weak quad vs strong dual

[crashtech]

Interesting read and a real insight into the human psyche. It makes you wonder if Brand X really is better than Brand Y or is it the emotional attachment to the object that really forms our opinions.

Sorry for the OT post but your sig link piqued my interest.

Thanks for the comment. Brand loyalty has been something I've unconsciously taken for granted for most of my life, but with new awareness comes a level of mindfulness that I wish to share with all whom I interact.

Back to the topic, I tend to agree the faster 2C/4T unit will be superior, but nevertheless, the "math" used to get to that conclusion is sloppy at best, and contaminated with opinion. In a way, it mirrors the AMD/Intel debate in the low midrange, many slow cores vs. fewer fast. Victories and losses come on a case by case basis, and discussions tend to be rife with cherry picking.

 

[beginner99]

It's not about architecture. Even multi-threaded software does not scale linearly with cores. Some scale well, some scale poorly, some scale only up to x number of threads and some don't scale at all. The effective clock speed of a 2GHz quad core is 2GHz. Period.

And not to mention that the so called multi-threaded games usually still really on 1 heavy "main thread" and if that one does not run fast enough more cores won't help at all.

Get the dual core + HT. Guys lets not forget that he want's a laptop for gaming and that said laptop in question is unlikely to be held back by effectively a desktop sandy i3. On the other hand 2 ghz may not be quite enough for some games (SC2, Skyrim for example).

this. Also because of my above argument. If the quad can turbo then the quad but else dual + HT.

 

[621ogob]

To sum up, get dual or enable turbo boost in quad, huh ?
I bought Acer Aspire 7750G (17,3'', i3-2350M, 7670M) and upgraded cpu to i5-2430M. Now, I don't know if colling system in my lappy (I've made copper mod) is sufficient for quad (i7-2630qm) with TB enabled ? Anyone has experience in upgrading that model ?

 

[Maximilian]

Quad no question.

It was proven in the past, the people who picked Qxxxx over an Exxxx dual had better longevity on their rigs. Not much has changed, quad > dual, even with HT.

In saying that the dual with HT isnt bad, its just the quad will be better.

 

[SPBHM]

Quad no question.

It was proven in the past, the people who picked Qxxxx over an Exxxx dual had better longevity on their rigs. Not much has changed, quad > dual, even with HT.

In saying that the dual with HT isnt bad, its just the quad will be better.

do you really think a C2D with HT and 50% higher clock would be much worse than a C2Q? I don't...

the thing is, C2Q vs C2D normally didn't have a huge clock difference with OC, and no HT for the dual core part...

 

[monkeydelmagico]

To sum up, get dual or enable turbo boost in quad, huh ?
I bought Acer Aspire 7750G (17,3'', i3-2350M, 7670M) and upgraded cpu to i5-2430M. Now, I don't know if colling system in my lappy (I've made copper mod) is sufficient for quad (i7-2630qm) with TB enabled ? Anyone has experience in upgrading that model ?

Seems to me like you've made a good upgrade already. Not sure going quad will really be much benefit when your graphics = 7670M. Going up another 10 watts might be difficult to cool with stock parts also.

 

[Enigmoid]

To sum up, get dual or enable turbo boost in quad, huh ?
I bought Acer Aspire 7750G (17,3'', i3-2350M, 7670M) and upgraded cpu to i5-2430M. Now, I don't know if colling system in my lappy (I've made copper mod) is sufficient for quad (i7-2630qm) with TB enabled ? Anyone has experience in upgrading that model ?

Load up your system with prime on CPU and measure clockspeed and temperature using HW monitor. You may also want to measure temps while running furmark on the GPU as well as that will stress the cooling system more. Make sure that the CPU and GPU are running at their maximum speeds.
If its low (like 60 degrees) then it may be able to handle the additional heat. If its something like 80 then you have no chance upgrading.

I know that sandy bridge mobile CPUs were not as good as ivy or haswell at keeping boost clocks due to higher power consumption.

Though you realize that with a 7670m you will not get any gain be upgrading your CPU? The 7670m is simply too weak to stress it.

