No dual core love in 2015

[Flapdrol1337]

A quad core amd will outlast those G3258 and the ones who invested the money in it will be left like idiots.

Lol, invested.

But seriously, the amd quads don't even outperform the pentium in synthetics like cinebench, there's no way a game would run better on them.

 

[john5220]

^ then you are beyond clueless.

Pentium G will give double the FPS of the phenom II X2 which is still unplayable. 9x2 is 18

for the last time people please stop acting like idiots. 3 years later and idiots cannot even understand the difference with BF series 64 player maps and its single player mode. The shittiest AMD quad cores will beat the best intel dual cores in 64 player maps simply because dual core stink on frostbite engine when it comes to 64 player online maps

such a shame people making idiotic claims and pointing to single player benchmarks as if it has any sort of meaning. No one plays the single player modes in these games its even coming to a point whee they will just stop shipping games like this with single player.

Find another way to make your point without calling people idiots.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[BSim500]

Yeah i dont care if its Intel or AMD, but building a new desktop rig that even on paper has lesser spec than a cell phone is laughable and embarassing for any yeck geek

LOL. Even a fast quad-core Snapdragon tablet CPU is about 3.5x slower than an average i3 (7x slower per core). You'd need about 14-16x Snapdragon cores to match an i3. "A 2w cell phone has more power than a 50w CPU" is just a silly statement even on paper...

Unity and Inquisition can even stretch to an octa-core and will effectively use a hexa core.

Not all cores are equal though (nor scale linearly):-

Of course a quad-core is recommended for heavy gaming these days, but there's obviously more to performance than core count alone. A 100% increase in cores (FX-8350 vs FX-4300) gains only 10-40% in some games (32.5% in ACU above and 5% of that is clock speed difference), whilst a quad-core i5-4670k is +57% faster than an octo-core FX-8350 above even with a 17.5% clock speed penalty (roughly +65-70% adjusted for clock). And the 8x Jaguar cores in consoles for which most games are designed to are again barely on par with an i3-4150 or C2750 Intel Avoton (8-core Atom) even in perfectly threaded tasks. (It's even less since only 6 out of the 8 PS4 / XB1 cores can be used for actual gaming).

I don't even use dual's in my office boxes anymore (barring a cheapo laptop). Duals are throwaways, its 2015 and you want the threads.

Dual-cores work perfectly well in most laptops, office boxes, etc, for general usage. If I disable 2 cores on my i5-3570, then lock the clock speed down to 1.6Ghz idle to mimic a slow dual-core netbook half the speed of a desktop Pentium, then playback a 1080p Youtube video + MP3 file + reload a background web browser tab + record a TV programme to disk (from a HTPC TV Tuner) all at exactly the same time, it barely uses 26% of 2x 1.6Ghz cores (ie, a "whopping drain" of 400Mhz per core with 3x multi-media tasks running). When clocked at normal 3.4Ghz, usage drops to barely 10-12%. A lot of people (especially AMD 4-8 core owners) seem to love wildly exaggerating how "awful" dual-cores are for trivial everyday tasks that 5-10 year old CPU's (including past 2.0-2.5GHz AMD X2's) could manage at less than 1/2 the speed of a 3-4GHz Pentium.

 

[Roland00Address]

The dual vs quad argument finished years ago as well. Q6xxx vs E8xxx The people who bought the quad were right.

Niche situations where the dual might have been better etc etc blah, wrong, the quad was the better buy.

I was about to bring this up. This is no longer 2008, we know what it is needed to have a consistent satisfactory gaming machine and as much as pentium anniversary chip is a nice chip it is not a gaming chip. Yes many games it can run fine at 60fps, and these games are sure fun, but it is not a tool that will work in all instances.

That said some people here need to turn down their extreme emotions. I do not want to say the word fanboyism, for having a favorite/preference is not a crime, but their arguments seem emotional not rational.

 

[cbn]

I was about to bring this up. This is no longer 2008

Interestingly, back in 2008 the argument was so much simpler because quad core and latest release dual cores had around the same IPC and frequency (or at least the frequency and IPC was much closer). So the quad core was always ahead in multi-threading.

Now things have progressed to the point where a dual core can actually have more multi-threading capacity than a quad core. This due to the newest dual cores having much higher IPC and frequency than some old quad cores or SOC based quad cores.

So IMO the generalization "quad core vs. dual core" is so much hard to make these days than it was back in 2008.

 

[ninaholic37]

Games refusing to start with dualcores is totally lame. If dragonage inquisition can run on a 2 Ghz intel quad it should run on a 4+ Ghz dualcore as well.

