Gaming Machine: Dual Or Single CPU?

NoEcho

NoEcho

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Figured this was a no-brainer - two cpus for the win - but a tech-heavy guy suggested he'd read that it wasn't. Dude said that the overhead required to manage the threads can match or exceed standard system demands so that doing system on 1 and games on 2 can prove to be the same, or worse, than doing both on a single cpu.

I mean this for both dual-cpu and dual-core.

Anyone got informed opinion on this?
 
NoEcho said:
Figured this was a no-brainer - two cpus for the win - but a tech-heavy guy suggested he'd read that it wasn't. Dude said that the overhead required to manage the threads can match or exceed standard system demands so that doing system on 1 and games on 2 can prove to be the same, or worse, than doing both on a single cpu.

I mean this for both dual-cpu and dual-core.

Anyone got informed opinion on this?
Click to expand...
hmm... a dual core version of a single core cpu should be just as fast in all single thread apps but it will shine in multithreaded apps....so when games beccome multithreaded in the near future the dual core will be faster but shouldnt be any faster or slower with current games
 
No games currently take advantage of SMP

hence

Dual CPU=Worthless (for now) for gaming

Save your money and get a faster single core CPU, it will do better in gaming.
 
Dual processors or dual core CPU's aren't any better for gaming, but they certainly aren't worse. I'd go dual core simply because the multi-tasking capabilities are much better on a dual CPU/dual core system. I find the performance of single processor/non-HT enabled processors to be abysmal. That's just me though.

Plus such a CPU may come in handy in the future as applications and games start to become multi-threaded. It certainly won't hurt to do dual core now.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
Dual processors or dual core CPU's aren't any better for gaming, but they certainly aren't worse.
Click to expand...

Bingo.

Also I recall someone saying about Quake 2 or 3 having a multithreaded mode...although it was something silly like offloading the sound processing, something like that. As to the future...the 80.x nVidia Forceware drivers are supposed to have something that benefits from it, and some upcoming games may take advantage of it to an extent. I doubt we'll see any games getting a huge boost from it for a while, there's just too much extra coding involved and too few people that would benefit. But it certainly won't hurt.
 
ashmedai said:
Also I recall someone saying about Quake 2 or 3 having a multithreaded mode...although it was something silly like offloading the sound processing, something like that
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The original release of Quake 3 did indeed have an SMP switch that was supposed to do sound in another thread, but it was buggy as hell and removed in a later patch.
 
Vertigo Acid said:
The original release of Quake 3 did indeed have an SMP switch that was supposed to do sound in another thread, but it was buggy as hell and removed in a later patch.
Click to expand...

The original release was also flawed in that it only worked for Windows NT. Windows 2000 didn't work right with it, as Windows 2000 was really new at the time. It wasn't available for testing during Q3's development.

Yes Q3 is that old. :eek:
 
Pff...I still play Quake 2 every few months...never did really switch to 3. Too much jumping around like fleas, not enough shooting stuff.
 
Actually I would seriously consider an X2 simply because Physics engines, like NovodeX, are starting to add robust multi-threading support. If you are going to have your CPU for 2 or 3 years then it's quite likely you will be able to take advantage of multi-threading in many games through added physics capabilities... and once the developers are used to it for physics they will start using it more and more for other things as well most likely.

Also these things (X2's) FOLD like mad... You should get one just to help your [H]ard team (team 33)!!!
 
Back when Dual CPU meant you had to get two much slower processors...going dual was completely pointless for gaming.


Did you know that until Prescott core, only the single processor P4 could pull of the 800MHz FSB? The Dual P4 Xeon could only manage 533MHz, while the four way version topped 400MHz.

And that until AMD dropped Socket A, the fastest dual AthlonMP motherboards were at 133MHz FSB? This is while the single Socket A systems blasted along at 200MHz FSB. Granted, this is more of an issue of AMD killing off Dual Socket A to develop Hammer core, but anyways...


Anyways, fast-forward to today.

