Intel ships 4.4 Ghz Westmere dual-cores.

[accord99]

You don't have to look too far to find some benchmarks to see that either. Pcgameshardware even mentions like ten games the benefit from a hexcore.

On the other hand, the quad-core 2600K is the fastest CPU in almost all of those games mentioned by PCGamesHardware.

[sin0822]

wasn't there a 4ghz P4?

Anyways this is impressive intel, keep em coming. but not a quad or hexa core?

[JumpingJack]

wasn't there a 4ghz P4?

Anyways this is impressive intel, keep em coming. but not a quad or hexa core?

I think the fastest P4 at stock wa 3.83 Ghz. AFIK

[cky2k6]

They made a 4ghz presshot, but decided against releasing it.

[saaya]

the fastest northwood was 3.4 and was only available in limited quantities
then there was an extreme edition gallatin core based chip that came at 3.46 with massive cache and higher fsb
after that prescott came out and only went up to 3.8, also only in limited quantities if i remember correctly...
there was also a prescott xe but it only came at 3.73 and was slower than gallatin at 3.46 if i remember correctly

its good that intel didnt release a 4ghz prescott...
other chips they shouldnt have released are their 1ghz+ p3 chips and their first dualcore chips (dual prescott, OUCH)

actually i think the problems was not good enough cooling at least for prescott and smithfield...
if theyd have bundled proper stock heatsinks for those chips, i dont think anybody would have cared... i mean vgas are breaking the 300W barrier now and people dont care as long perf and price is alright...

i remember craig barrett, or was it otellini?, getting down on his knees in front of an audience and apologizing for not releasing a 4ghz chip.
that was.. one of the most bizarre moments in tech history i think... never understood what the big deal was... nobody cared about 4ghz, it was about intel not being competitive...
even IF theyd have had a 4ghz chip at good temps and low price that wouldnt have solved their issues...

[Mungri]

They do at times, but when it comes to delays while loading it seems it's often a single threaded process.

But on intel quads when only a single thread is being used, it gets a turbo boost right?

I remember seeing some benchmarks were dual to quad made a huge impact in some games, I'll have a browse now and see what I can find.

- I really cant find anything recent with the latest architectures, all I mostly see is benchies comparing socket 775 CPUs which isnt really relevant.

Someone needs to do an up to date dual vs quad core review, and include the latest games.

[[XC] Oj101]

Saaya, some games definitely DO benefit from more than two cores. I found Flight Sim X and Bad Company 2 almost unplayable on a dual core without overclocking the crap out of it.

[STEvil]

But on intel quads when only a single thread is being used, it gets a turbo boost right?

I remember seeing some benchmarks were dual to quad made a huge impact in some games, I'll have a browse now and see what I can find.

- I really cant find anything recent with the latest architectures, all I mostly see is benchies comparing socket 775 CPUs which isnt really relevant.

Someone needs to do an up to date dual vs quad core review, and include the latest games.

Turbo is based on number of threads loaded, not just single thread.

Yes, quad can have large impact vs dual.

Give me a quad at 5ghz with 12mb. Duals are for phones :p

[Skratch]

just wondering why you think they should of not put out the 1ghz p3 copperton or what ever it was called.I had one and it blew away the first gen p4s

[Particle]

Oh yes, absolutely. Until P4s got into 2 GHz territory, I was partial to older Pentium 3 systems. They were quite a bit faster. That's why I upgraded from a Coppermine-derived Celeron 533 (which ran happily at 920 MHz heh) in those days to a 1.2 GHz Thunderbird instead of a P4.

[Vinas]

Oh yes, absolutely. Until P4s got into 2 GHz territory, I was partial to older Pentium 3 systems. They were quite a bit faster. That's why I upgraded from a Coppermine-derived Celeron 533 (which ran happily at 920 MHz heh) in those days to a 1.2 GHz Thunderbird instead of a P4.

