Quad core in single core games

[Taero]

I was wondering if I had say a quad core cpu that was 4x 2.5ghz meaning a total of 10ghz and a game came along requiring 3ghz to run would the cpu run it or would it only access one core and just say not fast enough?

 

[Hellramsden]

Depends if the game supports multi-core's.

 

[halister_one]

First off, the GHz don't add up in a quad or dual. a 2.5GHz Quad does NOT mean a single core 10GHz CPU. It simply means a Quad that's as fast as a single core 2.5GHz but with 4 of them.

As said above, if the game supports multi-threading, the tasks would distributed among the 2 (or 4) cores instead of 1 core, thus allowing the tasks to be processed up to 4 times faster. However, the game must be multi-threaded, if it isn't, a 2.5GHz Quad will function like a 2.5GHz single core CPU.

However, there are always some programs running in the background, thus additional cores will help alleviate the load off of the CPU, so a dual core would normally be faster than a single core.

 

[kelfen]

Well Generally Faster loading times with quad core.

 

[Taero]

Thanks for the replies guys/gals, I figured it might be something like that but thought I'd check (after all I guess if they could make a single core that was 10Ghz that easily they would) I guess it's down to theorycrafting future games and whether they'll ask for high speed single cores or lower speed multi-cores.

*Question answered*