Dual Core For Gaming ?

[Realprince]

Hi There ,

Will a Dual Core Processor enhance a PC Gaming Experience?

Thanks,

Realprince

 

[CalvinHobbes]

In some cases it might. For my game machine I would much rather have a very single core processor. There's not enough games that take advantage of it right now.

 

[MechaSheeba]

In the future it may, right now only Quake 4 get's a good boost from an SMP enabled patch.

 

[her209]

Spend the money on a better video card.

 

[dBTelos]

Now, no. 6 months to a year from now, yes.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Oblivion benefits slightly on the slower dual cores (10%) see the AnandTech CPU scaling article on the main page.

Nothing else really, even Quake 4 benefits mostly in pointless low-resolution benchmarks, unless you plan to run your system at only 800x600 and think you can tell the difference between 110 FPS and 115.

 

[MechaSheeba]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Oblivion benefits slightly on the slower dual cores (10%) see the AnandTech CPU scaling article on the main page.

Nothing else really, even Quake 4 benefits mostly in pointless low-resolution benchmarks, unless you plan to run your system at only 800x600 and think you can tell the difference between 110 FPS and 115.

Quake 4 offers a very large performance increase for dual core CPUs. The reason benchmarks are run in such low resolutions is because in higher resolutions the graphics cards will come into play making an apples to apples comparison of the CPUs impossible. Look at the AT review of the D 805, it outperforms the 3000+ and Opteron 144 in Quake 4 by a significant margin when the SMP patch is applied, and that says a lot about how well Q4 takes advantage of multiple cores considering the 3000+/144 stomp the D 805 a new asshole in every other single threaded game.

If developers start to properly optimize games for dual core CPUs they'll be the best values, period. Why would there be any reason to buy a single core A64 when the similarly priced D 805 would be able to outperform it in both games and encoding/rendering? Dual core is the future, IF more apps are properly coded for it from the ground up.

 

[Gamer X]

Quad cores are 8 months away. Single core will seem pathetic by then when most software
and games will be SMP.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Battlefield 2 benefits from dual-core CPUs as well.

 

[imported_fx]

There are fewer games (2%) that took benefits of Dual Core technology but 98% of games don't get benefit of Dual Core technology yet but it is recommened to have Dual Core so you wouldn't have to worry if you have to upgrade your processor in 6 months from now.

 

[Chadder007]

Developers need to get on the ball to support this stuff. Still waiting for good 64 bit support and Dual Core support, though it may take until Vista comes along ...

 

[obeseotron]

It's a twofold issue: not only are most games not multithreaded, they aren't limited by the cpu in the first place. In games that are multithreaded you usually don't see much improvement because the single core chip wasn't the bottleneck anyway.