Dual? Or Quad?

I was wondering the guy at the store said when i took in my Q9450 2.6ghz and was thinking he would swap for a dual core worth the same with more power.

Should i or just leave my Q9450.

 

Keep the 9450 and OC it.

 

You have a great processor. The guy at the store was just doing his job. Selling you more stuff. I have a Q6600 OC'd to 3Ghz and absolutely love it. Yes I know Dual Core's are generally faster in games but when I convert movies for my daughter the Quad absolutely destroys a Dual Core. Also we're getting dangerously close to the time when the majority of software and games will support Quads so getting rid of it now wouldn't really help.

 

What do you spend most of your time doing?

The 9450 OCs quite nicely, so I wouldn't be buying anything else. If you were going to upgrade at all it would be to ab i7 or or some such new beastly piece of hardware. That means MB and RAM, too, so don't bother. I've been out of the game for a month and a half so I don't know what AMD is up to, but I wouldn't worry about upgrading yet. Just have some fun with what you have, because it's still awesome .

 

Personally i would go with the quad core just becasue as sickboy said you may get better performance in games at the moment but within a year or so new games will come out which are designed for the quad core and also as sickboy said it will destroy movies and processes not dealing with games at the moment. Right now im looking to upgrade from ym crappy 3.4ghz p4 to a q6600 and OC it deff go with the quad core.

 

OC your quad to around 3.5GHz, then do a few CPU benchmarks and e-mail them to the guy at the PC store. I'll bet you 5 virtual chocolate bars that he won't reply to your e-mail.

 

lmao

 

By the time Quad cores are utilized in PC games there will be much faster and cheaper ones out there anyways. Basically quad core is more or less like having leather seats in your corvette sports car instead of fabric seats. The leather seats look nicer and smell nicer but it doesn’t make that car go any faster down the road...

 

+1 yes exactly

 

says the guy with a dual core...say again when u actually used a quad...
and there allot of games that use 4 cores not to max but they use them:
assassins creed
swsnowboarding
new POP
ut3
mirrors edge
basically any game with unreal3 engine is quadcore optimized

then here capcom
steam with its latest games (l4d, tf2 not so sure abut it but i know it getting there)

dirt
grid

these are just a few i remembered, and allot more to come.
i say stick with quad you won't regret it.

 

Tell that to World in Conflict players. Games are ALREADY out that show a significant difference in favor of quad core, and as with dual core support, the trickle soon turns into a flood. So I would say you've bet on too short sighted of a horse this run around the track...

 

Here in the next few months I will finish my testing and will post some facts on this topic. Test will include C2D, C2Q and i7 920 all running at 3.6Ghz testing various games on single 260 and Sli 260.

 

Don't forget GTA4 on the list of games that favor quads

Plus I'm pretty sure Guru3D had a quad vs dual-core article a while back, which came out in favor of quads.

 

I would recommend concentrating on RTS and simulation games since by now the WHOLE world has to know that CPUs don't make much difference for FPS gaming. But they can totally make a difference in RTS and flight sims, and this is far too often ignored by too many sites, including Guru3D for that matter. Benching FPS games and then declaring that is how gaming in general runs is just plain wrong and almost criminally overgeneralizing the state of performance. One genre does not an entire industry make...

For the record though, sharkyextreme did a GREAT review of Phenom II and actually reviewed 2 RTS, both of which show total domination by the Core i7 over Phenom II and Core 2. An additional point of WiC though, even up into normally GPU limited resolutions, WiC can still show significant differences between CPUs.

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/3261_3801711__10

 

Here is link to that article, although the test were conducted on older games. If the Quads did come out ahead, it was by single digit numbers.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/cpu-scaling-in-games-with-quad-core-processors/1

Final quote from the artivle above :

 

And that's a lame conclusion based on a single gaming genre. Lame as in making a blanket statement for the whole gaming industry based on 2 games from the same genre without testing ANY other genre's at all.

I do not accept or credit Guru3D's CPU gaming analysis with any validity beyond pure FPS gaming. If you play ANY other kind of game at all, Hilbert's conclusion falls short of giving you coverage to do so.

 

Keep your Quad your future games will thank you for it. :nerd:

 

lol i love the dualcore vs quadcore debate. its been what? 2-3 years since quads have been introduced and the song still remains the same.
dualcore user defends his purchase, quadcore user defends his...booooring.

@OP stick with what you have and like the Gurus before me suggested, crank that badboy. you have the memory to max it out so your golden.

 

Well I know for a fact L4D runs smooth on a single core as I just upgraded from a single core P4 and play L4D online. TF2? Same thing, ran fine on single core never mind dual core let alone 4 cores....

Guys not trying to sink your quad core boat but your just reaching for straws here. Even the games that can make some use of quad core isn't really using 4 cores anyways so that argument goes right out the window. Basicaly the 4 core gaming argument is crap right now. You just can't justify it for gaming, maybe for other things but for gaming you can't at least not enough to avoid dual cores...

 

And you seem to think FPS games are the whole point. They're not. I certainly CAN justify Core i7 for RTS gaming. WiC, a game I play alot of, shows massive gains for i7 over regular quads, and quads massively over duals. Company of Heroes also. I don't play that many FPS titles. So I can absolutely justfiy a quad over a dual AND specifically i7 over C2Q/PII.