 

[2is]

Quad no question.

It was proven in the past, the people who picked Qxxxx over an Exxxx dual had better longevity on their rigs. Not much has changed, quad > dual, even with HT.

In saying that the dual with HT isnt bad, its just the quad will be better.

Not even close to the same thing in this case and I've already mentioned exactly why a few posts back.

 

[Maximilian]

Not even close to the same thing in this case and I've already mentioned exactly why a few posts back.

Dosent matter, for new games quad > dual with HT, no question.

 

[TuxDave]

Dosent matter, for new games quad > dual with HT, no question.

You are boosting the dual with a whopping 50% clock frequency boost. Is it still a "no question" opinion?

 

[crashtech]

Dosent matter, for new games quad > dual with HT, no question.

Your certainty is not founded in fact. It's not a given that a 2GHz 4C/4T will outperform a 3GHz 2C/4T unless the cores remain heavily loaded by the app at virtually all times, something that cannot be guaranteed.

 

[2is]

Dosent matter, for new games quad > dual with HT, no question.

If you think it doesn't matter, you aren't understanding the implications of what you're talking about. It does matter.

EDIT: I'm tempted to buy an i7 test bed and run some benchmarks with 4 cores, HT off @ 2GHz and turning HT on, setting the proper affinity to mimick an i3 and run it at 3ghz

 

[spat55]

Dual Core.

 

[Maximilian]

You are boosting the dual with a whopping 50% clock frequency boost. Is it still a "no question" opinion?

Its not as no question as it was a day ago :whiste:

But I still think the quad will be faster in a modern game engine. BF3, CoH2 etc. Older engine games like skyrim, fallout or CoD wont matter with either chip.

 

[jacktesterson]

Last year I'd say Dual, but were heading to times where weaker Quad Cores will outperform stronger dual cores in a lot of games, at least from recent trends.

 

[BrightCandle]

A while back I captured a particular picture of a number of CPUs from gamegpu.ru. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3638175/GameGPU CPU performance.ods

One thing to notice in that data is that a 2500k on average is only 29% faster than a 3.1Ghz dual core with HT. At most the quad core is showing over a 200% advantage, but in 75% of games its less than 43%. These two chips are 3.3-3.7Ghz and 3.1Ghz and thus relatively comparable.

However if we are talking about a 2Ghz quad with no boost then its going to loose to the dual core core most of the time, because we know the scaling factor at similar clocks is really quite poor. Ideal scaling would be nearer 100%, a 29% average is a far way from quad core dominance, considering clock speed is a much closer to linear in a lot of these games (according to gamegpu.ru with a dual core GPU). With boast on the quad around 2.8Ghz however it mitigates most of the lose of 50% clock speed and personally my opinion is after looking through all this data is that a quad only makes sense when its clock speed isn't much below a dual core.

My concern with most sites that do reviews looking at this equalise everything but then only test a few games, maybe 4-6 of the big ones. If all you do is play the big games their review is right. While the gamegpu data is kind of flawed, because it doesn't have the comparisons we all crave for a true perfect comparison, what it does show is some really interesting trends and individual game behaviours that often differ from the triple A games. Take a look through their reviews, their data or my summaries and you might find some useful things in there. They have different clock speeds so you could probably extrapolate some basic clock speed scaling data as well, but originally I was trying to answer the question 3930k v 2500k v 2600k so it doesn't have the information.

 

[Enigmoid]

There is no way either CPU will affect his gaming performance with a 7670m. The quad, if it does anything at all. will most likely lower it due to higher heat output and that he is burdening the cooling system with 10 watts more than it was designed for. (Actually OP there is an easy way to check if your notebook can support the i7, can you buy that same model with a 45 watt CPU?)

 

[sm625]

Hi Guys,

In your opinion, what's better in terms of gaming (new games): 2 ghz quad sandy bridge vs 3 ghz dual core with hyperthreading sandy bridge ? No turbo boost or oc allowed.

