dual core or quad core!

[irati 0]

Hi, i'm thinking of buying a new cpu, my Current cpu is a dual core AMD athlon II x2 260 with 3.2ghz.

 

I'm thinking of upgrading to a Phenom II x4. At the moment SF2 run at around 25 fps at an airport with a lot of 3d objects

and 50-60 fps normal.

 

Will the extra 2 cores help the performance?

 

My specs are:

 

Windows 7 home premium 64bit

8 gb ddr ram

Club3d ati radeon 5750

[ValAstur 1,294]

Two more cores will definetely give you more power. But it's not only the CPU. It also depends your remaining hardware. I upgraded from a Intel Core2Duo E6750 (2 x 2.67GHz) to a Phenom X4 965 Black Edition.

 

The effects were very noticeable. But nevertheless, if your graphics card is not very fast, the mere CPU upgrade will achieve only little success. My HD5770 is enough for my processor. The main problem I have is my HDD.

 

My Samsung HD250HJ is only SATA-I, but upgrading to a SATA-III won't be of help, since my board only supports SATA-II.

 

A CPU upgrade is always a good idea, but depending on the other components, especially their age, you'll have to take further hardware exchanges into consideration.

Edited August 4, 2012 by ValAstur

[GodsLt 3]

Hey there! In regards to your CPU, it may help, and it may not help. In the case it does help, it will only improve loading times I'm afraid!

It may increase FPS in the 5-10 range, but nothing else...

It might be a good idea to upgrade both the CPU and the GPU (Graphics card) if you want better performance out of your system.

By upgrading both the CPU and the GPU, you eliminate the problem of your CPU becoming a bottleneck if your card is of very high performance,

thus allowing a maximum gain in performance FPS wise.

If you want to upgrade only one thing, I would upgrade the Graphics card. Those are responsible for most of the FPS!

You could also overclock your CPU... BUT I DO NOT RECOMMEND IT, AT ALL. AND I WILL NOT TELL YOU HOW TO DO IT. There, I said it

(If can fry your PC...)

[+SkateZilla 49]

you'll get a lil bump in Fr/ps, as SF uses multiple cores now. However the low Fr/PS on the ground is a Graphics Card Bottleneck,.

[irati 0]

Thanks for the replies! But how do i know which cpu would slow down my Graphic card or vice versa.

 

My Graphic card has 700 Mhz gpu speed and 1150Mhz memory clock speed and 1gb ram.

 

Would a 3ghz phenom II x4 quad core cpu slow or speed up SF2?

[+SkateZilla 49]

Upgrading to a Phenom IIx4

 

you get 2 extra cores,

but each core will also have L3 Cache to speed them up (AthlonIIs do not have L3)

 

The memory Controller in the PhenomII's is also faster than the AhtlonIIs

[RogerSmith 72]

SF2 mostly relies on GPU. I noticed a big difference switching from GT 430 to GT 640. My CPU is a AMD Athlon II 250

[Wrench 9,848]

quad core all the way...

[Fubar512 1,350]

The entire series is more CPU-dependant than anything else. Upgrade to at least a Core i5 Ivy Bridge (preferrably a 3570K), and you'll experience quite an improvement. Toms hardware ranks the current crop of AMD processors almost two generations behind the Ivy Bridge i5 CPUs.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html

 

This series, for as long as it's been out, favors nVidia GPUs, or more prcisely, nVidia's drivers.

Edited August 4, 2012 by Fubar512

[+streakeagle 871]

Exactly how does it favor nVidia gpus? I have been running ATi all along and there have been very few ATi specific issues... in fact, in recent months, nearly every post I see involving graphics issues are people with nVidia cards. I presume you have been using nVidia all along. So, I think my experience with AMD/ATi is a bit more conclusive than your broad statement:

Radeon 8500 128Mb <-- hardware TnL problem that could be eliminated using 3rd party tweaker, TK changed graphics engine to get around

Radeon 9800 Pro 128Mb <-- by the time I got this card, there were no problems, but FPS were greatly improved by using short horizon rather than normal or far.

x800XL 256Mb <-- I think around this time there was a problem with shadows having lines between model and ground, not sure if this was ATi specific

No ATi driver specific problems over the past few years with these cards:

x1800XT 512Mb

HD 4890 1Gb

HD 7870 1Gb

 

That's about 10 years of ATi and other than turning shadows off or having to briefly use a 3rd party utility to configure the driver, I simply didn't have any problems that were caused by my card/driver.

 

It is sad but true that the Intel i5 is by far the way to go right now. AMD is slowly but surely going the way of the other CPU competitors: being forced to focus on making low power and/or budget chips since they cannot afford to keep up with top-end performance. That is partly the result of Intel suppressing the AMD market when the x64 chips were smoking the Pentium 4s. But the end result of the x64 success was that it forced Intel to make a better product. If AMD can't keep up, who is going to put competitive pressure on Intel to prevent forcing hot/slow chips like P4s down consumer throats? Make no mistake, without competition, companies get lazy and will take as much money as they can without offering as good a product as they could.

[Fubar512 1,350]

When TK first enabled RWRs in SFP1 (in the first patch), they did not work on Radeon cards, and RADAR displays were also hosed. However, they worked fine on Geforce 3s and 4s. Go through the archives on the Thirdwire and SimHQ sites and you'll find quite a few posts detailing this.

