[Solved] Will the PII X6 be worth it?

Hello, I was wondering if the PII X6 will really give me an advantage over the PII X4 in Gaming I know it all depends on the game coding of the game but i mean in the long run will it be worth the extra 50$-40$ extra (which I think is fair considering the Athlon X2 is about 50$). Not trying to be a fanboy and sorry if I seem like one.

Reply to Userremoved

zipzoomflyhigh wrote :

No it wont give you a performance boost in gaming.

The market for these will be small and not for gamers.

For the $220 I've seen them on sale for though, it's a steal.

I don't think the market will be small for these chips. But gains in gaming will likely be limited over quads at the same clock speed.

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Reply to FALC0N

zipzoomflyhigh wrote :

No it wont give you a performance boost in gaming.

The market for these will be small and not for gamers.

For the $220 I've seen them on sale for though, it's a steal.

I was looking at the thread with the Amazon prices and I was just wondering about the performance cost ratio.

Reply to Userremoved

Doubt it for games for a while. However, if it does come out fairly cheap, it could have a market. I assume real benches should be out soon, and with games. So check and decide then.

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Reply to EXT64

from what i've heard, the architecture itself is improved on the phenom II's, and it should out perform them clock for clock. but we need to see some real reviews before making that assessment.

i will be getting one, i think it could be very useful for games that uses quads. having 2 cores for all my background processes and 4 entirely for the game to run. its all about futureproofing too, as when games start using more than 4 cores, the gains will be pretty big.

and @zip, you can't compare adding physical cores to the extra threads of HT. Hyper threading is of no benefit to gaming, and never will be. its just how it works, actual physical cores can offer a massive gain when implemented.

And saying you will use the two other cores for backround tasks is just silly and a waste of money. By the time any game performs significantly better with a x6 over a x4 both cpus will be ancient outdated tech.

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Reply to someguy7

someguy7 wrote :

And saying you will use the two other cores for backround tasks is just silly and a waste of money. By the time any game performs significantly better with a x6 over a x4 both cpus will be ancient outdated tech.

people said the same thing about quads. and in less than a year they have gone from enthusiast only parts that offered no real performance, to the defacto standard in most rigs and a recommended spec for most game releases.

you can say my idea is 'silly', but the fact is right now i cannot encode a video for my ipod at the same time as gaming without a performance hit (at least when i play crysis, or BC2).
when i get a 6 core not only can i do my encoding in the background (which will save me a lot of time) i can even leave every other program i normally shut down, running in the background. hell, i could even leave EVE open in the background to do some mining, and still play another game without bad performance.

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Message edited by welshmousepk on 04-25-2010 at 01:23:36 AM

Encoding a video is not a background task. If you are doing encoding you would want to use ALL 6 cores for that.

Defacto standard/recommended spec do not mean much. People end up getting quads because they are extremely cheap now compared to before. And they generally in the same ballpark clockwise as a dual core.

People said the same thing about quads. Yes. But it was not less then a year. Quads have been out for years. And some games are just now starting to actually use/benefit from them. Even those games with probably the except of flight simulator do not come anywhere near close to even fully using 4 cores.

All I am saying is more or less what you said actually. If you get a 6 core cpu make sure you're going to use them all for your workloads. Do not buy one because sometime in the future games will make use of them. The great thing about these chips seems to be that they not much more expensive then the quad cores and will perform=better in most things.

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Reply to someguy7

Hi
I think it will be good as long as it can be overclocked like the core i7. If not then things can go tough for AMD because from what i have heard is that for gaming core i7 will be better. but other than that Phenom II 6 cores cpu will be faster. Also I read some months ago that now the focus for these cpu makers are on more cores. previously it was more speed, in the Pentium 4 days. and the article author analyzed that after crossing a certain increase in the number of cores, i dont remember exactly but i think it was quad cores, the performance will actually begin to decrease. the graph was like a hill, the performance increase from single core to i think quad core, dont know for sure and then the performance gets constant with increased number of cores and then it starts to decrease with further increase in cores. i think the graph showed till 12 cores, im not sure on this either. thus keeping this in mind, I dont know what to expect. Hope i cleared some things.

