Do the new games REQUIRE having a Dual Core processor?

[WhipperSnapper]

Now that these new games are coming out in an era of dual core and quad core chips, is a dual core chip an absolute necessity now? What happens if you have a powerful single core chip and a nice video card? Would it be possible to play these new games (UT3, Quake Wars, Crysis, TF2, etc.) at a reasonable resolution, 1024 x 768 with decent frame rates at medium details? What if you have a 320 mb 8800 GTS?

 

[daveybrat]

http://www23.tomshardware.com/...0&model2=902&chart=421

Take a look at this chart. Using supreme commander, i picked 2 cpu's as a reference. I picked an Athlon64 4000+ (2.6GHz) and a P4 3.6GHz. (both single core cpus)

No more explaining is necessary, just look at the chart and you'll see

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

Now that these new games are coming out in an era of dual core and quad core chips, is a dual core chip an absolute necessity now? What happens if you have a powerful single core chip and a nice video card? Would it be possible to play these new games (UT3, Quake Wars, Crysis, TF2, etc.) at a reasonable resolution, 1024 x 768 with decent frame rates at medium details? What if you have a 320 mb 8800 GTS?

The games you mentioned are FPSs and it probably won't make much of a difference in them, since you would generally be playing at GPU limited settings. Crysis might be an exception though.

 

[gtsing]

Only get a dual-core over a single-core if you want to double or maybe triple your FPS.

 

[JBT]

Requirement? no.... Just make sure the next CPU you buy is multi core.

 

[coloumb]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

Now that these new games are coming out in an era of dual core and quad core chips, is a dual core chip an absolute necessity now? What happens if you have a powerful single core chip and a nice video card? Would it be possible to play these new games (UT3, Quake Wars, Crysis, TF2, etc.) at a reasonable resolution, 1024 x 768 with decent frame rates at medium details? What if you have a 320 mb 8800 GTS?

No...but every little bit helps. I personally notice a significant difference between using a desktop/laptop running a dual-core and another running a single core with similar graphics capabilities.

Since you want to run games in "lo-res" - you should be fine.

 

[Golgatha]

http://www23.tomshardware.com/...7&model2=902&chart=424

http://www23.tomshardware.com/...7&model2=902&chart=425

A couple of apples to apples comparisons (Pentium 3.6Ghz vs. Pentium D 3.6Ghz) for you with Quake 4 and Prey. Supreme Commander was written with dual and even quad cores in mind, and thus you get nearly 100% better performance. I was actually surprised to see Prey getting 44% more performance.

I'm not really sure where the point at which a single core can no longer feed the graphics card, but definitely an 8800GTS or 8800GTX would be wasted on a single core system.

 

[shortylickens]

I went from an Athlon 3200 to a 4800 dual core and I didnt see much difference in Supreme Commander or any other games. I wonder what the heck I'm doing wrong. In the task manager it shows the game working on both cores.

This was with an EVGA 7900GTX so I would like to think it wasnt a video issue.

 

[Raduque]

I can't speak for most games coming out, but I am pretty sure I read that Alan Wake completely refuses to run on a single core cpu. It'll run on P4s withh HT but not well.

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
http://www23.tomshardware.com/...7&model2=902&chart=424

http://www23.tomshardware.com/...7&model2=902&chart=425

A couple of apples to apples comparisons (Pentium 3.6Ghz vs. Pentium D 3.6Ghz) for you with Quake 4 and Prey. Supreme Commander was written with dual and even quad cores in mind, and thus you get nearly 100% better performance. I was actually surprised to see Prey getting 44% more performance.

I'm not really sure where the point at which a single core can no longer feed the graphics card, but definitely an 8800GTS or 8800GTX would be wasted on a single core system.

Q4 and Prey aren't very good examples, as the dual core advantage almost completely disappears if you increase the resolution by a notch (which most people will do when the framerates are that high). This is the case with many FPSs that are supposedly optimized for dual core. RTSs are a different story though, and it definitely makes a big difference in those.

 

[TheVrolok]

Originally posted by: Raduque
I can't speak for most games coming out, but I am pretty sure I read that Alan Wake completely refuses to run on a single core cpu. It'll run on P4s withh HT but not well.

