Some benefits of having a multi-core CPU in your gaming PC.

Posted By: Steve McBarnes - 05:35:30 Mon, July 16, 2007

I was reading PC Perspective's review of Intel's new Core 2 Extreme QX6850 processor, when one of their benchies caught my eye. There are two tests that are using Valve's new Source engine updates that are being developed right now. Check out these super sweet numbers. (I am so glad I have a QX6700.) For those of you that are not brimming with CPU knowledge, I will tell you that all the CPU's on the graph are all dual core except for the QX6700 and QX6850 which are quad cores. So if a single core processor was benched, it would probably score half as well as the FX-62 or E6700.

I first read about these Source engine updates in this wonderful [H]ard|OCP article. I am pretty sure that the updated Source engine will be utilized in Left 4 Dead and the three games found inside The Orange Box.

8 Comments

Monday, July 16, 2007 9:03:20 PM

unclesharkey
n00b

A wolfenstein game............I can't wait.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007 12:04:43 AM

anonymousD
n00b

nice of you to drop by the site ;)

Tuesday, July 17, 2007 12:07:33 PM

Sgt.McRuff
guest

I wonder why they used a fx-62 as the amd 6000 out performs the fx-62.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007 12:18:21 PM

Steve
The Progenitor

@ Sgt.McRuff The simplest explanation is that they did not have a 6000 and they did have a FX-62. Not many hardware review sites are reviewing AMD processors because most people are buying Intel procs.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007 3:57:23 AM

helmo
guest

Well, this numbers don�t tell you everything. New games will surely be "Dual Core reday", but old games, even not so old ones (NWN 2 comes to my mind, it�s not even a year old game) run better with just one core than with two cores. Of course, that doesn�t mean your old single core can deal those games better than a dual one. It just means that some games are not ready to take full advantage, or even some advantage of dual cores.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007 7:36:08 PM

unclesharkey
n00b

Most benchies with games that support multiple cores only show of about an extra 10 frames. If that is all you get it is hardly worth it. They better start writing better software to take advantage of the extra cores.

Sunday, July 22, 2007 8:09:44 AM

RobotDevil
guest

I find that most "multi-core" software is actually written for virtual cores (Hyper-Threading) and that does not translate to physical cores. One of the best examples of dual and quad core power is to look at 3DSMax rendering times as it is one of the few programs written specifically for multi-core environments.

Sunday, July 22, 2007 10:13:33 AM

anonymous
guest

Just as a note, this benchmark is just synthetic and you will not need anything more than a single core to play any game out before 2009 on max settings.

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