Will I benefit from Dual Core for gaming any time soon?

[imported_boe]

I'm thinking about building a new PC. I have a 2.8HT intel now. The only time I see my processor hop is when I'm doing video encoding or playing games. Will I see any benefit from going to dual core within the next year? I am not currently aware of any game development in the works that will take advantage of dual cores but that doesn't mean they don't plan on it. I was curious if anyone had ready anything on that topic that might suggest something coming out soon or a patch for an existing game engine to take advantage of the dual cores.

Thanks

 

[Fallengod]

Well if youre like me and do gaming/ dvd encoding /multimedia work, a SINGLE core amd64 chip is still gonna be faster than that intel.

I just recently upgraded from a 2.8ghz HT Intel northwood chip. Im on a opteron 144 @ 2.6ghz and let me tell you, its wayyyyy faster than my northwood was at gaming and encoding. A 1.8ghz - 2.0ghz amd 64 is roughly equal to 2.8ghz northwood.

Now to actually answer your question. There are some games that have patches lately to help support dual-cores but not all that many. Like Call of duty 2 has a patch. I know a few others have patches to support it as well. However, not that many. So dual-core cpu definitely wouldnt help you all that much in gaming at this point in time. Im sure as more and more games are released, the support for dual cores will go up. It just takes time.

Id go for raw speed. Like buying a 3200+ venice for $100 and ocing it to 2.5ghz at least. That would be incredible bang 4 buck. Thats close to what I did. I paid $140 total for my opteron 144 and it does an easy 2.8ghz, but I like lower temps and volts so I run it on near stock volts at 2.6ghz. It screams in encoding and gaming.

That upgrade would definitely still be faster than your current setup, even though its not a dual-core. You could spend like $200 and have a brand new faster setup. You could just wait a while for prices to drop and support for dualcores to increase. Thats sorta what I am doing. Just an idea.

 

[Gbaby1008]

Originally posted by: modempower
Well if youre like me and do dvd encoding/multimedia work, a SINGLE core amd64 chip is still gonna be faster than that intel.

I just recently upgraded from a 2.8ghz HT Intel northwood chip. Im on a opteron 144 @ 2.6ghz and let me tell you, its wayyyyy faster than my northwood was at gaming and encoding. A 1.8ghz - 2.0ghz amd 64 is roughly equal to 2.8ghz northwood.

Now to actually answer your question. There are some games that have patches lately to help support dual-cores but not all that many. Like Call of duty 2 has a patch. I know a few others have patches to support it as well. However, not that many. So dual-core cpu definitely wouldnt help you all that much in gaming at this point in time. Im sure as more and more games are released, the support for dual cores will go up. It just takes time.

Id go for raw speed. Like buying a 3200+ venice for $100 and ocing it to 2.5ghz at least. That would be incredible bang 4 buck. Thats close to what I did. I paid $140 total for my opteron 144 and it does an easy 2.8ghz, but I like lower temps and volts so I run it on near stock volts at 2.6ghz. It screams in encoding and gaming.

That upgrade would definitely still be faster than your current setup, even though its not a dual-core. You could just wait a while for prices to drop and more support for them. Thats sorta what I am doing. Just an idea.

thats exactly what i did, its the best bang for the buck u can get, and u can easily get it up to 2.6-2.7
i would highly suggest going with a cheaper single core for now if your just doing gaming

 

[imported_boe]

Thanks - I see I can get an Opteron165 and an Athlon 64 4000 for the same price and a athlon 64 x2 4200 dual core for just a smidge more. I'm not very familiar with the AMD architechture. I believe the x2 4200 is essentially two 2100's although I could be comletely wrong. I don't know squat about the Opteron vs. Athlon.

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: boe
Thanks - I see I can get an Opteron165 and an Athlon 64 4000 for the same price and a athlon 64 x2 4200 dual core for just a smidge more. I'm not very familiar with the AMD architechture. I believe the x2 4200 is essentially two 2100's although I could be comletely wrong. I don't know squat about the Opteron vs. Athlon.

you are very wrong

the X2 3800+ is two 2Ghz 512kb cache (two "3200+" single core)
the X2 4200+ is two 2.2Ghz 512kb cache (two "3500+" single core)

 

[Gatt]

The x2 4200+ can also easily crack 2400mhz on stock cooling/voltage, and in the newer games that are dual core aware the performance difference is pretty huge.

Single core may be faster for the moment, but I'd bet by years end single core will be noticably slower on many games and in Vista. Even if clocked significantly higher.

Your choice, but I'd never go back to a single core again myself...

 

[letdown427]

I'd have to say dual core. They dominate in video encoding, and applications will take advantage of it soon.

And as a shameless plug, I've written a program that will assign all of your windows processes to one cpu, and then let you play your game all by itself on the other. This does give a slight performance boost, mainly in cpu bound games (or if you use onboard sound). So you could use that, and then use SMP patches when they become available, and have the best of both worlds!

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...adid=1716798&STARTPAGE=2&enterthread=y

So yeah, go dual core if you can!

 

[AMDxx165xxfx60]

no ones mentioning windows 64 bit , are people using regular windows xp professional or winxp 64 pro?

 

[AMDxx165xxfx60]

scratch that last post , dumb question

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: Gatt
in the newer games that are dual core aware the performance difference is pretty huge.

Can you post a link to the benchmarks for those games? I'm considering going dual core myself, but plan to wait until I see any actual gains that would make it worth it. Faster encoding, while useful, doesn't do much for me as I usually just let it go overnight anyway. It would be more flexible to be able to just do it anytime, but that's not worth $200 to me right now (after selling off my old chip).

 

[couppi]

Actual gains? It's future proof Games are being developed with normal game processes on one core and an amazing AI on the other and stuff like that.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: couppi
Actual gains? It's future proof Games are being developed with normal game processes on one core and an amazing AI on the other and stuff like that.

nothing is future proof.

op, i just switched to my rig in sig from a 2.8P4@3.0GHz. i play bf2 and honestly didn't notice a difference because my fps was already pretty high (~50+fps) so my eye doesn't pick it up. i did however gain quite a bit in 3dmark01 and 05. also my superpi scores are much faster.

however just based on the fact that you do video encoding and if your encoder is smt/smp aware, then my all means go for it as with a good program that is smt/smp aware you will get a 90% increase in performing those apps.

even if the games you play are not smt/smp aware, and you run the whole game off of one core, you would still be running on a 3200 if you went with a x2 3800, which is still very good as most games are gpu limited now for the most part.

also i use fair use wizard to encode dvd movies into 450MB xvid files. with my P4 the during the encoding part i would hit ~20-30fps, and now i hit ~60+fps

what gpu do you have?

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: couppi
Actual gains? It's future proof Games are being developed with normal game processes on one core and an amazing AI on the other and stuff like that.

Don't get me wrong-- I'm all about getting excited as to what the future may bring... but I don't want to spend $200 on a chip that won't provide me with any better performance in what I mainly use the computer for right now-- gaming. I realize there are many other benefits, but those aren't compelling enough for me to spend the money. I want to see significant increases in gaming performance. The person I asked the question to had remarked that the gains in games now are "pretty huge". I haven't seen that at all.

Oblivion is probably the first game coming out here soon that has specifically advertised being developed with "dual core" optimizations. So maybe that will provide a good test. It's just that recent games have been very GPU limited, even at lower resolutions... showing NO performance gain between a 3000+ and an FX-57. I realize it's not the same, but it makes me wonder just how much of a performance increase a 2nd core could possibly have.