Yep. Alan Wake will utilize 4 cores as it now stands.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

For those of us who need to upgrade, at least for me, it comes down to this:

I have a single core Opteron 148 (can run at 2.75 Ghz) and a x800xt. If I were willing to spend up to $275 to upgrade do I:

(A) Buy an 8800 GTS-320 (and run it with the single-core CPU)? or

(B) Buy an Athlon X2 4200 (2.2 Ghz stock, can probably overclock to at least 2.5 Ghz) for $70 and an x1950 Pro with 512 mb RAM and an Arctic Cooling HSF for $150?

I think Option B is probably better.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: CP5670

Originally posted by: Golgatha
http://www23.tomshardware.com/...7&model2=902&chart=424

http://www23.tomshardware.com/...7&model2=902&chart=425

A couple of apples to apples comparisons (Pentium 3.6Ghz vs. Pentium D 3.6Ghz) for you with Quake 4 and Prey. Supreme Commander was written with dual and even quad cores in mind, and thus you get nearly 100% better performance. I was actually surprised to see Prey getting 44% more performance.

I'm not really sure where the point at which a single core can no longer feed the graphics card, but definitely an 8800GTS or 8800GTX would be wasted on a single core system.

Q4 and Prey aren't very good examples, as the dual core advantage almost completely disappears if you increase the resolution by a notch (which most people will do when the framerates are that high). This is the case with many FPSs that are supposedly optimized for dual core. RTSs are a different story though, and it definitely makes a big difference in those.

True, there is always the fine balance between CPU and GPU limited FPS in games. Myself, I prefer severe overkill with my Q6600@3.0Ghz, 4GB RAM, and 8800GTX .

 

[Bateluer]

I tend to float towards overkill on my gaming machine. Once you've experienced high resolutions and high details, its very hard to go back to lower detail settings.

The next major upgrade for anyone should be a dual core CPU, though I doubt you will even have a choice before too much longer. All the main stream and high end consumer CPUs are already dual or quad core. The low end CPUs will follow suit soon. Shoot, you can get a dual core X2 for about 70 dollars right now.

 

[Starbuck1975]

I faced this decision point last year when I built my current gaming rig, and conventional wisdom at the time was that developers would start to write games that take advantage of dual core capabilities.

I don't have any benchmarks or frames of reference to back up that claim, but my understanding is that games like Supreme Commander, BioShock, Crysis and many in development are optimized for multi-core CPUs.

 

[mb]

Originally posted by: Raduque
I can't speak for most games coming out, but I am pretty sure I read that Alan Wake completely refuses to run on a single core cpu. It'll run on P4s withh HT but not well.

I was going to post that there's no way future games simply won't run on single core processors.. certainly slower but that it would still work, but it looks like that may not be the case if what you said is true.

 

[Aikouka]

Going from one to two cores isn't necessarily just because a game can take advantage of it, it's also because a game isn't the only thing running on your computer. Ever since we got the notion of DOS out of our head where we can run more than one application at a time through a fabulous thing called a core switch, we have the problem that there tend to be a lot of things wanting to play on the processor at once. Your I.M., your anti-virus (because you download that Britney Spears nudie video, you perv), your downloading (most network "cards" off-load work to the CPU), etc will all want some of the PC's juice...! Going from a single core to a dual core is almost night and day if your PC isn't a dedicated gaming machine with a copy of Windows that's stripped to the bare minimum with nothing but the game and the essential services running.

 

[Zenoth]

I think that recent PC gaming SHOULD require Dual-Cores. I'm surprised and also disappointed to see games like Crysis still working with a Single-Core, which I believe contributes to slow down the progress of gaming to whatever extent of it.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I think that recent PC gaming SHOULD require Dual-Cores. I'm surprised and also disappointed to see games like Crysis still working with a Single-Core, which I believe contributes to slow down the progress of gaming to whatever extent of it.

crysis may work with single core, but it maxes out my E4300 in the MP beta.

as i recall, crysis can even take advantage of quad core.

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I think that recent PC gaming SHOULD require Dual-Cores. I'm surprised and also disappointed to see games like Crysis still working with a Single-Core, which I believe contributes to slow down the progress of gaming to whatever extent of it.

Not for a long long time. There are STILL people b!tching about having to own a DVD drive for "newer" games. I've been praying for that transition for 5 years or as long as I've owned a DVD Rom (was still >$100 when I got it).

I'm still running single-core happily, so they better not make dual core required anytime soon. I can afford it, just don't want to.