Dual-Cores good for dual-gaming?

[dizman]

This is question from my roommate. He's looking to build a new 939 system and he's not really sold on the whole dual-cores until I told him that it help him do something he really wants to do.

He plays World of Warcraft a LOT! And has tried to run two instances of it (he has two accounts) on his AthlonXP system and failed in that it'll do it but run very choppy and you can't really play either well. So I told him from what I had read that dual-cores really shine when it comes to multi-tasking and that sounds like a perfect example where it would benefit him.

So I'm here to ask if that would be true, aside from gpu limitations (he's going to get 7800GT SLI) would a dual-core help here? Would he be able to run to instances of WoW on one computer with few to no problems with a dual-core?

(Btw when I say "instanes" here I don't mean the game instances I mean to windows of the game running" though I guess if this did work you could try and do two instances of Molten Core, lol)

 

[DrTrunks]

So I'm here to ask if that would be true, aside from gpu limitations (he's going to get 7800GT SLI) would a dual-core help here? Would he be able to run to instances of WoW on one computer with few to no problems with a dual-core?

(Btw when I say "instanes" here I don't mean the game instances I mean to windows of the game running" though I guess if this did work you could try and do two instances of Molten Core, lol)

SLI is for 1 monitor only, so if he's planning to run 2xWow on 2 monitors, he would have to disable SLI and let the cards do their own thing.

Dual core would help yes, but a good graphics card is a must too.

 

[dizman]

SLI is for 1 monitor only, so if he's planning to run 2xWow on 2 monitors, he would have to disable SLI and let the cards do their own thing.

Dual core would help yes, but a good graphics card is a must too.

He currently has 2 monitors running off of a 6200GT, guess I should've mentioned that he already had 2 monitors. So disable SLI if he is going to run one on each monitor then? Should he enable SLI if he just plays one game on one monitor then?

He's going to get two 7800GT's

Btw thanks all for the help

 

[mnmarine]

Just got a dc 3800+ and I get benchmarks near 55 and 57 levels...and there are games like BF and Quake that are Hyper-Thread and or dual core updated and it is amazing....I can run anything in the background...I updated one game while playing BF and no frame hits at the highest settings...with zone alarm...with Norton...and all background tasks...I used to have a xp 2600+ and I couldnt do two things at once!

 

[mdd1963]

"In gaming dual cores don't help at all, since games are single threaded and can only use one core. "

Except for Quake4, which ekes out a small 40% framerate increase by virtue of the 2nd core...

Nvidia/ATI drivers are also becoming multithreaded, worth another few %...

 

[RichPLS]

No, not at all, unless your playing one of these supported games...

Call of Duty 2
City of Villains
F.E.A.R.
World of Warcraft
Age of Empires III
Black & White 2
Peter Jackson’s King Kong
The Movies
Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2: Special Forces
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3
Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland
Quake 4
Vangauard Saga of Heros


and believe quite a bunch more are supported or fixing to get supported... so the list is growing, and any popular game in the planning is sure to have dual-core support.

Not to mention ATI's graphic drivers are multi-threaded giving an additional boost to dual core performance.

If you run anti-virus or software firewalls as a service, this is not an impact on speed, since they are multi=threaded and benifit from dual core also...

 

[mnmarine]

So the future will be dual core in processors and video.....checks good..

 

[ShortyNumber45]

EDIT: But dual-core is not yet the future I believe so... I've heard that AMD is planning to release it's quad-core CPUs in c. 2007.

 

[mnmarine]

Yeah and hdtv will be law in 2008...so what ever we get and or have today...what we buy will push the market to tomorrow...they will make and improve to what is the majority or what will make the most money...if we what what will give us the best...they will use it..

 

[RichPLS]

If properly means installing and using, then yes...
I just havent got the problems with dual processors or dual core as some have had.
Hell, even years ago on NT2000 I had no problems running dual processors.
Many very old games played fine, but a few did not, but they were not ones I really cared about much.
You did have to be carefull about file system software, especially with RAID drives, that it was intened to handle it, once verified, ran fine too.
Now tho, all seems to be fine, now I am considering Win64 and will look into it closely.