Quad or Dual? (gaming)

If you had 350 USD what processor would be a good choice? Socket 775, (750i SLI mobo) Its going to be hardcore gaming, playing games like crysis and FC2. Should I go core 2 duo, or quad core? Many have told me that quad core is NOT supported by many games and would be a waste of money, but I have also heard that "Quad cores are the future, and buying a duo would be kissing obsolescence" What do I do?

(ignore my setup, im building this for a friend)

 

Well, both can be said really.

Duals (in games that don't support Quad) arent that much faster than Quads, its inflated a lot by the people who do have duals. Granted it's not as fast, but the speed difference is hardly even worth mentioning on a FPS level.

There are advantages to quads at the moment though because most games currently due for release are taking advantage of the extra threads. GTA4 loves quad core processors in comparison to Duals, theres Alan Wake which will likely be the same and so many other games which i can't even mention.

A high clocked Dual is good, but in these games the extra threads are just too much of an advantage for the Duals to be benefitial anymore.

 

Tough call that most of us gamers change our minds on daily. As previously stated, most of todays and yesterdays games, Crysis, Crysis WH, FC2 would prefer higher clocked C2D (E8x00). But tomorrows games like HAWX, Operation Flashpoint 2 will probably support C2Q's better.

 

heres my 2 pence worth, i used to game on a quad (q6600@3.2) but i noticed in 95% of the games i play 2 core were always doing nothing. so thought theres no point in have 2 cores doing nothing so i changed back to a dual. the only real benafit i got from a quad was in benchmarks but you dont play benchmarks lol.

plus i was looking at getting a 260 back then and i knew that the quads clock speed would bottleneck the card so i go a e8400 and clocked it to 3.8 and never been happier.

i think i'll come back to the quads when i install W7 when its released.

 

In the future...having a dual will be a disadvantage...so, unless you're planning an upgrade to Core i7 in the next 18-24 months, go with a Q9550....

 

My point of view: Quad over Dual. GTA 4 uses Quad all the way. And its not the only one. The future will be Quad. So i would never switch back to a Dualcore. I recall the same questions one core versus dualcore. So i would recommend Quadcore (45nm).

Just my kind of thinking.

 

Quad-core all the way! Far Cry 2, GTA IV, UT III, etc. all support and utilize quad-cores, and you can bet that so will Alan Wake and the other big hits of the future.

 

is Alan Wake ever going to be released? I've been hearing about it for a couple years now...

 

Remedy's usual ETA response: "when it's ready". It should be released this year though.

 

The use of a Quad goes beyond gaming, multitasking is noticeably better, but for today's gaming the different between a lower clocked quad and a higher clocked duo is quite negligible. remember that at higher resolutions with games like crysis, the graphic card becomes the main concern rather than the cpu.

 

I hear it's on the same fast track as Duke Nukem Forever. Maybe they will have a joint-release.

 

We need something like this review Hilbert did
http://www.guru3d.com/article/cpu-scaling-in-games-with-quad-core-processors/1

But with upto date GFX and CPU's

 

I let people convince me to go dual. Im not a huge pc gamer, but I do enjoy it and my e8400 is doing just fine. However, the price difference of a quad (q6600) and dual wasnt too much and like an idiot I let other people convince me. Its always good to be future proof, then again all i hear is that by the time quad is fully supported, that these CPUs that are currently out (minues the i7s of course) will be obsolete. I would save up for an i7 now rather than upgrading if I had a choice. Im too late now though

 

IMO, with a decent highend graphics card and if you can get 4GHz out of your dual you will do just fine with any game out there now and in the near future. Right now the i7s' might be overkill just for gaming, plus they would require a new mb and ddr3 ram.

Here's a good review that might help you decide:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/11/03/intel-core-i7-920-945-965-review/1

 

I love these forums...I really do. Current quad core processors (C2Q) won't be obsolete in the next 2 years. Now, maybe by the next Windows release (after Win7) they might have a disadvantage. Most software is only using 2 threads.....so where does the assumption come from that quad cores will be obsolete so soon? Remember, we had single core processors for how long? It's more likely that a dual core processor will be obsolete in the next 1-2 years, than it is that current quad cores will be obsolete in the next 2-3 years.

 

I believe the assumption people are making when claiming that current quads will be obsolete by the time quads hit prime time is that the clock speed / architecture of current quads will make them so much slower than their contemporary counterparts, that the amount of cores will simply not be enough to compensate. But I think people are forgetting that even current quads can be overclocked very well, and with the majority of Q6600 users getting at least 3.0GHz out of their CPU (not to mention some people getting 3.6GHz on air), I don't think it's a valid claim to state that current quads will be the equivalent of silicon paperweights by the time programs actually utilize 4 cores.

But, this is, of course nothing but speculation and a bit of common sense on my part, so I might be wrong...

 

In two years time the current C2Q will be obsolete when comparing them to the lastest Quad or Oct core cpu's of the time.

 

Core i7 will take a bit of time to become mainstream. As for 8 core....I highly doubt that will happen in the next 2 years as it would actually hurt Intel to double the number of cores that soon after releasing i7. Besides, there's no point in having 6 idle cores. I wouldn't expect to see 8 core processors at least until sub-32nm at the earliest. Programmers are already having problems pushing enough threads to fully utilize quad-core processors and in an statement made by Intel previously, they don't appear to believe that quad-core processors will be fully utilized until it's possible to write truly parallel (which means 2 or more instructions can be started at the exact same time with zero delay between them) software code. People don't seem to understand exactly how hard that concept is...

 

It may sound interesting to some, but my guess is that any time you add any more cores, you'll start losing production yield. I bet Intel wants a near perfect yield in all of their batches.

Going back to the OP, dual core does the job for now. There's no guaranty for tomorrow, but for about the half of the cost vs. quads, it'll do the job for gaming. People always talk about the "what ifs" in 3-4 years from now but I can predict that I will be going through a whole system change 4 years from now. By then, the i7 will be a joke and they'll have something more kick ass where quad will be the absolute base minimum standard.

 

Multicore cpu's in GTA4 are used if you use Windows Vista. Multicores are NOT supported in XP. Rockstar developed GTA IV with multicore cpu use only. It's in the MINIMUM specs., so they can get away with BAD or sloppy programming. The more powerful the system; the sloppier the programming can be. Rockstar Games suck large!