Off topic but yeah I was rocking a dual socket PIII for the longest time over the P4. Those were good times!

On topic: looks like 4GHz and soon 5GHz is old and dusty now a days. So 6GHz it is then!

[[XC] Oj101]

Oh yes, absolutely. Until P4s got into 2 GHz territory, I was partial to older Pentium 3 systems. They were quite a bit faster. That's why I upgraded from a Coppermine-derived Celeron 533 (which ran happily at 920 MHz heh) in those days to a 1.2 GHz Thunderbird instead of a P4.

Don't forget the Tualatin based Pentium 3s after that, and the Celerons too. I think a 1.3GHz Celeron came pretty close to a 1.3GHz s423 P4

[Tom128]

Bad Company 2 does more than "make use" of more than 2 cores. It will outright punish you for not having a quad. You can't clock a dual core high enough to really compensate (unless you are going well into 4Ghz territory, maybe).

[[XC] Oj101]

Bad Company 2 does more than "make use" of more than 2 cores. It will outright punish you for not having a quad. You can't clock a dual core high enough to really compensate (unless you are going well into 4Ghz territory, maybe).

Hahahaha this^^ I also saw a (much smaller, but still there) increase going from a 965BE to a 1055T, both clocked at 3.9GHz.

[Brahmzy]

With the myriad of quad-cores flooding consumer's (gamer's) homes, I can only assume that most new releases will be fully optimized for more than 2 cores.
I was a big proponent of my 4.4GHz E8600 and held off on the quads for a long-time. Then I woke up and smelled the coffee. Life with a quad + HT IS better. - Especially at 4.6GHz. We just need easy 5.5GHz OCable quads.

Not to derail, but how much btter will the Ivy Bridge quads be? Maybe squeeze another 200MHz using same voltages?

[Hornet331]

Why do we even need to argure about that when we have pretty reliable statistics...

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/cpus/

Fact is, that the majority of cpu out there are still dualcores, and if the trend continues we need another 4-5 months till the crossover to quadcores is done.

[saaya]

I've seen you claim a lot of stuff like that about gaming. Quads don't help, overclocking is unnecessary, etc. According to your posts you don't need anything more than an E5300 for an optimal gaming experience.

where did i say quads dont help and overclocking is unneccessary?

i guess you refer to my comments that depending on what resolutions you play at with what vga a 2.4ghz chip is all you need?

i said i havent seen any games that notably scale with more than 2 cores...
why do you have to twist my words around and then make it personal? whats your problem?

Even in GTA4? Starcraft2?

oh well, gta4 was a horrible console port...
i think it got a 40% fps boost going from 2 to 4 cores at the same clocks or something... but there was more to it, it stuttered and had weird issues with dualcore chips which didnt show up in benchmarks...

so yeah, true... for gta4 more than 2 cores definitely make sense...

starcraft2... dont know what you mean...
sc2 is very cpu bound but doesnt make good use of cores...
860 vs 750, almost no difference
c2d vs c2q, cores dont matter, its all about clocks

Sayaa isn't a big gamer. It's not the first time that he has made a comment about how a fast cpu, or more cores don't make a difference with gaming

sigh... yeah, faster cpus, memory, ssds, vgas ALWAYS scale... there are no bottlenecks... your right...

I'm not going to list the games that do benefit from a quad but its no small list anymore and it is growing. You don't have to look too far to find some benchmarks to see that either. Pcgameshardware even mentions like ten games the benefit from a hexcore.

i never said no games benefit from quads of hex cores...
maybe thats why your so pssed off... go read my posts and relax...

IIII havent seen any (added: interesting) games that IIIII think benefit from more than 2 cores enough to justify a quad or even hex over a dualcore...
you say im wrong, quoting me incorrectly, attack me personally, and then dont provide any info to back up your statements... bravo!

But on intel quads when only a single thread is being used, it gets a turbo boost right?

