2 core/quad decider at last!

[Pigbristle]

At last!!! we can finally get an answer to which is best, E6850 or Q6600.

The fact that I've read 100000000000000 posts about which ones better then the other over the last 2 month has done nothing to make up my mind (

But now, all I have to do is find out someone who has both the E6850 & Q6600, plus has just downloaded the demo of Crysis & Bobs your uncle, RESULT!!!!

Just let me know which one plays frickin best! pretty please

[MadduckUK]

oh you lucky chap, do I HAVE AN ARTICLE FOR YOU

Quad-core is Crysis phwoar - The INQUIRER

[staffsMike]

I've got an E6600 and built a Q6600 system.

Both 2.4Ghz, both overclock to around 3.4Ghz to 3.6Ghz fairly easily (in most cases)

Based on that there's no real reason why the q6600 could really be worse than the E6600 you could just have unutilised power (not sure how crysis is on multiple cores)

The answer to dual core or quad core is.. can you afford it?

I can't see a point to not spending the extra £30 for 2 more cores running the same speed if you have the £30

[LegacyOne]

In gaming (unless games are using more then two cores?) fast CPU is better.

I would just get the E6750.

[MadduckUK]

but your going to get great speeds with a Q even if the game only does 2 cores, and more and more will be switching to taking advantage of more (or more than 1 as it is pretty much at the moment)

everyone can find an extra £30, it may take a while longer and a few less pints in the pub but it really is the way to go now.

and you can join the hexus folding team and rip those WU's apart

[tigerboyce]

At last!!! we can finally get an answer to which is best, E6850 or Q6600.

The fact that I've read 100000000000000 posts about which ones better then the other over the last 2 month has done nothing to make up my mind (

But now, all I have to do is find out someone who has both the E6600 & Q6600, plus has just downloaded the demo of Crysis & Bobs your uncle, RESULT!!!!

Just let me know which one plays frickin best! pretty please

How would testing an E6600 against a Q6600, decide whats better between an E6850 or a Q6600????

[TooNice]

Multicore scaling on Unreal Engine 3.

Basically, nice improvement from single to dual, but comparatively subtle (~10%) from dual to quad. And that's at a resolution where the GFX card is not a bottleneck.

I am not sure if the CryENGINE2 is more efficiently than the Unreal Engine 3 though. That could be interesting to find out. But I suspect gaming performance will be limited by the GFX card at 1600x1200+.

[Pigbristle]

Thanks for the replys guys!

To be honest, if I went dual its gonna be the E6750 @ £117
What I need to decide is, is the Quad @ £175 (thats with added cooler) worth it?

Or should I put the £58 difference, towards the next gen quad in about 18months time?

[staffsMike]

well its £165 with a retail cooler

and you'll no doubt buy a cooler for the E6750 anyway so play fair

I'm of the opinion that if you buy the quad now you wouldn't really be thinking about upgrades for a good while..unless you're a tech junky and must have the best all the time.

Having used both it's an easy decision for me as you can get all the benifits of a quad core now rather than holding out, but the dual core is plenty good enough for now if you want to wait.

[tigerboyce]

Dont just think about it in terms of gaming too, Even if games dont utilise all cores, alot of other thing on your PC will so you should see a generally faster PC

[Rosaline]

Looking at the AnandTech review of UT3 performance, it seems that going from dual core to quad core is roughly equivalent with a clock speed increase of 660MHz for a 2.66GHz system (comparing multi-core graphs to clock speed graphs by eye). That's a significant performance increase, roughly a 25% gain!

Looking at the multi-core performance charts, some maps care more about quad core. This is entirely what we would expect - quad cores need lots of things happening in parallel to really shine.

Until seeing that, I was really not sold on the idea of quad core. Now, however, it is clear that the benefit can only increase as time passes and better SMP techniques are used.

The benefit from quad core is a bit like the benefit for DX10, in that the game 'needs to know about it', the programmers have to have designed the game to use all it's features. This means that most current or older games, written in the times when quad core was rare, will not see any improvement at all from quad core, unless you have a habit of gaming with a video encoder running in the background

Newer games, however, are going to go silly on the Scalable Multi-Processor front. The next generation of intel processor design will feature two threads per core (hopefully done properly, unlike HT), up to four cores per die, and the same Multi-Chip Module method we see now for quad core used to make octo core systems. Games are only going to get more muti-threaded, not less.

[Rosaline]

(Deleted: Posting system went crazy and made too many copies, sorry)

[Mblaster]

Multicore scaling on Unreal Engine 3.

Basically, nice improvement from single to dual, but comparatively subtle (~10%) from dual to quad. And that's at a resolution where the GFX card is not a bottleneck.

I am not sure if the CryENGINE2 is more efficiently than the Unreal Engine 3 though. That could be interesting to find out. But I suspect gaming performance will be limited by the GFX card at 1600x1200+.

Great article, although I'd like to see similar comparisions on Crysis, since they've gone on about how well it scales with multi-core. Although I guess they'll come, SP demo has only been out for ~24 hours

[WannaPiEcE]

Crysis Demo ran great on my GTS/e6000 @ 1333/3.0Ghz (which is equal to a e6850) on High + 2x AA... Motion blur feels laggy but thats about it.. had to OC the GTS to 580/900 using nTune/Vista x64...

Anyone know of the Tab console command to display F.P.S?

Otherwise maybe run FRAPS in the backround to determine FPS?>