Dual core comes along. Suddenly 2x CPUs are cheap. Cost of entry is minimal, and the processors are not much more expensive. In some cases you essentially get twice as much power (two cores) at less than the cost of buying two seperate processors. And you have none of the problems associated with buying a dual socket motherboard (at least for AMD that I've watched) -- ie, you get features for overclockers at consumer prices. And suddenly these machines can compete with processors another level higher...not even mentioning you have 2x the power of that next level processor.

Lots of value in dual core. Nearly impossible to turn your money (if you still have it) the other way for a single core version of the dual core chip, unfortunately.



Of course today this is compared to the age-old "get a faster single processor for gaming." Which was undoubtedly true for the last how-ever-many years. But I suspect that this is becoming untrue because today, these dual core processors 1) cost less per CPU than their equivilent single CPU brothers (and there are infact current equivilents), 2) overclock well, 3) work on "normal" hardware, and 4) are the new thing.

That was not true back when the phrase was coined. (ie, You got expensive things that generally didn't support overclocking much that required it's own special hardware and that were generally behind the "curve")



If you can afford it, an X2 processor would be a decent investment in the future beyond gaming (as long as you don't want to move to M2). But if you plan on replacing it with the next best thing (tm) because money is no object, or are dedicated to gaming and could care about nothing else (unlikely), you're better off getting the FX57...or both.

Myself...I went for the old school dual socket AthlonMP platform and mixed in some of those snazzy-quick AthlonXP-Mobile processors in there and have it up at 2.43GHz. I don't game, but for everything else there is nothing like multiple processors. :)


In the end though, you are not likely to notice any difference. We're (generally) more GPU limited than CPU limited at this point. :p
 
Tim_axe said:
Of course today this is compared to the age-old "get a faster single processor for gaming." Which was undoubtedly true for the last how-ever-many years. But I suspect that this is becoming untrue because today, these dual core processors 1) cost less per CPU than their equivilent single CPU brothers (and there are infact current equivilents), 2) overclock well, 3) work on "normal" hardware, and 4) are the new thing.
Click to expand...
Dual core != Dual Processor
 
ashmedai said:
Functionally close enough though.
Click to expand...

Its more like traditional SMP in that the buses are shared. The cores have their own HTT link between each other, but they still share memory and the external HTT link. Where with an Opteron that isn't the case. Opteron's have their own HTT link externally, and their own dedicated memory, plus they've still got the HTT link between each other.

While not faster for gaming, the Opteron is still more powerfull when used in conjunction with a NUMA capable OS and with software that takes advantage of the Opteron's strength.

Still X2 has fairly close performance or better in most apps and MUCH cheaper than Opterons. Plus the X2 can be overclocked alot easier than the Opteron.

Tim_axe said:
In the end though, you are not likely to notice any difference. We're (generally) more GPU limited than CPU limited at this point. :p
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This is true. I notice almost no difference between my A64 3800+ and my dual Opteron 246's in games when both systems used the same video card setup.
 
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how 760MP/760MPX works with the dual FSB. The Intel Xeons with shared FSB don't seem too hard to understand (common link, they can signal on the bus what is happening), but I'm not very sure how my AthlonMP system works this stuff out (two bussess, are they seperate or connected?)...

And of course Opterons/Athlon64, although very recent processors, seem much more well documented than AthlonMP...
 
Tim_axe said:
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how 760MP/760MPX works with the dual FSB. The Intel Xeons with shared FSB don't seem too hard to understand (common link, they can signal on the bus what is happening), but I'm not very sure how my AthlonMP system works this stuff out (two bussess, are they seperate or connected?)...

And of course Opterons/Athlon64, although very recent processors, seem much more well documented than AthlonMP...
Click to expand...

Well, the Athlon MP simply has two FSB's. Each one to the shared memory controller. That's how I understand it to work. So not really that different from the Xeon. They just don't share a single link to the memory controller (chipset).
 
