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Is A Quad Core CPU Useful To The PC Gamer?

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Voodoo from Immortalmachines.com briefly goes over the current state of Quad-Core CPUs, and if it's even worth it for PC gamers.

"Beyond the price, is a quad core CPU useful in a PC Gaming rig? Well, if you use your rig like I do, it is used for more than PC Gaming. Sometimes I may be only playing a game but other times I there might be a TV recording in the background. Video recordings, especially live ones, are very susceptible to lack of resources which will result in loss frames. As a matter of fact, any type of audio/video encoding/decoding/transcoding can play havoc on the CPU. With a quad core, you have cores to spare... But this brings us back to the first point, is it worth it?"
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immortalmachines.com

[via immortalmachines.com]
AdamBlue - contributor
Published: 688 days 19 hours ago | Article | Gaming | PC | Tech
 
 

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xplosneer - 688 days 17 hours ago
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1 - Stupid
Barely any insight...he talks about how much it would tax the unit then just skips to price and ends with opinion. How bout some RESEARCH or FINDINGS when you run a game and record at the same time on both Quad cores?
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bourner - 688 days 17 hours ago
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1.1 -
yer i see what you mean . i wanted to know if it helps with gaming comopared to a good dual core
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AdamBlue - 688 days 15 hours ago
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1.2 -
We're just gamers curious about the same things aswell. We just posted this to try and spark some conversation. We hoped providing this link would bring some poeple over interested in discussing it.

Or we can complain.
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Charlie2688 - 688 days 16 hours ago
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2 -
According to Tomshardware

If you are going to make a pure PC gaming rig you are better off right now with the Dual Core due to price and performance (a little bit more expensive but an extra edge on performance in games than current Quad Core)

If you are also doing video coding, 3D rendering you should considering the Quad Core due to price and multi core improved performance in heavy programs (heavy programs showed a good performance upgrade with Quad Core but games still had high performance in the high Dual Core)

BUT when the new Quad Core comes out that actually has more performance than the high Dual Core in games AND has the heavy programs multi core support then that one is the choice BUT remember they are going to come out very expensive
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RJ2000 - 688 days 15 hours ago
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3 - With A Computer Science Degree
We haven't tapped into the full potential of the Dual processors yet. Why would we jump to multiple processors if we can't come up with algorythms that only have two?
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deeznuts - 688 days 15 hours ago
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Is your computer science degree telling me that my video editing programs is not using all four of my cores while my task manager, and actual processing time, is telling me otherwise?

And how about this, running one dual-threaded app, while running another app at the same time?
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f4nb0i - 688 days 12 hours ago
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4 - lol
Why have 7 SPE's in the cell processor when developers cant even use more than 30% of their power?

;-)

(yet that is)

answer this then you answer the question about quads
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ravenguard88 - 688 days 10 hours ago
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5 - Quad core gives you next to no benefit in gaming at this time.
Even running Crysis it only uses 30% or less CPU on my quad core. Though, it uses each core evenly.

The first year of the Xbox 360 release few games used more than a single thread (out of six) and right now PC games are barely pushing into the dual core area.

Quad cores are pretty much for multitaskers and for programs such as Photoshop.
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f4nb0i - 688 days 3 hours ago
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6 - :-)
its called future proofing

ps. try bioshock
crysis is not the best multithreaded game out there ;-)
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Charmers - 687 days 18 hours ago
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Well I have two PC's here, both of them I built myself :-

Gaming PC :- Q6600 Quadcore 2.4ghz, 3gbs RAM, 8800GTS 320mb
Media PC :- E6600 Core2Duo 2.4ghz, 2gbs RAM, 8600gt 512mb

To be honest gaming wise I haven't really felt that any game pushes the core2duo (that includes crysis which is still fairly gpu heavy). Whether a quadcore is worth it or not really depends on what way the gaming future is going. I know there isn't much of a push to utilise multicore on the PC simply because for the most part it isn't needed.

The main reason consoles have gone multicore is to try and get around some of the headaches that are associated with the limited cpu's they use, such as in order execution and limited execution set. The PC's with their enhanced execution set and out of order execution benefit far less from multicore. It is sort of "nice to have but not essential".

As to whether it is better to get a quadcore or a faster core2duo that is hard to say. If gaming is all you will be doing then probably still wise to go with a faster core2duo. If you do other stuff with your PC then a quadcore really does make sense. That is my 2 cents, no doubt I will be burned alive at the stake for stating my opinion, but hey that is life.
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