 

With the '06 and '08 patch, shader-driven effects (terrain and water) appeared as "blocky" artifacts on my x800xt. When I switched back to an nVidia-based adapter, those artifacts were suddenly gone. And, I am not the only user to have experienced this, Dave also did, and I'm sure that his response to your argument would probably include a few choice scatalogical terms.

 

And even today, some users (all of them using Radeons) are reporting stuttering when accessing the avionics60.dll. I have no such issues with my four year-old tech GTX 250, and neither does Wrench with his GTS 240.

Edited August 4, 2012 by Fubar512

[RogerSmith 72]

The entire series is more CPU-dependant than anything else.

 

My temperatures tell me differently. GPU gets in the 50s celcius, my CPU just gets warm. Whereas IL-2:1946 it is opposite, it relies on the CPU a lot

[Fubar512 1,350]

That just tells me that you most likely have more officiant cooling for your CPU. I can backup my statement by logging CPU and memory loads.

 

Using your logic, Silent Hunter 4 must not be very CPU dependent, because my GPU's fan goes into full gas-turbine mode when I run it, whereas I never hear it when running SF2:NA.

[GodsLt 3]

In any case, OP, Upgrading your CPU will not harm you at all

There's really no good or bad choice, you really can't go wrong with a quad core!

Just bear in mind, that the brunt number of FPS is generated by your GPU, NOT your CPU.

Although upgrading your CPU might improve performance somewhat (due to improved CPU efficiency, L3 cache memore, etc),

Upgrading your Graphics card will always yield you the highest FPS gains.

[Slant6 21]

GodsLT. That's true, but when SF2 decides to throw thirty-odd planes into the battle all at once (SF2E and SF2 especially will do that), a stronger CPU will move all that along more quickly.

[Wrench 9,848]

quad core; no question

 

AND

 

a HUGE vid card!

[Carlos_Tex 2]

Toms hardware ranks the current crop of AMD processors almost two generations behind the Ivy Bridge i5 CPUs.

 

 

With all due respect for your post, let me just say that Tom's Hardware is full of s**t...

[+Jug 99]

Just finished a rebuild myself:

AMD 8-core running at 3.7 mhz

Asus Sabretooth motherboard

32 Gig RAM

3 1 Terrabyte HDs

NVidia 8800 GTX graphics card

Liquid cooled cpu

It smokes........................

 

Cost about $700.00.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Jug

[MigBuster 2,884]

Just finished a rebuild myself:

AMD 8-core running at 3.7 mhz

Asus Sabretooth motherboard

32 Gig RAM

3 1 Terrabyte HDs

NVidia 8800 GTX graphics card

Liquid cooled cpu

It smokes........................

 

Cost about $700.00.

 

 

Excellent - are you sure you have enough RAM :)

 

 

Do you not have any Solid State HDs? - if you put Windows on an SSD your start up time will be about 10 seconds from power on - and all lag will be gone (well locally)

[Carlos_Tex 2]

Just finished a rebuild myself:

AMD 8-core running at 3.7 mhz

Asus Sabretooth motherboard

32 Gig RAM

3 1 Terrabyte HDs

NVidia 8800 GTX graphics card

Liquid cooled cpu

It smokes........................

 

Cost about $700.00.

 

 

NVidia 8800 GTX? That's so 2006....

 

Hmmm i guess it's ok, i'm going to keep my Radeon 4850 for a while too!!!

[Fubar512 1,350]

With all due respect for your post, let me just say that Tom's Hardware is full of s**t...

 

Did you even bother to look at the date of that post?

[+Brain32 265]

In my experience with ANY game so far, more powerful CPU will only noticeably help in that it can "feed" your graphics card with DATA faster, if you are already at the peak and your CPU is pulling maximum out of your gfx card, you will get little to nothing in terms of performance.

I yet have to see any kind of noticeable scaling with same gfx card and more CPU models when all of them push the card to the max, most of the time difference was 1-2fps...

[Fubar512 1,350]

These two are the benchmarks that really count for most of the people who come to this site.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5

 

and

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/6

 

I have no horse in this race, as I'm still using a 5-year old Core2Duo. I have also assembled more PCs in my time than I can recall, for both myself, my friends, and my customers. I have used CPUs from both AMD and Intel over the years.

[+Brain32 265]

Just a note I wasn't speaking about Intel vs AMD because Intel is clearly more powerful but about relations between gfx card and CPU and impact on performance made by that relation, this test does not show that or atleast not clearly.

First they used two extremely different gfx cards and second the new 680 GTX is top of the line so it's quite possible that even the newest AMD stuff can't feed it as good as INTEL's hardware...

This however is rarely a concern for an average user(atleast here because we are poor as f and taxes are insane) so when somebody is building a "can" for gaming with limited budget I'd always recommend a better gfx card and a slightly lesser CPU(ofcourse trying to balance as much as possible) than for powerful CPU and poor gfx card because in that situation CPU will not have much to do...and performance will not reach budget potential.

[Carlos_Tex 2]

Did you even bother to look at the date of that post?

 

Yes it is a few months old. It doesn't really matter for me as benchmarking in most review sites is just pure benchmarketing.