Gamers - quad core/hex core dilemma

[Homeles]

Right now, my opinion is that quads are still king, and that won't be changing anytime soon. Haswell-E will (possibly/probably) drop the cost of Intel hex-cores to reasonable levels, but the cost is still high, and there are some tradeoffs that the platform has that negatively impact lightly threaded applications. If the mainstream platform ever has 6 core models offered... that would probably be when I'd seriously start eying hex-cores.

Wonder if that will ever happen, though; seems to be contrary to Intel's goals, as well as the industry as a whole.

 

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[DominionSeraph]

Question is simple.

No it isn't. You threw up two numbers in a vacuum. Am I torn between six 8088's and my X4 945? Not really.

With current silicon we have limits on frequency scaling that result in it being more economically feasible to add cores with the hope of software compatibility than add single-core speed. But CPUs are priced based on performance metrics meaning that all other things being equal (i.e. hex cores coming out of the workstation/enthusiast bracket and being judged side-by-side) you're going to be charged for it if the performance is there. The market's pricing adjusts based on the answer, and the pricing then modifies the answer, so how is that simple?

 

[Homeles]

4 vs 6/8 cores is a terrible dilemma. Thinking back to the E8600 vs Q6600 dilemma, I feel that the E8600 was absolutely the right choice (some people on this board say otherwise, but by the time games really started using more than two cores well, both CPUs were obsolete and there were far better choices of quad than the Q6600). However, I see far more evidence of 6 core utilization now than I did of 4 core utilization back then, so I'm not sure I should let fond memories of the E8600 sway my decision.

I don't see a a quad with HT as any substitute for a real 6-8 core CPU. HT negative scaling is just as much an issue as it ever was. For example, enabling HT on a 4770K might increase performance in Crysis 3, but at the same time it will decrease performance in Far Cry 3. I'm never going to bother with enabling and disabling HT for specific games, so for me HT always stays off.

The main issue with duals vs. quads in the Core 2 era was that there wasn't any way to compensate for the fact that not all workloads are multi-threaded, but turbo boost has addressed that.

If money weren't an issue... I'd definitely go for a 6 or 8 core. The tradeoff is mainly a monetary one, and the additional cores have some "future proofing" value for gaming, in addition to the fact that they'd handle heavy workloads better. There's potentially a slight performance loss if > 4 cores aren't utilized, but we're talking about the difference between ludicrous speed and ridiculous speed.

 

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[SPBHM]

cheapest new 6 core CPU is like 3x Core i5s, and the i5s are as good or faster for most games, so... yes.... it's not even worth comparing right now.

 

[Homeles]

I'm still waiting for someone to convince me that turbo boost actually works any better in hex-core processors than it does in quads (where it's effectively useless as I've pointed out in two other threads recently. A couple of hundred MHz, which is what turbo boost gives you in real-world situations, isn't addressing anything).

As I said before, turbo boost isn't going to have the slightest effect on my purchasing decisions. I'll be comparing base clock vs base clock, not some boosted clock that might work.

Obviously desktops are an entirely different beast, but turbo boost is absolutely critical in laptops and other mobile devices -- I couldn't stress enough how big of a difference it makes.

As far as the mainstream desktop goes, going by base clocks isn't a bad practice. The difference it makes there is definitely less.

I have no idea how it affects the HEDT platform, but I'd imagine as power and thermals are more of an issue there, like they are with the mobile segment, it'd again have more of an effect compared to the mainstream desktop platform. More cores would also, in theory, mean turbo boost would be more useful as well. However, I don't think I've ever seen an investigation into the subject.

 

[rtsurfer]

cheapest new 6 core CPU is like 3x Core i5s, and the i5s are as good or faster for most games, so... yes.... it's not even worth comparing right now.

With Haswell-E the 6-core is expected to be in the $400-$450 range.
That would make it equal to 2 i5 s.
The price difference is shrinking & while nobody is saying that new Games are going to use 6 cores, people are atleast starting to see the appeal of HT 4770Ks over 4670K.

While I might be hesitant to recommend a 6 core, a quad with HT is definitely suggested for future proofing.

So throw away the i5 argument.

 

[pandemonium]

Currently, Quad is all you need for gaming. Most games won't utilize more than 2 cores, which leaves you 2 additional cores open for peripheral programs to run on.

With the changes to consoles going with more multi-core support in development, this likely will change, but I don't expect that to happen for a few years yet.

 

[rtsurfer]

Currently, Quad is all you need for gaming. Most games won't utilize more than 2 cores, which leaves you 2 additional cores open for peripheral programs to run on.

