How many cores of CPU do you really need?

[Arshdeep]

AMD: AMD simply come with "6", "8" cores, or so they say, 8 amd cores are basically 6-6.5 cores, no offence of chourse

 

INTEL: Quads are fine for intel but if you wanna go the safe way which just cost more for no benifiet to gaming, only rendering and photoshop, go with a six core.

 

AMD and Intel have slight diff core architecture, nothing mager... spend more on a good gpu and okay cpu, 3570k/8350 will go on for 4-5 years easy like the phenom 965 BE did, but as hardware

gets better, Games are getting Even Better including their demands, well some game engines do...

[tS_kStin]

I was gonna go with 3570k but considering modern and new games may demand more than 4 cores, i am having doubts going with intel. 

 

Just remember that the intel cores should be better than what will be in the nextgen consoles, so 4 i5 cores should be about equal to the 8 of the next consoles. Thats like how the i5 and 8350 perfore similar. So going with the 3570k will be fine.

[Godlygamer23]

Hyper-threading improves performance in some games. http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/the-intel-ivy-bridge-core-i7-3770k-review/7

[Glenwing]

Hyper-threading improves performance in some games. http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/the-intel-ivy-bridge-core-i7-3770k-review/7

 

How do you figure?  There were no other Ivy Bridge CPUs in the review to compare with the 3770K.  You can compare it to the 2500K but there's a ~10% IPC improvement from that to Ivy and that is pretty much what we see in those benchmarks.  Between the 2500K and 2600K there was -3.5 to 5fps gain.  That's margin of error.  Hyperthreading can improve performance a little bit, you'll see this between Pentiums and i3's (dual-core vs dual-core HTT) but like I said hyperthreading isn't a useful technology just by virtue of the way games stress CPU resources.  It's not one of those "new" features that we are waiting to be properly utilized.

[orangecat]

Some people say 2 is enough but i don't think so. The os needs to run so the more cores you have the better plus the game can leverage more power.

[Glenwing]

Some people say 2 is enough but i don't think so. The os needs to run so the more cores you have the better plus the game can leverage more power.

 

Agreed, I'd say two is not enough anymore, although it's still alright.  Quad-core is ideal, 6-core can benefit in a few games and is looking good moving forward.

[orangecat]

Agreed, I'd say two is not enough anymore, although it's still alright.  Quad-core is ideal, 6-core can benefit in a few games and is looking good moving forward.

Personally 6 cores can't help much in games only a select  few care about more cores but a quad core is most ideal now.

[grayperview]

At the moment all that is needed is 4 cores for games......yes the new consoles have 8 cores, but they are weak as shit......a half decent quad core will run rings around them in performance wise, in the future (2 years or so) we will need more cores for games granted, but you know what, by that time, they will be out and you will be able to buy one :)

[Glenwing]

Personally 6 cores can't help much in games only a select  few care about more cores but a quad core is most ideal now.

 

That's what I just said  :blink: