Optix

Some of you have commented on my use of an E6850 processor in my reviews, and have questioned whether it could be limiting my results in some way.

Also historically many tech forums contain a proliferation of people extolling the virtues of quad-core over dual-core for gaming. Others go even further and imply that unless you have a quad-core i7 overclocked to 4 GHz, you’ll be CPU limited.

I believe this is simply untrue, and I also believe CPU requirements for gaming are vastly overblown for real world situations. I’ve long argued that any decent mainstream dual-core platform is capable of taxing a graphics system just as good as the fastest quad-core CPU, providing you always run your games at the highest playable settings like I do.

So today I’ll test 16 games to see if my theories are correct. The settings I’ll use are quite varied but rest assured, they haven’t been cherry-picked just to prove an agenda. They’re the actual settings that I use when playing these games, so you can’t get more real-world than that. They’re infinitely more realistic than some 1024×768 benchmarks done without AA to artificially isolate the CPU.
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Source: Alien Babel Tech

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Optix

And this my friends is why I'm going with either an Phenom II X2 550 or an i3 540.

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BlueMak

He didn't use a quad core cpu? What's the point? FAIL. It might work as an investigation for only the specific CPU, and not CPU bottleneck in general.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Optix

This wasn't to test dual core vs. quad core. It was to showcase how the GPU is the limiting factor, not the CPU so using a quad core is kind of a moot point.

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comp_ali

I agree Phenom II is the best price/performance , there is no much performance drop from i7 actually.

IvanV

Interesting set of games if you look at CPU requirements:

Call of Juarez: Pentium 4/Athlon 2400+
Call of Juarez 2: Intel Pentium 4 3,2 GHz / AMD Athlon 64 3500+
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl: Pentium 4 2 GHzminimum, Athlon 64 X2 4200+ recommended
QuakeWars: 2.0 GHz processor
Bioshock: Pentium 4 2.4 GHz minimum, any C2D/A64 X2 recommended
Fear 2: Pentium 4 2.8 GHz
Pray: Intel Pentium 4 2.0Ghz / AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor
Jericho: Pentium 2.4 GHz or Athlon XP 2400+ minimum; any C2D/A64 X2 recommended
Unreal Tournament 3: 2.0 GHz single core CPU (2.4 GHz dual core CPU or faster recommended)

etc (this is where I got tired searching Wikipedia for games he chose. I started from the last page and went in order, I don't think I skipped any of the games by this point).

It's an interesting way to prove that you don't need a quad even when the requirements say you do (which is what he said his intention was on page 1 "... I also believe CPU requirements for gaming are vastly overblown for real world situations"): take a bunch of games none of which has even a recommended requirement of anything higher than a low end dual core. Brilliant!

EDIT: There is one thing I agree with the author about, a 3GHz dual-core is still enough for a normal gaming experience, but if he reviews high end graphics solutions with that, that's a completely different matter and the article, the way it's done, regardless of the time he needed to do all those tests, is completely worthless.

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If anyone has Portal 2 and hasn't played the co-op and wants to do me a favour, let me know (PM me or whatever).

BlueMak

The GPU can't be the limiting factor if you use a top GPU.
Or try GTAIV with a dual core cpu and tell me that it isn't the limiting factor.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

deBelly

What do you people think about the Sempron 140 for a low-budget system? Unlock it, overclock it and you can play virtually any game, and costs 39$. That's less than one game!
I think there are still not too many games that really need 4 cores.

It is, but the difference is not really that big. See this comparison.

BlueMak

The game is faster by %50 with a Q9650 compared to a E6850...

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Optix

For a pure budget build the Sempron can't be beat but I would say that an Athlon II X2 240 would be the lowest chip for gaming and still keep reasonable frame rates. For $58 bucks you just can't beat the price/performance ratio.
We all know that different games are coded to tax one part of your system more than the other. Crysis for example. That is an extremely GPU oriented game so yes, GTA IV may be an exception of this example.

This article shows that by underclocking a 6850 to 2Ghz and then by underclocking the GPU by the same percentage shows that the GPU score suffers the most. Normally about 4% with the CPU compared to about 33% with the GPU.

A 4% drop in performance using a 2Ghz processor hardly seems like a problem with the chip.

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deBelly

True, but when you compare CPUs from the same generation, e.g. E6600 vs Q6600 it's more like 31-32% Besides, dual cores usually OC better.
Still, I think I'll swap my E6700 for my mom's Q6600 one of these days.

IvanV

Previously, I posted a partial list of the games he used for the testing (after I read the article, I started going backwards and looked at the last 10 or so games that he used). None of those games had anything higher than a low and (any) dual-core as recommended, so it's no surprise that he hasn't seen a significant drop in performance. Concentrating mostly on such games is a strange choice for an article whose goal (one of) was to show that most official CPU requirements are too high.

I'm not an expert on the matter, but, apart from already mentioned GTA IV, I believe that World in Conflict is also very CPU dependent. Unfortunately it hasn't been featured either. Actually, only 3 of the participating games came out this year and some were from 2006. while the first desktop quad core processors were only available early in 2007. Overall, intentionally or not, the author chose an excellent set of games if to show that games were not CPU dependent at all.

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If anyone has Portal 2 and hasn't played the co-op and wants to do me a favour, let me know (PM me or whatever).

BlueMak

QFT!!!

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.