With the changes to consoles going with more multi-core support in development, this likely will change, but I don't expect that to happen for a few years yet.

2 Cores..??
Really. ?
What is this 2007.?

Lets just take the example of Tomb Raider, which is seen as not much CPU heavy, unlike something like BF4 or Watch Dogs.

A dual core i3 was slaughtered.
Even though it had 2 extra HT threads just for Background stuff.

 

[Cerb]

a highly clock-able 6 core with out ht could temp me.
-not all that sold on ht , might like that ht tech to direct data to all of the highly clocked 6 cores for gaming. by the 4Q we should see if the game dev's are going to use more cores.

Don't get HT for gaming. Get HT for all the other crap running while your game is running.

 

[pandemonium]

2 Cores..??
Really. ?
What is this 2007.?

Lets just take the example of Tomb Raider, which is seen as not much CPU heavy, unlike something like BF4 or Watch Dogs.

A dual core i3 was slaughtered.
Even though it had 2 extra HT threads just for Background stuff.

Are you even serious right now? You're neglecting a major variable in your severely limited assessment: individual core and individual thread capability.

A single core on a i3-2100 will not compete with any of the other CPUs on that benchmark based on single-threaded performance. That's the primary reason for the poor performance, not solely because of the number of cores...

Why do you think we overclock our CPUs for gaming performance?

Do me a favor and take a screenshot of your CPU utilization on the next game you're playing and see how many cores are spiking. Likely you'll be surprised.

 

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[SPBHM]

With Haswell-E the 6-core is expected to be in the $400-$450 range.
That would make it equal to 2 i5 s.
The price difference is shrinking & while nobody is saying that new Games are going to use 6 cores, people are atleast starting to see the appeal of HT 4770Ks over 4670K.

While I might be hesitant to recommend a 6 core, a quad with HT is definitely suggested for future proofing.

So throw away the i5 argument.

there is no 5820K out yet, we don't know the memory and motherboard prices,
i5 is 1/3 of the price of a 4930K, have higher ST performance and higher performance in many (or most) games, it also can be used in motherboards as low as 1/4 the price of a typical x79 board, or minimum 1/2 the price for the entry level x79 vs z87 board.

as I said, it's not worth comparing, i5s are much better performance per $, and specially with OC more than enough for current games, and while some games show good advantage for HT and 4 cores it's not easy to justify the price difference of 40% more, when many games completely ignore the advantage of the HT threads,

 

[pandemonium]

That's going to backfire on you. They'll end up giving you a bunch of task manager screens showing what appears to be multiple cores loaded even if the game was actually two-threaded.

I think you're stretching the truth a bit though, when you say "most games won't utilize more than 2 cores". 'Most games' meaning what? Most modern games are using at least 3, often 4. Even Skyrim, using the stone-age Gamebryo engine will take a significant hit if you try to run it on 2 cores.

You're right; it will backfire on me, and it'll be reduced to confirmation bias and anything not supporting their argument will be ignored. I just want them to start actually looking instead of assuming.

"Most games" means, out of all games. I'm not talking solely, big-budget, modern games. You have to admit, there's a lot of games out there, and most of them won't utilize more than 2 cores. Also, this does not mean I'm saying you only need 2 cores. Threads will spill over on the 3rd core often with the majority of these games, but primarily you'll see 2 cores being pegged a majority of the time.

 

[ShintaiDK]

That still makes 7-8 cores 'optimal' though. 6 cores for the game, and one or two left over for OS/driver overhead and any background tasks.

Though if the 8 core proc had was slower per-core vs the hex I would never choose it

The driver dont run on the "other cores". If you need 1-2 extra cores for junk, you are doing it wrong.

My system at best uses 1-2% of 1 core when I play. And thats with plenty of things open. Same reason why it runs 800Mhz normally with a few % CPU usage.

Not sure where the myth came from that you need more cores for background tasks. Well I do have an idea from where...

 

[BSim500]

Four strong cores is still the sweet spot and probably will remain so for the rest of the current "next gen" console's lifespan as anything that will load more will saturate 6x Jaguar cores. Most real-world background tasks use very little. Even with a web browser open with 50 tabs or so (more memory hungry than CPU) + NextPVR recording 2x HDTV programmes simultaneously off a DTT tuner, background CPU usage is under 10% of 1 core on an i5-3570. A 1080p Youtube "walkthrough" vid uses up to 15-20% of 1 core (and that's 15-20% of 1.6GHz idle Speedstep state) but then you usually pause it before switching back, you don't leave it running as the audio will drown out whatever game you're playing plus you'll lose your place in case you need help on the next section. Downloading a file in the background takes up what 2-3%?

