Dual Core Processors for Gaming Machines! Let's get the debate started!

[ryan5000]

Firstly, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read this thread. Now on to the point:

I know most people strongly warn against a dual core processor for gaming because they seem to achieve much lower benchmarks than their single core cousins, but won’t most of the new games coming out in the future be able to take advantage of a dual core chip? Isn’t buying one a worthy investment in the future? And even if today’s games won't use it isn't the 3.2GHz clock speed on chips such as the Pentium D 840 fast enough to play most games on high settings with a good graphics card and lots of RAM.

I would love to hear peoples opinions on this matter. It will help me choose the next processor for my PC.

Let the ranting begin!

 

[Blakhart]

Dual core, dual cpu, and HT are all good ways to get more responsiveness (and actual efficiency) out of a system. When I play Tribes (wich is single threaded gaming at its finest, and threads are the parts of applications that the cpu(s) actualy process), one of the "vestigial" cpus in my HT 3GHz system is maxed out, the other is loafing along, probably taking care of os calls, networking, and so on while the game beats up on the other cpu. Any thread ready to run can and will be run on a dual/ht system, making these systems far more responsive than standard non HT/ dual core/dual cpu systems.
As long as the threads being processed don't call on the same cpu or system resources at the same time everything is fine, money is saved, people are happy, and the system is far more efficient, but once they do try to gain the same resources you get increased latency over uniprocessor systems. The average increase in an HT system's performance is 5% to 30% more. Keep in mind that HT isn't smp, it's smt. Google for smp and smt. The core of the HT cpu shares resources between the execution units, so you can't get the complete benefit of true smp. See, even when your non smp/smt cpu shows 100% use, it may be only 30% _efficient_. There may be parts of the cpu idle waiting on i/o to occurr or other happenings, and the cpu must wait rather than run another thread. This is a waste of processing power and HT and the like is designed to overcome it.

Now for the other way around, more and more game code is multithreaded. All ut engined games are multithreaded so they will run smoother, on an ht system they typicaly show a 5fps boost. There are other multithreaded game apps out there and more to come. That's certain.

The bottom line is you get a more responsive system with HT/smp,, maybe not faster one.
I'll take HT/smp for gameing, thanks.

 

[nein]

Firstly, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read this thread. Now on to the point:

I know most people strongly warn against a dual core processor for gaming because they seem to achieve much lower benchmarks than their single core cousins, but won’t most of the new games coming out in the future be able to take advantage of a dual core chip? Isn’t buying one a worthy investment in the future? And even if today’s games won't use it isn't the 3.2GHz clock speed on chips such as the Pentium D 840 fast enough to play most games on high settings with a good graphics card and lots of RAM.

Most people do so because most people knew nothing about Distributed Processing or Distributed Multi-Processing, despite the numerous many millions who had participated in Distributed Processing Projects of one kind or another, they still had no real clue about Distributed Processing.

All most people really knew about is Symmetric Processing or Symmetric Multi-Processing, they are born and are raised on Intel Symmetric Processing hardware. Even so they still didn't know Symmetric Processing very well.

All AMD64 series are Distributed Processing designs, they are better for games or real-time applications than any Intel's P4 series which are Symmetric Processing designs.

All AMD64 series Distributed Multi-Processing designs are better for games or real-time applications than any Intel's P4 series which are Symmetric Multi-Processing designs.

The new Sony game console is going to be a Distributed Multi-Processing design.