NoEcho said:
Dude said that the overhead required to manage the threads can match or exceed standard system demands so that doing system on 1 and games on 2 can prove to be the same, or worse, than doing both on a single cpu.
Click to expand...

There are two views of this:
- application view
- kernel/OS view

The application view is simple: since the game doesn't use threads in first place there is no slowdown.

In kernel/OS view there is, or at least was, some truth in this statement. An OS kernel written with no regards to SMP is faster on a one-processor machine. However, no OS kernels in common use today have such an architecture anymore, with the possible exceptions of OpenBSD and DragonflyBSD. The last commercial OS to have a real seperate non-SMP kernel was SGI Irix but they gave up on that, too.

So, yes, for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD today you suffer from SMP design even if you don't need it. And no, there is nothing you can do about it.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
Dual processors or dual core CPU's aren't any better for gaming, but they certainly aren't worse. I'd go dual core simply because the multi-tasking capabilities are much better on a dual CPU/dual core system. I find the performance of single processor/non-HT enabled processors to be abysmal. That's just me though.

Plus such a CPU may come in handy in the future as applications and games start to become multi-threaded. It certainly won't hurt to do dual core now.
Click to expand...

They are worse to an overclocker because of more heat/voltage needed. With no performance gains from that extra heat and voltage.
 
Generally a single CPU system overclocks better and costs less. Since the second core gives you no advantage in current games, the choice shoud be obvious.
 
Arkaine23 said:
Generally a single CPU system overclocks better and costs less. Since the second core gives you no advantage in current games, the choice shoud be obvious.
Click to expand...

These statements are all true. However, if you do other things besides gaming, dual core and or dual processors can definatley enhance the overall performance of the system in other applications.

You need to weigh what you need vs. your budget and make the decision accordingly. The only reason I use Opterons is because of the AMD Tech Tour deal, otherwise it would have been cost prohibitive to build such a machine.
 
Is it possible to assign one processor core to take care of the onboard/software sound that most motherboards use (like Realtek). That would greatly help in games.
 
Diseaseboy said:
Is it possible to assign one processor core to take care of the onboard/software sound that most motherboards use (like Realtek). That would greatly help in games.
Click to expand...

Not really. The drivers themselves do not really have assignable processes. There are certain functions like the audio mixers and control panel applets, but nothing you can really do on a driver level.
 
NoEcho said:
Figured this was a no-brainer - two cpus for the win - but a tech-heavy guy suggested he'd read that it wasn't. Dude said that the overhead required to manage the threads can match or exceed standard system demands so that doing system on 1 and games on 2 can prove to be the same, or worse, than doing both on a single cpu.

I mean this for both dual-cpu and dual-core.

Anyone got informed opinion on this?
Click to expand...

I plan on going dual core later this year for one reason only: Oblivion. It's been coded from the ground up to support multiple processors. Dual core chips should be quite a bit faster for that game. I played Morrowind for over a year fairly regularly, so it's worth it for me.
 
Arkaine23 said:
Generally a single CPU system overclocks better and costs less. Since the second core gives you no advantage in current games, the choice shoud be obvious.
Click to expand...

I've got a slight disagreement with this.....

I play CS:Source a lot. And yes this game is single threaded - But - In todays online gaming environment, if you want the best team play experience, you have several different apps running concurrently with your game.

1) Everybody in my clan runs TeamSpeak while we are gaming.
2) Most of us are on X-Fire for the chat feature.....Got to be able to text message when setting up those scrims! Or have some other IM client running.
3) Those of us who are admins also have a VNC application running to assist in adminning the server during play.
4) Some guys like playing music while gaming, so they run their favorite media player for their mp3s.
5) Then you've got all of your standard Windows XP stuff going on in the background.
6) And I know one guy that KEEPS a web-cam app active 24/7 - I haven't figured why out yet - kinda of scared to! :eek:
7) I've got another guy that burns CD/DVD's while playing!!!!

So how does a single threaded app like a game not benefit from dual core / dual cpu? :rolleyes:

Also: on another note....
The current revision of the nVidia drivers are multi-threaded, and have been for a while. They had a press release on this a few months ago.

Game ON!

 
rodsfree said:
I've got a slight disagreement with this.....

I play CS:Source a lot. And yes this game is single threaded - But - In todays online gaming environment, if you want the best team play experience, you have several different apps running concurrently with your game.

1) Everybody in my clan runs TeamSpeak while we are gaming.
2) Most of us are on X-Fire for the chat feature.....Got to be able to text message when setting up those scrims! Or have some other IM client running.
3) Those of us who are admins also have a VNC application running to assist in adminning the server during play.
4) Some guys like playing music while gaming, so they run their favorite media player for their mp3s.
5) Then you've got all of your standard Windows XP stuff going on in the background.
6) And I know one guy that KEEPS a web-cam app active 24/7 - I haven't figured why out yet - kinda of scared to! :eek:
7) I've got another guy that burns CD/DVD's while playing!!!!

So how does a single threaded app like a game not benefit from dual core / dual cpu? :rolleyes:

Also: on another note....
The current revision of the nVidia drivers are multi-threaded, and have been for a while. They had a press release on this a few months ago.

Game ON!

Click to expand...

I agree. There are bennefits to dual core/SMP that people just don't think about. It hasn't been cost effective for the masses until the X2's came out though.
 
I had a 3500+ winchester @ 2.7 GHz, and I now have a 4400+ @ 2.8 GHz, and the 4400+ feels much smoother when playing CS:S. As noted by others, there are things running on your computer other than your game, and it's not like you get that much less of an OC out of a dual core - in my case I got a better OC.

Anyway, my experience with gaming has been better with a dual core. I'm glad I got it.
 
rodsfree said:
I've got a slight disagreement with this.....

I play CS:Source a lot. And yes this game is single threaded - But - In todays online gaming environment, if you want the best team play experience, you have several different apps running concurrently with your game.

1) Everybody in my clan runs TeamSpeak while we are gaming.
2) Most of us are on X-Fire for the chat feature.....Got to be able to text message when setting up those scrims! Or have some other IM client running.
3) Those of us who are admins also have a VNC application running to assist in adminning the server during play.
4) Some guys like playing music while gaming, so they run their favorite media player for their mp3s.
5) Then you've got all of your standard Windows XP stuff going on in the background.
6) And I know one guy that KEEPS a web-cam app active 24/7 - I haven't figured why out yet - kinda of scared to! :eek:
7) I've got another guy that burns CD/DVD's while playing!!!!

So how does a single threaded app like a game not benefit from dual core / dual cpu? :rolleyes:

Also: on another note....
The current revision of the nVidia drivers are multi-threaded, and have been for a while. They had a press release on this a few months ago.

Game ON!

Click to expand...

heck, your nvidia driver can run on the other core.. and your sound driver.. and your... etc etc
 
Soon everything will be dual core and more companies (including games) will make their software multi-threaded. Heck if you have a lot of stuff running in the background a dual setup will help to free up resources for games.

Right now it may not be worth the additional expense. But when the Celerons and Sempr0ns become dual core, it won't even be a choice any more.
 
Although it is true that in the current gaming environment there is no benefit from having a dual core setup; you would probably be much more future-proofed by getting a dual core as there are several games coming out that will take advantage of it; and also the reality is that at the same speed there is very little difference in performance between a dual core and single core. Yes it's true that single cores tend to oerclock better, but its dual cores are putting up some impressive OC #s as well.

That being said, I think that dual core has the ability to improve your overall gaming experience rather then just simply looking at how it powers individual gaming apps. As was stated earlier in the thread, if your looking at a situation where you're going to be running the game, some IM ap, teamspeak, etc and will be switching between them allfrequently...a dual core system will handle that much better then a single core system.
 
Quanticles said:
I had a 3500+ winchester @ 2.7 GHz, and I now have a 4400+ @ 2.8 GHz, and the 4400+ feels much smoother when playing CS:S. As noted by others, there are things running on your computer other than your game, and it's not like you get that much less of an OC out of a dual core - in my case I got a better OC.

Anyway, my experience with gaming has been better with a dual core. I'm glad I got it.
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The overall computing experience is better. I noticed this on my rig.
 
A lot of good points have been made for both sides...

I'll just throw in my personal preference...

I tweak the hell out of my systems, and my gaming system is set up for GAMING. I've got other machines for anything else I might want to be doing at that time.

I tweak my OS to run lean, for the fastest possible framerates. When I game, basically the only thing running is the game and voice chat.

At this time, the fastest setup for me is a single core setup.
1. The games aren't coded for dual core
2. The single cores currently have higher clock speeds.
3. Single cores tend to overclock better.

It will probably be at least a year, if not more, before a dual core system will match a single core with a system tuned like mine.
 
It will probably be at least a year, if not more, before a dual core system will match a single core with a system tuned like mine.
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Remember that a dual core system is analogus to a dual cpu system, the only difference is the extra cpu socket.

I've got a pair of 1.6LV Xeons that have a 100% OC to 3.2Ghz on air cooling and they are Prime95 stable for over 29Hrs....until I stopped the test.

And I know that they post Sandra benchmark scores that are well over DOUBLE what a P4 3.0Ghz Prescott I also own will post.

So if you want to talk about what will OC better.....show me any other setup that will do a 100% OC on air cooling. :D

It's not about GHz any more.
Completed instructions - MFLOPS - are the name of the game today.
That's why the Opterons are owning everything out there, while running what would be a rediculously low clock rate on an Intel chip.

The more instructions a cpu - cpu set can complete in a given amount of time is what is important. That is the real reason behind OCing in the first place. But we've pretty much hit a barrier in how fast we can make the hardware clock. The only way to get more instructions done is by increasing the transistor count. The old way of doing that was multiple cpus - to avoid designing chips that have more transistors on die. The new way is the dual core cpus - which just clones the cpu design and incorporates a bridge, onto the same die.

Even if you have a single threaded app running on a dual core dual cpu machine - it will run better than it would on a single cpu system, just because the dual core/cpu system doesn't have to interupt execution of the single threaded app to take care of the OS's normal housekeeping chores.

Remember that most games are slowed down to accomadate the human player, as a rule.
The lags and unplayability happen more from hard drive accesses due to large bitmaps and not enough ram causing pagefile swaps, than are caused by cpu speed.

You should have been playing Commanche 1 on a 386SX-16 and then take the same program to a 486-66. It was unplayable.... You'd enter the game and die instantly because the game was scaled to the cpu's clock rate. Novalogic had to release a patch that would limit the speed of the game based on the machine it was being played on. After that it was great....played smooth as hell. And the 486-66 just idled where the 386SX had to struggle.

If you get a chance... try your favorite game on a dual core/cpu system and check out the difference. It's not really faster. The frame rates aren't higher. It's just a lot smoother, transistions happen quicker, and you don't get little freezes and crap.

Try it...You'll like it!!

 
Quake 3 tried supported smp w/ r_smp 1 (supposedly). I played on my old dual 300mhz Linux box w/ a geforce 3. Of course I never benchmarked anything or compared w/out smp set but it played nice and smooth on that old box..hehe
 
ashmedai said:
Also I recall someone saying about Quake 2 or 3 having a multithreaded mode...although it was something silly like offloading the sound processing, something like that.
Click to expand...
Granted, that's a pretty bad way to multithread your application, but at the same time, UT2003/4 did exactly this. On a dual processor system, the gains could be up to 30%. If you run a benchmark with -nosound (on a single-proc system) versus the same system with sound on, the difference is visible and useful. On a dual processor system of the same speed, it runs as fast with sound as without sound on a single-proc.

I can't wait for real multithreaded games/apps/whatevers. It could make so many things faster.

 
rodsfree said:
Remember that a dual core system is analogus to a dual cpu system, the only difference is the extra cpu socket.
Click to expand...

