dual vs quad core

G

gavinc

SOH-CM-2022
Hi,
I have been given the green light to get an new gaming pc, however in this economic climate I can't just go out and get the biggest baddest machine around.

All other things being equal am I better off with a Core Duo E8500 at 3.16 GHz or a Q8400 Quad core at 2.66 GHz?
In other words do 4 slower cores beat 2 faster cores in the world of FSX?

thanks
Gavin
 
FSX barely uses other cores, even after SP2. I'd still recommend speed over numbers of cores, but you can always palm other applications off onto second, third or fourth cores if you like, thus freeing up more CPU0 time to actually run FSX...
 
I run FSX flawless on an E5200 duo core OCed to 3.3

I rin FSX flawless on a E8600 CPU too.

Point is they are both dual core, and both OCed somewhat
 
Do you plan on overclocking? If so, go with the quad as it'll help avoid "the blurries"....ie. it helps to load textures faster. If not, go with the fastest dual core chip that you can afford.
In order to get the most from your system you'll also need to pretty good RAM...~1200mhz would be perfect (if your motherboard will support it).:)
 
I'd definitely go dual core. I built a new rig not so long ago with an E8500 and an ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card. Flying the Aerosoft F-16, which is a pretty big framerate hog, over Washington DC (default terrain) was as fast and smooth as you like. I run without autogen, but otherwise use around 75% on all sliders.
 
2.4 GHz Quad Core Q6600 o/c'd to 3.0 GHz. Runs like a champ - with the exception of high density scenery areas. A huge improvement with the o/c to 3.0 GHz. Ran nice at 2.4, but runs great at 3.0. Still have issues with minor stutters with high autogen setting and conifer trees (not sure why it's just confiers), but no problems with texture blurries at all. Running a 768MB NVidia 8800 GTX card.

Dave
 
I have a quad core and it is the third one I have owned. I really haven't seen that much of a difference in the speed of my pooter. The new processors that are out today you can really over clock with no heat issues what so ever.When I get ready to replace this set up I will go with a dual core.Mike
 
well if i was to do my CPU choise over agian i would go a with a Q9650 or Q9550 and go ot 3.4 or 3.6 GHz the extra 6 mb of cach can be handy.

as for the dual core side..
the E8400 i have running at 3.6 ghz dose prety well with my set up
ie the 790I and 4 Gb of DDR3-1333 ram with the CPU i have

i recently upgraded to 8 GB i would if i was you keep the Ram in the 4+ GB range so you have more room later on down the road and get a good GPU to.. i seen a increase going from a 512 8800GT or what i have now
 
hey_moe said:
I have a quad core and it is the third one I have owned. I really haven't seen that much of a difference in the speed of my pooter. The new processors that are out today you can really over clock with no heat issues what so ever.When I get ready to replace this set up I will go with a dual core.Mike
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Oh man! That would be nice.

FS might not be able to handle dual quads, but other games can.

Apple has a dual quad. Big price tag, but its a Lambo...



Bill
 
Go to www.tomshardware.com

The 'Tom's Hardware' site evaluates various $$ value builds from time-to-time. I was just reading today about recent builds - a $700 budget build, a $1200 intermediate build and a $2500 gamers dream build (or similar names).

Sometimes the write-ups on the various builds use FSX as an evaluation tool, sometimes they don't. In the write-up I was reading the writer talked about how he (or she, I'm not sure) would have liked to have evaluated the newest AMD chip (the socket AM3 955 BE - a quad core) because the AM3 socket now supports DDR3 memory. That AMD chip is (only) $165 and is 3.2 ghz and has 6MB L3 cache. The AM3 boards are relatively inexpensive (about $100 for a 785GX AMD chipset which supports hybrid crossfire (if you get a 5700 or 5800 series video card)). Compared to the core i7 or core i5 solution this is less expensive. Even compared to the E8600, the price is similar.

My point is (finally, I get to the point) - last week I ordered my first AMD board and CPU in 7 years. I ordered a AMD AM3 955 BE quad core, a $90 785GX board and some DDR3 memory. I will wait for the 5700 and 5800 graphics cards to come down in price (I like the hybrid crossfire and the Eyefinity options) and will run the rig on a 4850 card I have for now. I'm also starting clean with a Win7 install. When all is done, I will report back my FSX experience with this set up.
 