I remember seeing some benchmarks were dual to quad made a huge impact in some games, I'll have a browse now and see what I can find.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,7...CPUs/Practice/
lots of "up to" and "in some situations"...
im curious how they tested and what the actual numbers are like...

Saaya, some games definitely DO benefit from more than two cores. I found Flight Sim X and Bad Company 2 almost unplayable on a dual core without overclocking the crap out of it.

fsx makes sense, yeah...
bc2... didnt know that... guess its cause its a console port as well :/

just wondering why you think they should of not put out the 1ghz p3 copperton or what ever it was called.I had one and it blew away the first gen p4s

you were lucky then... the first couple of batches were not stable at 1ghz and above... there was a 1.13ghz p3 that intel canceled cause they just couldnt get them stable, and then they relaunched them later i think...

i had a P3 700E with 100fsb... just had to up the fsb to 133 which board and mem supported, and voila, 933
didnt need more volts... i loved my P3... but when athlon thunderbird came out with DDR and 1ghz stock speed overclocking to 1.7+ on air... damn... that was a different world... what a massive speed boost...

Don't forget the Tualatin based Pentium 3s after that, and the Celerons too. I think a 1.3GHz Celeron came pretty close to a 1.3GHz s423 P4

yeah i built a few tualatin celeron 1.3ghz rigs running 1.8 on air...
loved those... they were fsb limited, otherwise i think they would have gone insanely high on ln2 and phase change...

[Alex-Ro]

They must be 2-core Gulftown,that means they have gulftown IMC not clarkdale,so this kind of CPU would be just great for 2d benches if it reaches very high clock speeds on LN2

[[XC] Oj101]

GTA4 is not a "horrible console port", the engine does a crap load of work. Do you ever see a pause as it says LOADING while driving from one area to the next? Basically the entire game is stored in RAM, be it system RAM or graphics memory.

[radaja]

They must be 2-core Gulftown,that means they have gulftown IMC not clarkdale,so this kind of CPU would be just great for 2d benches if it reaches very high clock speeds on LN2

thats what i was thinking too,these might make for some great memory OC's

[dinos22]

hopefully the price is reasonable

this chip + OC board = sweet

[m^2]

other chips they shouldnt have released are their 1ghz+ p3 chips and their first dualcore chips (dual prescott, OUCH)

I totally disagree, I'm still running Pentium D 805 (in fact right now), at the time it cost half of the cheapest AMD dual (~100 euro IIRC) and overclocked like crazy.

[BrowncoatGR]

I totally disagree, I'm still running Pentium D 805 (in fact right now), at the time it cost half of the cheapest AMD dual (~100 euro IIRC) and overclocked like crazy.

We still have a Pentium D at work here. It really isn't much more responsive than the P4 Northwood box we still use. Even at the cheap price Intel was offloading these chips i really don't think they were worth it unless you really couldn't afford a K8 dualcore. Even overclocked they really were a far cry from using an AMD dual core at the time. Offcourse the reverse is more or less true at the moment.

[K404]

Utterly irrelevant....... I played Bad Company 2 on a Clarkdale with HT disabled at 3.04GHz with a 5770 and had no problems other than the game not being anything special. Resolution was 1440x900 though, if that matters

[saaya]

Well then gta4 is ahead of its time and one of the most demanding and advanced games out there... call it whatever you want, it stutters with dualcores even though fps are fine , it needs LOTS of RAM both for CPU and gpu, and graphics and features suck compared to any other game out there.

Gta3 and onwards are successful cause they are creative and have a lot of nice humor in them, and I like them, but don't tell me they are using a great engine and are coded well lol...

I totally disagree, I'm still running Pentium D 805 (in fact right now), at the time it cost half of the cheapest AMD dual (~100 euro IIRC) and overclocked like crazy.

those were nice with a good heatsink, I was talking about the 840xeons those chips violated intense own tdp guidelines and blew quite some boards and ran very hot.