This isn't exactly true. Chipset differences between workstation/server boards vs desktop boards made a noticeable impact on gaming in the past. Historically, a cutting-edge desktop chipset was simply faster for gaming. There are plenty of reasons for this, but logically it's b/c there's less research, development, and testing needed for a single cpu chipset.

AMD has really changed that by basically integrating the north bridge chipset into the core, and using HTT links between cores.

I've got a pair of 1.6LV Xeons that have a 100% OC to 3.2Ghz on air cooling
Click to expand...

First off, nice o/c.

Second, an LV chip is like cheating, as far as bragging rights. I mean, it's basically an underclocked, undervolted chip in the first place, so the % o/c is mis-leading. You've probably got a prestonia core, which is basically a northwood, and they are known to go 3.0 to 3.2 on air pretty easily. Reminds me of this old bbspot parody:
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2001/01/athlon_extreme.html

Regardless, it's still a nice o/c.

So if you want to talk about what will OC better.....show me any other setup that will do a 100% OC on air cooling.
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In terms of sheer probability, a single core IS likely to overclock higher. A cpu with smaller cache is also likely to overclock higher.

Less transistors == less to go wrong when you start pushing the limits. You may be able to find anecdotal evidence that breaks the general rule, but I was speaking in terms of probability.

Finally, note that you're actually talking about overclocking single core chips. You just happen to have two of them. ;)

It's not about GHz any more.... The more instructions a cpu - cpu set can complete in a given amount of time is what is important.
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You're 1/2 right here... You should modify that to "It's not *just* about GHz". But just because a cpu *can* do something, doesn't mean it *will*. I don't care if you have 8 cpus, it's not going to run most games faster. The landscape will be changing over the coming years, but it hasn't changed yet. Clock speed and IPC have traditionally been the kings of performance, but now code and compilers will be making a larger performance impact. But right now--what you can buy today--the fastest gaming setup will still be a single core (and it's actually going to cost less!).

Even if you have a single threaded app running on a dual core dual cpu machine - it will run better than it would on a single cpu system, just because the dual core/cpu system doesn't have to interupt execution of the single threaded app to take care of the OS's normal housekeeping chores.
Click to expand...

It isn't that simple... An X2 3800+ runs at 2 GHz while an Athlon64 3800+ runs at 2.4 GHz. With a single threaded app, that 20% clock speed is going to be more important than a 2nd core sitting there idle.

I might as well mention that the Athlon64 3800+ is also cheaper than the X2 3800+.

That's the point I'm trying to make here... The single cores run at higher clocks, and unless you're running something besides games, it's going to be faster for a while.

If you only have one computer, and you want to build for the future, then a dual core setup is a good investment.

If you want a system specifically for gaming, and are tweaking for the highest possible performance... a single core setup is a good investment.

AMD has really made it great because when they finally DO get dual core chips that run as fast or faster than a single core, you might be able to simply flash your BIOS and drop it in your old motherboard (if they don't go changing sockets).
 
I would still get a Dual core/ht cpu anyway. I dont wanna wait 2 hours to recode a dvd, which could be 1 hour with a HT cpu, and 30 min with a dual core. Unless your system is gaming 24/7 and your not using any program but games
 
DVD encoding is not 100% faster. I tried it with mine, running DVDShrink and it was about 10-15% faster when re-encoding DVDs. I don't know if there are any other programs what make better use of the 2nd CPU when re-encoding DVDs...

If I were the original poster, I would go for an AMD X2 CPU, since they are pretty fast compared to single-core and you still get the dual/core/cpu benefits for multitasking.
 
Hopefully driver support is better nowadays.

The last time I ran dual proc on wintel, creative's drivers shit the bed quite often on a dual-proc system.

They weren't that sweet on a single cpu system, either, for that matter, lol.

If you don't need the absolute top end single cpu speed, dual core seems like a great alternative to me.
 
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