Nope but nice try. Even if it did start it wouldn't run well. Games are designed to run with 4 cores because 80% of CPU's have at least 4 cores.

Why would a dual core at 4Ghz+ perform worse than a quad core at 2Ghz?

 

[Morbus]

But we dont, thats the issue. Had it at least been a legitimate requirement, but its purely artificial.

Seriously though, what did you expect. We're talking about BioWare and Activision, after all. When have they made a good game ever?

It's stuff for console tards, you either dumb down to their level and it sheet or you play proper PC games. There's no compromise...

 

[biostud]

Still looking forward to multi-threaded AI and physics outside 3Dmark.

 

[NTMBK]

Seriously though, what did you expect. We're talking about BioWare and Activision, after all. When have they made a good game ever?

It's stuff for console tards, you either dumb down to their level and it sheet or you play proper PC games. There's no compromise...

Seriously? :\ Bioware are the company who brought us Baldur's Gate and KotOR, and Activision Blizzard are responsible for Warcraft 3, WoW, Starcraft, Diablo III... They have made some absolutely fantastic PC games between them.

 

[cbn]

Regarding the stuttering (that usually gets mentioned in threads like these) and that was found in the Tom's test of G3258 using Thief--> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pentium-g3258-overclocking-performance,3849-8.html I have to wonder how much of that was simply a graphics driver issue since the game was so new when Tom's tested it?

When I looked at some "older" (ie, released 2013) quad core optimized games in the same Tom's test like Metro Last light --> http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36875563&postcount=49 the frame time variance appeared to be inversely related to FPS rather than core count suggesting CPU to GPU balance was a greater factor in games with mature drivers,

 

[Roland00Address]

So IMO the generalization "quad core vs. dual core" is so much hard to make these days than it was back in 2008.

I disagree. We had different opportunity costs back then. Today the opportunity is price and spending that money somewhere else like a better ssd, gpu monitor, or just save it/use it something non computer related. Back then the opportunity cost was more cores but at a lower clockspeed/frequency. The IPC was the same more or less

The E8400 and Q6600 were similar prices (sometimes the Q6600 was a little more but similar bracket) but the E8400 had a 25% clock speed advantage, plus it had more cache (6mb per cores 1 and 2 vs 4mb for core 1 and 2 and 4mb for cores 3 and 4), so unless you were using 3 or more threads (including non game tasks like the OS) the E8400 was faster. Even when using 3 or 4 threads you had to utilize them enough and have a high enough load for the Q6600 to catch up. If all 4 cores were fully utilized (non gaming scenarios like rendering) the Q6600 easily won.

The E8400 also usually clocked at a higher oc if you oc due to the fact it was less stress on the motherboard and its power systems (2 cores vs 4 cores). The e8400 also was 45nm instead of 65nm .

Pretty much this all went away when we got the core architecture starting in Nov 2008 with the Nehalem based Bloomfield. The turbo was improved with Lynnfield and even more so in Sandy Bridge where it was more or less perfected. With Sandy the quads were faster in over 95% of chances. They now just cost more.




The difference between quad vs dual with a tradeoff also in laptops in 20010. Do you prefer this 45nm clarksfield based core i7 quad core i7 720qm, or 32nm Arrandale based core i7 620m dual core which a lot higher frequencies and integrated graphics so if the motherboard had a manual switch (before optimus) you can reboot and get better battery life. They cost roughly the same.

i7 720qm quad core 1.6 ghz base, 1.73 quad turbo, 1.73 tri turbo, 2.39 dual turbo, 2.79 single turbo
i7 620m dual core 2.66 ghz base, 3.06 dual turbo, 3.33 single turbo

But once again when sandy rolled around the quads were always better and the duals were only saved for ultrabooks, and thin high end computers that could not handle a 45w sku (business, macbooks)

 

[cbn]

The E8400 and Q6600 were similar prices (sometimes the Q6600 was a little more but similar bracket) but the E8400 had a 25% clock speed advantage, plus it had more cache (6mb per cores 1 and 2 vs 4mb for core 1 and 2 and 4mb for cores 3 and 4)

But the Q6600 was still a lot faster in mult-threading.

Today we can actually have dual cores that are faster (sometimes much faster) than a quad core in mult-threading.

 

[Roland00Address]

Why would a dual core at 4Ghz+ perform worse than a quad core at 2Ghz?

TLDR: Short answer. If the cpu can sustain 100% utiliziataion the dual core would be faster. In real life there are many bottlenecks that prevent 100% utilization. Here are some.



