I was looking at my oldrig and my new rigs i built. The old rig runs a Intel Celeron 345 @ 3.06ghz and it isntoverclocked New rig uses a Intel Core 2 quad q8400 Clocked @ 2.66ghz WHY is a single core cpu out performing a dual core cpu? Neither are overclocked. both out of the box cpu's. It isnt aproblem with the new cpu as it shows on the intel website it being 2.66ghz OH:
You need to read up in the differences between dual core cpu's and single core ones. Its not outperforming it at all.
I had a skt 775 Celeron D running at 2.8GHz but now use a skt 775 dual core running at 2.0GHz but the dual core is better, Its not just about clockspeed which determines how CPU's stack up.
clock speed is no longer a factor in performance like it was back in Pentium 1 days. Pick up a PC magazine next time.
Id assume it is as in GTA San Andreas, The celeron is getting 20fps more despite it having worse parts in general
GTA:SA probably isnt optimized for multi-core processors, its really quite old at this point so it shouldnt be used as a judgement whether or not the multicore is better the then the single.
If a game runs better on a single core over a dual/quad core it likely is this: A)Unoptimized for SMP B)Needs a LOT of CPU cycles to handle physics/whatever Assuming B is true, then the single core has more raw power than the dual core. I'd wager a guess its got a higher FSB. Could also be a simple case of GPU power differences which would have to be akin to the Cellery running a newer and more powerful chip over the quad core forcing the quad to do more work than the Cellery would have to which otherwise would be used for physics. Physics+graphics on quad < Physics alone on single core. Then you can nitpick later about Nvidia over ATi, DDR2 V. DDR3, GDDR V. DDR1/2/3, etc. as well as AGP V. PCI-E. Bottlenecky goodness.
The thing with dual-core or multi-processor setups is that speed isn't directly proportional to the amount of processors/cores you add. All it lets you do is multi-task more efficiently. Some applications can run faster by dividing work over multiple cores/processors, but unless they are programmed to take advantage of it, you won't see any kind of real speed doubling or improvements.
No but he's failed to understand that a higher clockspeed number doesn't mean jack anymore. Running GTA SA and looking for framerate differences could be down to many different things, GPU's RAM etc. At least if he runs a benchmarking program then it will show him where a single core excels where a dual fails and the other way around. Heck just reading a review of some of the earlier dual core CPU's is sufficient as they often show benchmarking tests between the new cpu and an older single core. They often have a games test too running a game a which runs in single and dual core modes.
It can also come down to FSB speeds. Maybe the Celery accesses memory at a faster rate? FSB speeds can make a difference in I/O speed depending on system architecture and bottlenecks. (Before you start hatin', I did not check the FSBs on his 2 CPUs.)
Imagine one pair of hands moving very fast trying to move 100 blocks across a field. Now imagine 4 pairs of hands, doing the same thing but at a slightly slower pace. It's not about speed, but the ability to do work. Speed is nice though, 4 cores @4ghz is nicer.
If those are two different machines with two different hardware setups, and the Celeron is coming out faster in GTA, I'd say you have something going on with the computer the Q8400 is in. GTAIV is pretty CPU dependent, but at the same time I don't think it's multi-threaded (I could be wrong, though). One of the Q8400 cores at 2.66ghz should still be faster than the Celeron just due to architectural differences and the Q8400 not being horribly gimped. I was using a Celeron D @3.2ghz for about a month or two before I upgraded to a Phenom II X2 @3.1ghz. The difference is night and day. That Celeron was easily the best I've ever used, but it was still slow as shit. I could also overclock the pants off of this CPU, but I'm lazy and don't really care, anyway. The PC port of GTAIV is horribly unoptimized, from what I've heard. If your graphics card and RAM aren't up to snuff, the Q8400 definitely isn't going to pick up the slack. It's still pretty fast compared to the Celeron, but it's not the brightest crayon in the box anymore.
