OT: New Processor

[AgentZero]

Hey folks, long time no see. So, I've got me a not insubstantial amount of money coming my way in the near future, and I'm thinking of sinking some of it into a new computer. I've decided on most of the core components, but I'm still trying to decide what processor to stick in the thing. I know it'll be an Intel, because a friend of mine works for Intel & can get me a wee discount. But I'm not sure what to go with from a gaming standpoint.
I'm looking at one of three options:
A 3.2GHz P4 with Hyper Threading
A 3.2GHz Pentium 840 Dual Core
or A 3.20GHz Pentium 840 'Extreme Edition' which is basically dual core AND Hyper Threading.

Does anyone know which would be better for games? I've heard most games wouldn't benefit much from the HT, but I'm not sure how Dual Core technology would affect games. Thing is, I could get a 3.6GHz P4 with HT for about the same price as a 3.2GHz dual core processor, but I'm wondering whether or not the dual core would outperform the 3.6GHz version.

Little help?

[Fyron]

From my understanding, hyperthreading and dual cores don't really improve performance for games by much because games are generally not written to take advantage of mulitple processors. Both dual cores and hyperthreading are ways to pretend to have multiple processors. They are primarily buzz words these days.

If you are running multiple processor-intensive applications at once, these technologies will help. But the chances of that are pretty slim...

[Atrocities]

I recall reading on a game site that the technology did not improve game performance all that much if any. I hope that helps. Think it was either gamespot or one of the file planet sites

[El_Phil]

Do you run alot of things in the background when running games? If you do then it will help a noticeable amount.

As in one processor runs the game, the other does the anti-virus, MP3 player, rips the CD and anything you do in the background.

On the other hand if you don't run much stuff then HT is probably enough as it will improve the multi-tasking.

Finally games are going to utilise dual core eventually, so it would be future proof and good for a few years. As I understand it in a couple of years your effective processor power is going to double when games can use both cores.

[AgentZero]

I do tend to have a few things running simultaneously, usually while playing MMOGs of some variety, during the downtime I'm often burning CDs or web browsing, etc. And since most games music tends not to suit my tastes, I almost always have an MP3 player running in the background. On the current machine, I usually run into a annoyingly noticeable delay when switching between programs. Would dual core help with that at all? And of course once games start taking advantage of dual cores, that'll be a bonus as well.

On the AMD side of things, I was looking at their website and I noticed the 'top' AMD processors, the FX-55 and the FX-57 seem to have dropped dual core technology. Does anyone know if they've done anything fancy to make up for this?

[Thermodyne]

As far as Intel is concerned, the P4 3.73 EE is the king of gaming systems. But, the fact that they don’t even have a new style model number would indicate that they are not long for this world. The dual core chips are the future, but not the ones on the shelf today. But since you prolly don’t want to wait on the new series, I’d go with a dual core EE for future proofing or a 3.73 EE if the future was now. The 3.73 EE has a faster FSB which is worth a lot with some games.


I can show you some real world bench results from a 3.73 EE if you’re interested.

[Thermodyne]

AgentZero said:
I do tend to have a few things running simultaneously, usually while playing MMOGs of some variety, during the downtime I'm often burning CDs or web browsing, etc. And since most games music tends not to suit my tastes, I almost always have an MP3 player running in the background. On the current machine, I usually run into a annoyingly noticeable delay when switching between programs. Would dual core help with that at all? And of course once games start taking advantage of dual cores, that'll be a bonus as well.

On the AMD side of things, I was looking at their website and I noticed the 'top' AMD processors, the FX-55 and the FX-57 seem to have dropped dual core technology. Does anyone know if they've done anything fancy to make up for this?

The FX series is unlocked, and intended for the OC'ing market. While the DC chips are mainstream. There is a performance hit for DC overhead, so a single core chip will out perform a DC chip of the same speed/core on most games. But AMD chips are not good multi-taskers, and the DC chips fix this.

[Fyron]

El_Phil said:
As in one processor runs the game, the other does the anti-virus, MP3 player, rips the CD and anything you do in the background.

Unless you have a horribly innefficient AV program (Kaspersky only uses more than 0% CPU in taskman when it is doing a full system scan, which can be done at night when not using the PC anyways), CD ripping is the only process there that is even marginally processor intensive. IM programs, MP3 players, etc. tend to use very few resources, so will not benefit tremendously from dual cores. Unless they are Trillian 3.x and you are viewing the contact list, of course... ugh.

El_Phil said:
Finally games are going to utilise dual core eventually, so it would be future proof and good for a few years. As I understand it in a couple of years your effective processor power is going to double when games can use both cores.

The problem being that you will be spending twice as much money now for a processor that really won't do much for you until a few years later when games might commonly be made as multithreaded applications.

400 euros more for dual core is most certainly not worth it. You will certainly be able to buy a good dual core processor in 2 years for less than that. "Future proofing" is only worth it when it doesn't more than double the price.

[Baron Munchausen]

From all I have heard to date the software has to support either HT or multiple cores. As others have noted, most games do not currently support either. But if your OS at least supports these, you will probably see at least some benefit as the other things your computer is doing while you are gaming will interfere less with the game performance. Unless you are doing something fairly processor intensive in the background when gaming I suspect that the HT CPU at the higher clock rate will give you better performance with current generation games, though.

Perhaps you should consider other factors. What is the total power draw of these various processors? How hard are they to cool? (Surface area to power ratio, etc.) Since the performance difference will probably be marginal the one that runs cooler might be the smarter investment since you expect to run your system at full throttle for extended periods.

[Fyron]

To benefit from multiple processors (or hack jobs like "hyperthreading" or limited imitations like "dual cores") the program has to be written from the ground up as a multi-threaded process. This allows the process scheduler to see what appears to be two or more processes, so it can make use of the second processor to optimize CPU cycle usage. Otherwise, the process scheduler can not possibly do _anything_ to benefit from multiple processors, for that process. Other processes can be scheduled to the second processor just fine. But since the background processes typically run use only a fraction of the number of CPU cycles that the game will, the net gains will be marginal, on the order of a few percent. Certainly not worth 400 euro.