Single threaded core more important for games?

Rafael Mestdag · Sep 6, 2016

I've done an experience with PassMark and by disabling 2 cores out of my FX6300 I found that it always scores higher on single threaded cores.

Is single threaded cores more important for games than most or all of the the other test results?

scuzzycard · Sep 6, 2016

That's interesting - how much was the difference?

Rafael Mestdag · Sep 6, 2016

scuzzycard :

On stock clock(Turbo on), with all 6 cores the cpu scored 1364, while with 4 cores it scored 1445 on single threaded.

scuzzycard · Sep 6, 2016

That's a new one for me, I have an Intel 6-core, and the single-thread performance doesn't budge if I disable cores. You're going to have check the frame rate in the actual games. My wild prediction is that they run better with all cores enabled.

Rafael Mestdag · Sep 6, 2016

scuzzycard :

I've come to disable 4 cores leaving only 2 working and although all the other scores fell considerably, the single threaded performance remained the same, and the games performance as well as the PC's performance remained practically the same.

That's weird.

sizzling · Sep 6, 2016

What motherboard are you running and have you overclocked the cpu? What you describe would make sense if your motherboard is throttling the cpu when all 6 cores are being used, possibly overheating VRM's? By reducing the number of active cores your reducing the power load on the VRM's

Rafael Mestdag · Sep 6, 2016

sizzling :

It's a Micro ATX Gigabyte 78LMT-S2.

And yes, I've overclocked it, currently I'm running my CPU at 4.6Ghz and it's very fast for programas and stuff but for gaming it remains the same as if it were stock.

audie-tron25 · Sep 6, 2016

I have a theory about why you might see this improvement in single core performance when benchmarking. This is completly hypothetical so feel free to correct me.

So with AMD's Bulldozer architecture (including updated versions like Piledriver used in the FX-6300), AMD uses shared resources between pairs of cores. By doing this, they can essentially create two cores where there would traditionally be only one. This should also help with multi-threaded programs because it can process more information quicker. However, when bench-marking, this could saturate the CPU core's and mean each core has less resources to work with than it would if only one core was enabled. This could explain why the single core results are increased when most are disabled.

You would realistically not notice any improvement because even if a program is only single threaded, it would only use one core and not affect the other core it shares resources with. It would be detrimental if the program/s is able to use all of the cores however which would explain the lower results overall. Either way, I think it would be better to leave all cores enabled for real-world applications (like gaming).

Just as a test, what happens if you disable core's 2,4 & 6? Does the single thread performance increase?

Further reading:
- http://www.futurelooks.com/the-amd-fx-8150-bulldozer-cpu-and-scorpius-fx-platform-reviewed-part-one/

helpstar · Sep 6, 2016

which games do you use?

gamerk316 · Sep 6, 2016

audie-tron25 :

I have a theory about why you might see this improvement in single core performance when benchmarking. This is completly hypothetical so feel free to correct me.

So with AMD's Bulldozer architecture (including updated versions like Piledriver used in the FX-6300), AMD uses shared resources between pairs of cores. By doing this, they can essentially create two cores where there would traditionally be only one. This should also help with multi-threaded programs because it can process more information quicker. However, when bench-marking, this could saturate the CPU core's and mean each core has less resources to work with than it would if only one core was enabled. This could explain why the single core results are increased when most are disabled.

You would realistically not notice any improvement because even if a program is only single threaded, it would only use one core and not affect the other core it shares resources with. It would be detrimental if the program/s is able to use all of the cores however which would explain the lower results overall. Either way, I think it would be better to leave all cores enabled for real-world applications (like gaming).

Just as a test, what happens if you disable core's 2,4 & 6? Does the single thread performance increase?

Further reading:
- http://www.futurelooks.com/the-amd-fx-8150-bulldozer-cpu-and-scorpius-fx-platform-reviewed-part-one/

I was thinking this as well. There's a ~20% performance loss when using shared cores, so turning off certain cores, and thereby avoiding that performance penalty, could lead to increased single threaded performance. 5% gains like you are seeing seems reasonable.

Rafael Mestdag · Sep 6, 2016

helpstar :

Eurotruck Simulator 2, rFactor, Call of Duty(most versions) etc...

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Single threaded core more important for games?

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