Is buying a dual core processor too limiting?

[Moab]

I was reading some PC Gamer last night and a couple other things online and it seems like everything is now being optimized for quad core chips. The article mentioned how things like Half Life Ep. 2 and Supreme Commander are being built for quad core chips. Also mentioned how games will now be using multiple core chips for things like physics.

So is buying something like a E6600 chip way too limiting? I dont want to upgrade into a budget class machine that will prevent me from playing any of the newer games. Should dual core chips now be marked off as being simply word processing machines / watching Youtube videos and anyone who wants to even run any of the newer games go strictly quad and higher core chips?

 

[Geomagick]

No - dual core is NOT a budget technology just yet.

However in due course it will be but not for a while yet.

An e6600 is not a chip hat will limit you in games at the moment, as has always been the case getting a suitable graphics card will determine the playability of the game.

A Quad core chip may allow for additional features in future games, but I very much doubt it will be required for some tme to come.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: Moab
Is dual core now considered budget / low end?

Not at all.

Originally posted by: Moab
Should dual core chips now be marked off as being simply word processing machines / watching Youtube videos...?

That seriously made me laugh in disbelief. Really. You're reading too much marketing guff.

(Seriously ahahaha :laugh: )

 

[MichaelD]

The vast majority of the PCs in the world are running P3's, P4's and AthlonXP's; not new technology by any means.

Now, here in Geekland, we ride the bleeding edge of hardware...or try to afford to anyway!

A 2.4GHz P4 with 512MB of RAM is still considered a "really nice PC" in the average world. Just look at the minimum hardware requirements for most games. Kinda low, right?

Dual-core is still the chip to move up to. Quad core is for freaky geeky people...like me. 😀 I'm just waiting for the price to drop.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
The vast majority of the PCs in the world are running P3's, P4's and AthlonXP's; not new technology by any means.

Now, here in Geekland, we ride the bleeding edge of hardware...or try to afford to anyway!

A 2.4GHz P4 with 512MB of RAM is still considered a "really nice PC" in the average world. Just look at the minimum hardware requirements for most games. Kinda low, right?

Dual-core is still the chip to move up to. Quad core is for freaky geeky people...like me. 😀 I'm just waiting for the price to drop.

My brotha! :beer:😀

Go with the route I'm plotting out - buy a dual-core now (by "Now" I mean "After the 4/22 Intel price cuts") and then swap out to a quad-core when those come down to the $250 range. 🙂

- M4H

 

[ForumMaster]

Originally posted by: Moab
I was reading some PC Gamer last night and a couple other things online and it seems like everything is now being optimized for quad core chips. The article mentioned how things like Half Life Ep. 2 and Supreme Commander are being built for quad core chips. Also mentioned how games will now be using multiple core chips for things like physics.

So is buying something like a E6600 chip way too limiting? I dont want to upgrade into a budget class machine that will prevent me from playing any of the newer games. Should dual core chips now be marked off as being simply word processing machines / watching Youtube videos and anyone who wants to even run any of the newer games go strictly quad and higher core chips?

:laugh: a single core, no even an ancient CPU like mine (amd athlon xp-m 2400 from about 2002-3) will easily handle that.

on the other hand, there are some games such as allan wake or unreal tournament 2007 that will require dual core (or hyperthreading for more recent pentium 4's) and won't run without it.

the 6600 is hardly a budget chip. get it and give a slight overclock. unless you really have money to waste and constantly play that lastest games, it will last you for atleast 4 to 5 years.

 

[Boyo]

Most people don't even have a dual core, so it's not obsolete just yet. Most people will be moving up to a dual core and then quad cores will be the thing to get to.

 

[Imyourzero]

Dual core low end? HAHAHAHAHAHA...that's funny.

When the 8800 GPUs came out, it didn't make the 7900 and X1900 series low end did it?

Even the faster single core CPUs aren't considered low end...yet.

 

[rudder]

So what if a dual core is low end. You go and spend $800 on a quad core cpu while I will go spend $180 on a dual core. Or even under $100 for an AM2 dual core.

It will be several game generations before the box says "quad core cpu required."

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: Moab
Should dual core chips now be marked off as being simply word processing machines / watching Youtube videos

Hehe... My vintage 2001/2 Athlon XP 1800+ machine would have had no trouble with any of that, if she were brought back to life. As it is now, my old 800Mhz iMac that I gave to my parents works fine for such work.

 

[Telon]

I can OC my E6600 to 3.7 stabel on air that is not realy a mild OC I havent tried to go OC it much more yet but will probley next week.

The quad cores will be main steam probley later this year if they take the price back down to were the E6600 is right now. I read this was suppose to happen in september.
If it dose I will try to have the cash set back to upgade to a quad sore at that time.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: George Powell
No - dual core is NOT a budget technology just yet.

However in due course it will be but not for a while yet.

An e6600 is not a chip hat will limit you in games at the moment, as has always been the case getting a suitable graphics card will determine the playability of the game.

A Quad core chip may allow for additional features in future games, but I very much doubt it will be required for some tme to come.

Intel is just weeks away from releasing a quad core version of that same chip (2MB,2.4GHz x4) for about $500 and when they do, the dual core E6600 will drop to about $200-210. AMD is already selling $55 dual core Athlon 64 X2s, so I would argue that dual core is now in the budget realm and all the mid to high end processors are dual core.

54.95 Dual Core 1.9 GHz (close enought to 3800+speeds)

EDIT: Even many celerons are dual core.

 

[Moab]

Originally posted by: ForumMaster
on the other hand, there are some games such as allan wake or unreal tournament 2007 that will require dual core (or hyperthreading for more recent pentium 4's) and won't run without it.