I've used FSX with everything from single core to duals and quads, and having spent many weeks benchmarking over the years I would not build an FSX rig unless it's a quad. The main reason is terrain texture loading and smoothness. A quad has twice the terrain texture loading performance of a dual core, and seeing sharp ground textures is important to me.

Adding cores will not improve your frame rate, but it does reduce stutters and blurries. Personally I would go for the fastest quad you can get. In fact, I would take a lower clocked quad over a higher clocked dual core, no question about it.

Before I built my i7 rig I ran for a long time with a 3.0Hz Quad core after upgrading from a 3.5GHz Dual core. After I got the Quad the Dual went back in the box and never came back out. Despite a slightly lower frame rate with the lower clocked Quad I was much happier with it.

EDIT: My signature seems to have vanished and I see no way to add it again, but my curent system is this:

Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem Quad @ 4.2GHz
EVGA GTX260 216 710/2500MHz
OCZ Platinum CL7 6GB
EVGA Intel X58
 
SolarEagle said:
I've used FSX with everything from single core to duals and quads, and having spent many weeks benchmarking over the years I would not build an FSX rig unless it's a quad. The main reason is terrain texture loading and smoothness. A quad has twice the terrain texture loading performance of a dual core, and seeing sharp ground textures is important to me.
Click to expand...

I haven't done a lot of benchmarking. I moved from dual (E6600) to quad (Q6600) at identical clock speed a year and a half ago. No improvement in framerates, but textures come into focus rapidly. Makes photoscenery much more fun.
 
I know a lot of folks will rave about dual cores for games, but i run a q6600 quad at 2.4 ghz and a gtx 260 and i'm getting fourty frames a second with fraps running full bore.. that means i'm at nearly sixty frames a second during normal times when i'm not using fraps.. i dont know if i've got it tweaked right or not. i dont claim to be a genius and i left ther i.t. industry eight years ago, but my performance is outstanding.. Considering i only have four gigs of ram ( 800 mhz ) i cant complain at all..
Since words dont show much heres a little film i made last night to give you some idea, and yes, it's a shameless plug for a project i'm currently working on as well.. Apologies for the quality. i only had movie maker to work with, and fraps was capturing the full 1920x1080 screen.. Theres nan hd version as well there.
Pam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiXCEzfMtMk

I have another clip with fraps recording at half frame and is much smoother which i'll also post, however, anyone will tell you, fraps puts a heavy load on any machine, and it isnt nearly as smooth as when your flying without it..
 
Daube said:
GHz make the FPS.
Cores make the crisp textures.
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I think i agree with you. When i put the water cooling back on this system and get another four gigs of ram, i want to punch it up to around 2.7 ghz and tie in that gtx 260 using CUDA, turning my machine into basically a baby super computer..

Thats another option the gentleman asking the original question could look at. it's called GPU computing, and makes use of the GPU's cores as processor cores, making the machine a small but very effective parallel processing powerplant. he'd have incredible graphics AND extremely smooth frame rates..
 
warchild said:
I know a lot of folks will rave about dual cores for games, but i run a q6600 quad at 2.4 ghz and a gtx 260 and i'm getting fourty frames a second with fraps running full bore.. that means i'm at nearly sixty frames a second during normal times when i'm not using fraps.. i dont know if i've got it tweaked right or not. i dont claim to be a genius and i left ther i.t. industry eight years ago, but my performance is outstanding.. Considering i only have four gigs of ram ( 800 mhz ) i cant complain at all..
Since words dont show much heres a little film i made last night to give you some idea, and yes, it's a shameless plug for a project i'm currently working on as well.. Apologies for the quality. i only had movie maker to work with, and fraps was capturing the full 1920x1080 screen.. Theres nan hd version as well there.
Pam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiXCEzfMtMk

I have another clip with fraps recording at half frame and is much smoother which i'll also post, however, anyone will tell you, fraps puts a heavy load on any machine, and it isnt nearly as smooth as when your flying without it..
Click to expand...

Nice! :) Not many post-WWI and pre-WWII aircraft around.
 
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