Video encoding whilst gaming isn't exactly a typical use and can be "solved" with better time-management skills (ie, batch encode when away from the PC : eating dinner, showering, taking the dog for a walk, overnight, when at school/work, etc) leaving 100% of all cores available when at the PC). All these people saying 2x i5 extra cores must be "reserved" for background tasks must have a virus / trojan / keylogger or something as that's not what I'm seeing even on a HD HTPC rig... 😕

Unless your job involves encoding / rendering / other professional usage of highly-scalable apps all day, I'd say a larger 512GB-1TB SSD is a better future investment than a 6-core CPU just for gaming.

 

[BrightCandle]

There are issues with gamegpu.ru's benchmarks and data, of that I have no doubt but I can't be bothered to go over them again. However earlier this year I went through a lot of the historical games and I captured a load of CPU performance data which compares i3, i5, i7 and 6 core. Its not perfect, its not complete but it is an interesting comparison:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3638175/GameGPU CPU performance.ods

2c4t v 4c4t (i3-2100 v i5 2500k):
2500k v i3-2100
Average 129%
Maximum 235%
25% Quartile 122%
75% Quartile 143%
Minimum 85%

So the quad core is on average a third faster, and for half the games you can expect it to be between 22% and 43% faster than the i3. But sometimes its slower (15%) and at most its whopping 2.35x faster.

6c12t v Quad 4c8t cores (3930k v 2600k)
Average 101%
Maximum 167%
25% Quartile 99%
75% Quartile 102%
Minimum 88%

On average the six core is just 1% faster. On half of games you can expect it to perform the same. But on a few games it can perform up to 67% faster. At worst its 12% slower.

I need to update the spreadsheet with gamegpu's latest games and hardware, but even going up to Guild wars 2 there is definitely a case for quad cores today. 6 cores its not really the downside that is the issue (lower clock speed) because it doesn't seem to have much impact most of the time, its the upside in less than 25% of games that I think matters. There is also data in there for 2600k v 2500k (HT on or not) and its 5% on average faster to have HT, but at best its 22% faster.

 

[pandemonium]

Now that's some impressive data to have on hand. Well done!

 

[ShintaiDK]

Remember when comparing 3930K to 2600K that you also got 50% more cache and 100% more memory bandwidth.

 

[pandemonium]

Yup. There's still a lot of salt grains to take with it - considering those processors and their threads aren't equal - but it's still nice in a general context of blatant comparisons for this thread.

 

[beginner99]

because of consoles, games will have to be optimized for 8 cores, and thus, I feel a quad core with smt will be the sweet spot. We've had these processors since 2008, and the gaming software/api's are still in the near future, so I understand the cynicism around processors with many cores.

The consoles cores are pathetic. 4 Hawell cores easily beat 8 of these weak console cores, even an i3 is superior.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Although I know many of you guys are addicted to buying hardware and all (I've been there).......the REAL question nobody seems to be asking is:

What benefit you will get from extra cores, at what cost and for which exact game?

All of these should be considered. In most cases, you are talking about spending 100s of dollars to get 10-20FPS difference.

Ask yourself, is that really worth it?

 

[tolis626]

Although I know many of you guys are addicted to buying hardware and all (I've been there).......the REAL question nobody seems to be asking is:

What benefit you will get from extra cores, at what cost and for which exact game?

All of these should be considered. In most cases, you are talking about spending 100s of dollars to get 10-20FPS difference.

Ask yourself, is that really worth it?

Ermm...If one really wants it and can afford it, yes. You don't ask a guy with a Porsche or a Ferrari why he bought it. Of course it's not because it will get him to his job faster or for fuel economy. It's that simple.

Now if your question is whether someone who is at least a little budget-conscious should go for the HEDT platform over the mainstream one... Then no, they shouldn't in most cases as it's usually beyond the point where ROI is diminished. And it's like it's been said quite a lot of times. It's not the cost of the CPU that's prohibitive on the HEDT platform. It's the total system cost. One could cut down on a few things and get a 4930k instead of going with a 4770k if the only difference was the CPU. Add the extra mobo price, more memory modules (Quad-channel and all) and you start getting a little out of control price wise. And it's gonna be more so with Haswell-E and DDR4.

 

[crashtech]

Price/performance is a "real" question, it's just not the OP's question, imo, though the OP might have been more explicit in excluding cost from the equation.

Even in a cost-no-object scenario, a multi-GPU high end Z97 board with a PLX chip and a liquid cooled 4790K is gonna be as good or better than an Ivy-E system for games most of the time. Guess we'll have to wait and see about Haswell-E...