Foolish question for video gaming

thedrama

I know 3D video gaming is a highly demanding process. There is a variety of graphics cards as well as it is on microprocessors.
On the the other side, you know microprocessors are as significant as graphics cards on video gaming cos everything
goes through them first.

What i need to know is "by knowing the advantages of multi cores rather than single core", even single-cores remained in the past, what would you say regarding the performance between these two as an example. A single core p4 with 2.8 GHz clock speed and a dual-core celeron or a little bit higher with 1.4 GHz.

Are those considered to offer almost equal performance?

SteveLord

A huge gap like that would have the P4 winning hands down. Many other things factor into this so. Especially how many CPU generations apart we're talking.

1.4ghz does not equal 2.8ghz performance. You still rely on the clock speed ultimately. Most modern games benefit from dualcore and a few from quadcore.

Today, there is little reason to NOT go Quadcore (although the i3 2100 is a really good performer). You still ultimately benefit from a highly clocked one combined with a high end video card.

dontstop

A: It really depends on the game.

The first thing i would do is a side by side comparison of each of those processors (single core mode)... running some very specific CPU/Mem tests like SuperPI etc to see how much of a performance hit you take in single core mode and to see how much the architecture has improved.

Then you need to see how well the games support multicore and what they actually use it for - AI, Sound, Networking, etc.

It also depends on what resolution you try and run the game at... and what type of graphics card you are trying to feed & what graphics features your trying to run.

You really could not say that 100% of the time one would be faster than the other.

ptilsen

Actually, the Celeron is going to win every time in pretty much every application -- not because it's dual-core, either. What you have to realize is that the first dual-core Celeron was released in 2008. It's based on the Core architecture and is much, much, much, much faster per-clock than any variant of Pentium 4. The most recent Pentium 4 2.8GHz was released in 2005. While you could probably dig up an application that performed better on the P4, for the most part they should be worlds apart. For those who don't remember, the Pentium M (precursor to the Core series) way back in 2004 could be overclocked to outperform any P4 ever made (even with overclocking), and generally came close or outperformed them at stock speeds. I can assure you that that Pentium M is not as fast pretty much any multi-core Celeron.

The overall theory of what processor is best for what task is not usually as simple as clock speed or cores, but in this case, it's very simple. A three-year-old entry-level (for its time) desktop CPU is almost always going to be more powerful than a five-to-eight-year-old mid-range (again, for its time) CPU.

SteveLord

I was taking a guess and thinking the Celeron was older. Which is why I mentioned it depends on the generation we're in. Surely...there is more to it than clock speed.

dontstop

I assumed the OP was not taking generation into account and just trying to compare how a high frequency processor compares to a lower frequency processor with dual cores for gaming. Otherwise if he is talking about actual real processors it would just be easier to check the reviews of each for a similar benchmark suite.

A better way to phrase the question would be:

Q: For gaming, all things being equal - Would a 3GHz processor run faster than a Dual-core 1.5GHz processor

DevilWAH

dontstop wrote: »

I assumed the OP was not taking generation into account and just trying to compare how a high frequency processor compares to a lower frequency processor with dual cores for gaming. Otherwise if he is talking about actual real processors it would just be easier to check the reviews of each for a similar benchmark suite.

A better way to phrase the question would be:

Q: For gaming, all things being equal - Would a 3GHz processor run faster than a Dual-core 1.5GHz processor

it depends on the code and how it is optimised. for a single threaded application it may not be able to make use of the second core, so would in effect be running on a single core 1.5ghz. While other code that is optimised to run on multi core will runn more effecently on two slower cores than it will on a single core over double the speed.

You are asking a question that has no answer as it all depended on OS and Application (game) you are trying to run. For simple raw maths calculation you should expect both the duel core 1.5 and single core 3ghz to run at the same speed.

But as soon as you start trying to optermise the code you have to decided what your are optermising for, and this will bias it either in favour of single core or multi core.

Remember back in the AMD / Intel battle days. Intel had clock speeds far in excess of AMD and for math functions Intel won hands down. How ever AMD made there chips do more work for each cycle, so in multimedi tasks even with a reduced clock speed they could keep up and often exceed Intel.

Having said all that more and more applications are being coded to support true multi threads, so multi core is defiantly the way to go, it also allows a more efficient system and most moden CPU's can shut down unused cores and reduce power and heat.

thedrama

i reviewed the relevant chart. Multi cores just own right now. Mostly cos programs are coded using multithreads in these days. This thing cause them being in front(advantageous) rather than single core with higher clock speeds. Its so weird that
the processor on my netbook(SU2300 1.2 GHz) got a benchmark result nearly the one on my laptop. (Athlon 64 x2 TK-57 1.9 GHz) [Both dual core]

Actually, i knew multi cores beat single ones in these days. However, i considered if clock speed of the single core has doubled the multi one with lower clock speeds. Did you figure out ?