Can More Cores Beat More Clock Speed?

Nearly everyone who's followed CPU technology over the past two years knows that quad cores have a distinct performance advantage in a wide variety of professional applications, because many applications are designed for multi-threading. These same readers also know that the four-core advantage virtually evaporates in games, because games usually support only a single thread and occasionally two, but not four.

[VirusE]

So far the x6800 still rains supreme for games but only because supreme commander is the only game that really takes advantage of the more cores. So I would say at the moment MHZ is still king but that will chance with UT 3 and crysis coming out.

[Caxtus750]

somthing iv always wanted to know.

I have a duel core 1.8ghz processor. Do games see my duel core as a single core 1.8? or a 3.6?

thanks :)

[Gorgon]

They see it as two 1.8 cores. It doesn't double the performance of your game.

[Caxtus750]

ok, thanks guys :)

[ben hates you]

and yes to the title, more cores can out compete high powered cores,

i have 3.2quad core 12.8ghz total, works great with everything

[Gorgon]

"i have 3.2quad core 12.8ghz total, works great with everything"

Sorry, thats BS.

[whengeeksgobad]

wow man sounds like a way boss machine.

[JCDenton]

No, you cannot just multiply MHz like "I have dual-core CPU, and each core is set to 2GHz, meaning I have a 4GHZ CPU". That's BS, like someone said...

[khellendros1]

Until companies design games that separate functions like A.I. and physics for separate cores you probably won't need more that 2 cores for gaming. You would be better off spending that money on a videocard or 2. The biggest reason to have 4 cores is if you're into video/music production or into computer graphics or animation.

[deadeyes99]

N-O = NO

[WilliamRLBaker]

Because strictly speaking a single core at high power is better then a multicore at singular functions.

Playing a single game and doing nothing else on ur computer is best with a single core, Because the game isn't made to take advantage of those multiple cores.

Now if your programs and games take advantage then of course multi cores is better then single high powered cores, but hardly any thing supports em, Even when you do have a multicore and you set programs to run on one while ur game or whatever runs on the other, your still using singular cores.