Isn't that what is worrying? Those games wont work right for low end chips and the makers are saying how they will only work well on quad core chips.

Gabe of Valve said something about quad core being the greatest thing to ever happen. It seems like developers are already moving beyond them and will no longer write anything to work on a dual core chip.

Are these dual core chips the fastest things to ever be obsoleted as far as CPUs in recent history?

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: Moab

Originally posted by: ForumMaster
on the other hand, there are some games such as allan wake or unreal tournament 2007 that will require dual core (or hyperthreading for more recent pentium 4's) and won't run without it.

Isn't that what is worrying? Those games wont work right for low end chips and the makers are saying how they will only work well on quad core chips.

Gabe of Valve said something about quad core being the greatest thing to ever happen. It seems like developers are already moving beyond them and will no longer write anything to work on a dual core chip.

Are these dual core chips the fastest things to ever be obsoleted as far as CPUs in recent history?

Links?

 

[Canai]

What Gabe was talking about was the future of writing code for multi-core chips and the inherent difficulties in doing so. There are only a few games that support dual core right now. NONE that support quad core.

 

[Negronpope]

For god's sake buy it. Yes it will become obsolete sooner than you want. Right now I envy you. However, if you get as weird as some people (myself included) you'll be buying stuff like the Asrock motherboard I'm using right now. It's an Norfce3 Socket 754 motherboard with an AM2 expansion slot. SO it's possible that I could just wait for the AM3 quad core processors (and skip several generations). Weird huh? Just buy it and replace it later. The time you waste is time you could be using it.

 

[Rangoric]

It almost impossible to REQUIRE 4 cores for a game, code wise, but the performance could be hit hard by coding 4 threads that take up a "Full CPU".

I just love the fact that dual core chips are so easy to get now. 10-15 years ago I loved the idea of having a dual CPU system. Especially for game writing. The uses of such a system where obvious to me back then and I am glad people are using that potential now.

 

[Atheus]

LOL! Honestly, most of you people are tools of advertising, this is almost as bad as the threads where people are concerned their 2 gigabytes of RAM will not be enough for their home office computer!

Originally posted by: ForumMaster

Originally posted by: Moab
Should dual core chips now be marked off as being simply word processing machines / watching Youtube videos

:laugh: a single core, no even an ancient CPU like mine (amd athlon xp-m 2400 from about 2002-3) will easily handle that.

Closer to the mark, but I'll go further - there is no non-gaming home computing task that can't be done a 500Mhz P3. And somebody please tell me what couldn't be done on a 200Mhz ARM9 if software wasn't so damn bloated...

I have a single core Opteron and it screams along in games, and everything else too. Maybe, just maybe, I would notice a performance difference with 2 of these cores but I doubt it. What do you people *do* on your computers?! 😕

 

[agathodaimon]

lol... Still loving my Athlon 4000.

 

[ForumMaster]

Originally posted by: Atheus
LOL! Honestly, most of you people are tools of advertising, this is almost as bad as the threads where people are concerned their 2 gigabytes of RAM will not be enough for their home office computer!

Originally posted by: ForumMaster

Originally posted by: Moab
Should dual core chips now be marked off as being simply word processing machines / watching Youtube videos

:laugh: a single core, no even an ancient CPU like mine (amd athlon xp-m 2400 from about 2002-3) will easily handle that.

Closer to the mark, but I'll go further - there is no non-gaming home computing task that can't be done a 500Mhz P3. And somebody please tell me what couldn't be done on a 200Mhz ARM9 if software wasn't so damn bloated...

I have a single core Opteron and it screams along in games, and everything else too. Maybe, just maybe, I would notice a performance difference with 2 of these cores but I doubt it. What do you people *do* on your computers?! 😕

absolutly. except my rig still let's me play recent games if i lower the settings a bit. i usually keep the cpu at around 1.7Ghz cause it's all i usually need and runs quiter and cooler. when i play games, i OC it to 2.2Ghz. best way imo.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: Moab
It seems like developers are already moving beyond them and will no longer write anything to work on a dual core chip.

Are these dual core chips the fastest things to ever be obsoleted as far as CPUs in recent history?

Wtf are you talking about? Links? 😕 Dual core is just the first logical step for parallelism in CPUs and development. It's still better than single core, whether for threaded programs or for multitasking single-threaded programs. Quad core and dual core chips are not mainstream yet. Dual core is becoming mainstream and will be by the end of the year; that's when more businesses and average joe home users will have it than not.

 

[Pwnbroker]

I really don't see how they can make games that REQUIRE quad core chips for years to come. If they did that, their customer base would be so small, they'd have to charge 150-200 dollars to make a profit. They will continue to make games to feed the masses and deal with the current limitations on hardware. After all, it's their bottom line that is most important.

 

[Moab]

So what about Supreme Commander?

People say the only way to really run the game well is with 4 cores. Maybe companies wont require quad core but they are saying "Well, yeah, you can run it with only a core or two but the only way to really play this game as it was meant to be played is if you have a quad core."

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: Moab
So what about Supreme Commander?

People say the only way to really run the game well is with 4 cores. Maybe companies wont require quad core but they are saying "Well, yeah, you can run it with only a core or two but the only way to really play this game as it was meant to be played is if you have a quad core."

Thats kind of the same things as with DX10 cards. Who here owns a several hundred dollar Nvidia 8800? A few people, but the majority of people who buy the games will play them on lesser video cards.

When half-life 2 was releases it scaled well with lower end hardware. Valve (or any publisher) would have been stupid to release a game that would require everyone to go out an buy a $400 video card.

Oblivion is selling well. WHo ahs the hardware to get 100fps will max detail?

 

[harobikes333]

exactly🙂 great point