1) Because the cache is only so big and so fast. You may finish the "math problem" really fast at 4ghz but if clock cycles are wasted pulling the next problem from ram memory and this is a big bottleneck. Wasted clock cycles are wasted math problems the computer wants to do but can't.

2) There are things like hyperthreading which allows you to do another thread while you wait when you are waiting for a result to come from another core or memory. For example the math problem A+B+C+D. The programer/complier designed the problem to be computed like this

A+B=X
C+D=Y
X+Y=A+B+C+D

Hyperthreading allows you to do the next step C+D as long as its on a separate thread, when the computer waits for B to be retrieved from memory for both A+B have to be in cache before the computer can do the math problem.

IBM with the older Power8 usings a hyperthreading that can do 8 threads per core on a 12 core chip for 96 threads, and this is only 96 threads per cpu socket and often there are multiple of these cpus working together. Intel only uses a 2 thread hyperthreading on consumer level chip. The reason why IBM does such extreme hyper threading is wasted cpu cycles is wasting your 4.2 billion 22nm SOI chip that is 650mm2 large. The nvidia titan is 561mm2 and the gtx 280 was 576mm2. Do you know how much nvidia cried about the yields of the 280? And IBM has a cpu that is larger on a more difficult type of node (bulk vs SOI)

 

[Roland00Address]

But the Q6600 was still a lot faster in mult-threading.

Today we can actually have dual cores that are faster (sometimes much faster) than a quad core in mult-threading.

That is my point, it was a tradeoff, there was no free lunch, you had to give up something. Better gaming performance, or better multithreading performance. Eventually several years later games became more multi threaded to take advantage of the quad and allow the q6600 to move on. But if you rotate computers every 2 years you were on Sandy by then. If you keep computers for 4+ years it was a lot harder decision.

Today one is obviously better and you save money but you miss out with performance. Same thing with the athlon x4s you are getting what you paid for. Whether the athlon x4 or the pentium is faster was not the point I was making. Some people are arguing this but they are too passionate and I just do not care. In my opinion on both those cpus you have a sucky gaming cpu that will only be good for casual gaming and for casual gaming both do fine and play games at 60fps.

If you want a serious gaming computer, not an enthusiast ($400+ gpus), but a serious computer with a $250 gpu you need to pair that gpu up with a i3 at minimum but really an i5.

 

[BSim500]

Pentium G will give double the FPS of the phenom II X2 which is still unplayable. 9x2 is 18

Sounds like there's something seriously wrong with your PC (again) if you're only getting 18fps when other people are getting much higher FPS in 64 player BF3 with the G3258, even with a budget 750Ti.

 

[Bman123]

How anyone expects to have a great gaming experience with a 2 core 2 thread cpu on a pc running windows is pretty funny. Look at ps4 and xbox one for Christ sake. They are programmed to the damn metal and have 6 cores for games and 2 for the OS
That's 6 slow cores for games, can people not see multithreading is here to stay? They use 2 cores just for the OS and people expect to run a windows rig and play the same games good because they have a dual core cpu with higher clock speed? Get real people

 

[papapapapapapapababy]

CONSOLE PUBLISHERS JUST DON'T CARE ABOUT PC GAMERS. PERIOD. THEY JUST DUMP WHATEVER SLOPPY CONSOLE CODE THEY HAVE TO THE PC AND EXPECT THE BEST, THATS IT. slow ass x86-64 CPUs should ALWAYS translate to better performance on pc. but it doesn't. you need x4 cpu power. AND gpus? amd generally runs like arse ON MOST GAMES. yet both ps4 and xbo1 are 100% AMD inside. there is no magic optimization. no magic secret sauce btw. is just business.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I thought game publishers used to understate their hardware requirements not exaggerate them. Why on earth would they want to lock out potential customers with still ok cpus? Were they put up to this by the hardware industry?

Intel kickbacks, maybe?...

 

[frozentundra123456]

Intel kickbacks, maybe?...

Huh? If you want to start a conspiracy theory, it would be the "moar cores" company that is nerfing games that should run on a dual core.

 

[rgallant]

With the shocking requirements of recent games like Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age Inquisition and them requiring a quad core processor or a dual core with hyperthreading (i3) do you guys think this might be a continuing trend in new major releases?

I was shocked when I realized I would not be able to play either game with a dual core processor. G3258 owners must be disappointed as a lot of gamers actually purchased one on the basis of it being a cheap performance killer when it came to gaming. I understand the need to advance gaming by using more cores, but with these two games especially I feel as if us dual core users have been shafted. Its even come to attention that some gamers have disabled 2 cores on their processors and managed to play the game flawlessly. Which may lead us to believe that they run a true or false check on the processor itself before launch.

