Click to expand...

Dual-core processors are useful if your computer can productively do
two things at once. This generally means running more than one
application at once, although a few rare applications can run in more
than one processor simultaneously.

Games are single applications that are usually designed to run in a
single execution thread. In a dual-core configuration, they leave one
processor largely idle. So dual-core processors won't necessarily buy
you much for gaming, unless your games are able to run simultaneously
in multiple processors.
 
Crushedalot said:
What I dont understand is why are the
dual core benchmarks SLOWER than the same speed single cores, I would
have thought they would have been even. They arent.
Click to expand...

There is a lot of extra OS overhead in the management of multiple
processors. This means that a dual-core system will probably perform
more poorly than a single-core system overall if it is running
applications that cannot take advantage of multiple processors.

Also, some dual-core processors may be slower in each core than some
single-core processors, and for certain tasks (those that cannot be
divided up among several processors), the dual-core processors will
run slower.
 
If your 95% using it for gaming then you definitely want the fastest Single
core CPU you can buy. The slower cores in the dual core would be wasting
CPU cycles in your games.
 
Oh - interesting - I dodnt know AMD had named dual core and single core
with different speeds the same number, I never like their naming
convention before and this makes it even more of a mess. Is there a
page somewhere that spells out all thier models and cores that actually
tells the SPEEDs? They really should find a better way to label thei
CPUs.
 
Oh - interesting - I dodnt know AMD had named dual core and single core
with different speeds the same number, I never like their naming
convention before and this makes it even more of a mess. Is there a
page somewhere that spells out all thier models and cores that actually
tells the SPEEDs? They really should find a better way to label their
CPUs.
Click to expand...

You can find a chart at the following site.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/21/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts_2005/page20.html
 
Bob said:
What do I want? I hear the dual core is great, except for games. 95% of my
computer is used for games and I want max. eye candy.
Click to expand...

AMD FX 60?

I suspect the 200 MHz it gives to the FX-57 will be outweighed by the dual-core
setup.
 
Crushedalot said:
Goto
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=233&model2=243&chart=71
and plug in your choices of CPU and pick the game to see conparisons.
THere are no Dual core CPUs at the top of any of the game benchmarks.
Click to expand...

Tom doesn't have the FX-60 benchmarked yet, though. It should be at LEAST as
fast as the FX55 for single-threaded apps, and overall faster than the FX-57 for
multi-threaded apps.

It will likely be cheaper than a separate FX57 machine for games, and a dual
Opteron for everything else... :-)
 
Just built an X2 4800+. So far, nothing in a single core
can touch it in benchmarks. EVERYTHING nearly doubled
their marks over anything else we have here. Floating
point AMD 32000 was 300 .. X2 was about 690. Put
something like an nVidia 7800 on that, and I believe
you are good to go for several years no matter what.
Maybe the X2 solves some kind of latency problem ??
Have 4 gig ram in it too.

johns
 
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