Thanks in advance,
bogo126

Take the 3GHz dual core. Anyone who says otherwise is a bleeping moron who will never be able to produce any data that suggests a 2 GHz 4c4t sandy is faster in any way compared to a 3GHz 2c4t sandy.

 

[USER8000]

The OP is comparing the following two CPUs it seems:

http://ark.intel.com/products/53450
http://ark.intel.com/products/52219

The thing is though the lightly threaded performance of the Core i7 is not much different than the Core i5 dual core,yet in any situation that has more that two cores used,the Core i7 will be faster.

 

[crashtech]

Yeah, but he wants to disable Turbo on the quad, which eliminates all empirical means of comparison, other than actually testing them both in that configuration.

 

[2is]

The OP is comparing the following two CPUs it seems:

http://ark.intel.com/products/53450
http://ark.intel.com/products/52219

The thing is though the lightly threaded performance of the Core i7 is not much different than the Core i5 dual core,yet in any situation that has more that two cores used,the Core i7 will be faster.

Your last sentence is inaccurate.

 

[2is]

So boredom and curiosity got the best of me and cost me about $300. Snagged a used 2600k and Z77 board to use as a test bed. I'll be running the specific test in the OP. Running it with 2 cores HT on at 3GHz and dropping it to 2GHz with all 4 cores going but HT off. Question is, what games should I test? BF3 MP is an obvious one. I know the comparisons between runs won't be precise, but I'll keep it as close as I can by going on a server that's as close to 64 players as possible and playing on the same map of course. Probably Oman.

What other games should I test? Help me take advantage of my new test bed please!

Test Setup will be:
i7 2600k (at various speeds)
8GB DDR3 1600 (2x4GB)
640GB WD Black HDD
650Ti (didn't feel like pulling one of my 680's from my main rig for this)

I'll be running it on a 16x10 monitor. Going to test at native res but turn down much of the rest of the settings to minimize a GPU bottleneck. My idea is to have the GPU load around 90-95% so that it isn't a bottleneck, but at the same time more indicative of settings people will actually use.

 

[shortylickens]

For games designed specifically with the PC in mind, more cores seems to be important.
For ported console games and emulators, a high clock seems to be the defining characteristic.

For almost any game, a fast video card makes a much bigger difference than the CPU.
For emulators you can often do better in software mode if you have a very fast CPU.

 

[Maximilian]

So boredom and curiosity got the best of me and cost me about $300. Snagged a used 2600k and Z77 board to use as a test bed. I'll be running the specific test in the OP. Running it with 2 cores HT on at 3GHz and dropping it to 2GHz with all 4 cores going but HT off. Question is, what games should I test? BF3 MP is an obvious one. I know the comparisons between runs won't be precise, but I'll keep it as close as I can by going on a server that's as close to 64 players as possible and playing on the same map of course. Probably Oman.

What other games should I test? Help me take advantage of my new test bed please!

Test Setup will be:
i7 2600k (at various speeds)
8GB DDR3 1600 (2x4GB)
640GB WD Black HDD
650Ti (didn't feel like pulling one of my 680's from my main rig for this)

I'll be running it on a 16x10 monitor. Going to test at native res but turn down much of the rest of the settings to minimize a GPU bottleneck. My idea is to have the GPU load around 90-95% so that it isn't a bottleneck, but at the same time more indicative of settings people will actually use.

Nice!

Well i guess it depends on games you got?

Modern (DX11) multi threaded games i know about are:
BF3 - up to 8 cores
Company of heroes 2 - don't know
Wargame airland battle - up to 4 cores, possibly more
Civilization V - don't know
Crysis 3 - don't know

The choice for older stuff or games that only use two cores is pretty extensive, popular ones are:
Fallout3/new vegas
Skyrim
Left 4 dead 2
Bioshock infinite

 

[BrightCandle]

I took a look through the data and there are games that benefit from 6 cores but even more benefit going from 2 to 4 cores in the gamegpu.ru data. I would focus on the i5 to i3 comparison and the biggest and smallest gainers there rather than those games that show good scaling at 6 cores.