Anyone else think dual core may be on its way to the graveyard when it comes to gaming?

disclamer - did not read the thread
but re cores
next gen. game play includes
DLC store
REAL time collectables and real time rewards
real time access for real $$ for whatever points to buy [for upgrade cheats]
-your peeps want to say hello
etc,etc
playing a game to day is a media event if you want it or NOT, so takes more cpu cycles logged on to so many sites by default.

 

[positivedoppler]

Amazing, people are still in denial that their 2 core cpu will soon be junk as far as new releases go. If your on such a small budget that your considering Pentium, Celewrong, and Kabini, do yourself a favor and get a X-Box or PS4 because it will last longer than your budget build.


http://www.pcper.com/news/Processor...ual-Core-Processors-Budget-Landscape-Shifting

"while the game will load when using dual-core CPU's with hyper-threading enabled (for 4 total "cores") the performance isn't very good."

If you want to game new releases and upcoming titles on 1080p or above get an i5 or if your on a budget one of the FX or AMD APU alternative. Single core desktop CPU went the way of the dinosaurs a few years ago and it's just a plan waste of money getting a dual core because they're next. Forget the Kabini, Celewrong, and Pentium unless your gaming old mama's games or just want to surf the internet.

 

[Ranulf]

The dual vs quad argument finished years ago as well. Q6xxx vs E8xxx The people who bought the quad were right.

Niche situations where the dual might have been better etc etc blah, wrong, the quad was the better buy.

Yes, yes.. blah blah. And I still hold animosity to those who told me to go quad core in 2010 (its the future man!), from a e6300 to a q6600 when it didnt take me too long to realize that I was going to need to upgrade the q6600 in 1-2 years simply because of clock speed.

The quad core argument is far more solid now except as others mentioned, the cost is that much more. That said, for gaming I think its i5 or go home for anything other than a lean mean watching every penny budget machine.

 

[RaistlinZ]

Amazing, people are still in denial that their 2 core cpu will soon be junk as far as new releases go. If your on such a small budget that your considering Pentium, Celewrong, and Kabini, do yourself a favor and get a X-Box or PS4 because it will last longer than your budget build.


http://www.pcper.com/news/Processor...ual-Core-Processors-Budget-Landscape-Shifting

"while the game will load when using dual-core CPU's with hyper-threading enabled (for 4 total "cores") the performance isn't very good."

If you want to game new releases and upcoming titles on 1080p or above get an i5 or if your on a budget one of the FX or AMD APU alternative. Single core desktop CPU went the way of the dinosaurs a few years ago and it's just a plan waste of money getting a dual core because they're next. Forget the Kabini, Celewrong, and Pentium unless your gaming old mama's games or just want to surf the internet.

Amen! People shouldn't be complaining their 2C/2T CPU can't play the latest complex games. What are game developers supposed to do, reverse progress just to satisfy the cheapskate 2C/2T market? Please.

It's a GOOD thing that games are utilizing (and yes, requiring) 4 threads now. We need to keep moving forward, not backward.

 

[meester]

The Pentium G3258 (Haswell) Anniversary Edition currently retails for $69 at NewEgg while the AMD Athlon X4 750K currently retails for $73.

Many people are building quad core gaming Mantle machines at this price point. The onboard video of the G3258 is negligible for gaming and clearly the quad core AMD chip is going to have a better future for games as evidenced by this thread. Only CPU dependent games like Starcraft 2 / WoW are going to see a benchmark improvement on the Intel chip.

This is correct.

Both Xbone and PS4 are AMD CPUs with many cores, so that's what games are being built for. IPC might be better on Intel, but things are only going to get worse for those with only two cores, given that the AMD consoles will be driving PC development as well.

Here in the UK a G3258 is £48, best price.

The unlocked X4 860K is £54.

The only good thing about the G3258 is that you can easily just buy another chip. Won't be cheap though!

Intel are selling a crippled chip - I write from my 2008-build Core 2 Quad Q9550 - £200 then - and it's a little sad that six years later that the entry level state of the art hasn't surpassed this. I guess Intel like making too much money.

 

[meester]

Yes, yes.. blah blah. And I still hold animosity to those who told me to go quad core in 2010 (its the future man!), from a e6300 to a q6600 when it didnt take me too long to realize that I was going to need to upgrade the q6600 in 1-2 years simply because of clock speed.

Q6600 came out in 2007. By 2010 it was already the past.