Reply to lordszone

zipzoomflyhigh wrote :

Well what would the market be? I mean an i5/i7 can do 8 threads and the new 6 core Intel does 12 threads......so.....it what's the market for 6 threads?

You obviously don't understand how this stuff really works. Arguing about "threads", especially threads as it refers to hyperthreading is pointless. Hyperthreading is little more than a special cpu instruction like SSE.

The practical impact of 6 REAL cores will be strong performance in multithreaded environments. Multiple threads is NOT limited to individual programs. Running multiple applications at a time, which is very common, as well as background apps such as antivirus/security suites, processing PDF files, any type of encoding, among many other common tasks, all benefit from multicore processors.

The end result of all of this is a faster processor overall. Your obsession with "threads" shows you simply don't understand the technology.

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Reply to FALC0N

someguy7 wrote :

And saying you will use the two other cores for backround tasks is just silly and a waste of money. By the time any game performs significantly better with a x6 over a x4 both cpus will be ancient outdated tech.

Yes of of course, that ALL anyone ever uses a computer for. 95% of computer, and by extension computer cpu's, are not used by overgrown kids as $2000 game machines.

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Reply to FALC0N

FALC0N wrote :

Yes of of course, that ALL anyone ever uses a computer for. 95% of computer, and by extension computer cpu's, are not used by overgrown kids as $2000 game machines.

I think he is trying to stay within the OPs question.

The OP asked that if in gaming they would see a worthy benefit. Most likley since most games do not use more than 4 cores at most, and not that efficiently at that, he will not see a worthy benefit in gaming.

Unless Thuban comes out with a 20-30% IPC increase clock per clock against Phenom II, which would mean it would also beat Core i7 clock per clock and judging by the price I doubt it, and gives near that boost in gaming, it would not be worth the investment to upgrade from a Phenom II X4 to a Phenom II X6.

Reply to jimmysmitty

You might be right Jimmysmitty. I thought he was responding to me, but I now see that he was probably responding to a similar post that went in a different direction. My bad.

By the way, I wasn't trying to demean overgrown kids. I am one myself! :pt1cable:

Reply to FALC0N

someguy7 wrote :

Encoding a video is not a background task. If you are doing encoding you would want to use ALL 6 cores for that.

Defacto standard/recommended spec do not mean much. People end up getting quads because they are extremely cheap now compared to before. And they generally in the same ballpark clockwise as a dual core.

People said the same thing about quads. Yes. But it was not less then a year. Quads have been out for years. And some games are just now starting to actually use/benefit from them. Even those games with probably the except of flight simulator do not come anywhere near close to even fully using 4 cores.

All I am saying is more or less what you said actually. If you get a 6 core cpu make sure you're going to use them all for your workloads. Do not buy one because sometime in the future games will make use of them. The great thing about these chips seems to be that they not much more expensive then the quad cores and will perform=better in most things.

encoding CAN be a backgrounds task. some of us know how to use a computer, and how to set programs to individual cores. i will have my encoding running on one core as i game. still leaving a core ofr other programs and 4 for gaming.

and i know quads have been out longer than a year, my point is it was only a year from them being virtually unused, to the standard for anyone buying a rig.

i guess we are agreeing mostly, weather the OP gets one depends on what he is doing. i plan to get one, but i will be using it. but i still think we will have games using 6 cores by the end of the year. i wouldn't be surprised if Crysis 2 takes advantage of more than 4 cores.

Best answer

I would not be surprised at all if crysis 2 looks pretty and has low framerates no matter what type of new hw is thrown at it.

And yes some of use do know how to actually use a computer. Some people don't just play games on them and actually use them for work. Not making one core run a crappy encode to the suitable ipod video format while shooting nazi's or whatnot in another FPS. We where talking about if the op would really see a advantage in gaming with the x6 over the x4. The simple answer is simply going to be no.

Not unless something changes drastically in the near future games will not advantage of more than 4 cores at the resolutions gamers actually play at.

And quads did simply did not take a year to go from virtually not used to standard for anyone buying a rig. Kentsfield came out early 07. Yorkfield over a year later.. And it still was not the standard. People where still buying the dual cores simply because they where a better value for everybody that did not do work that actually used more then two cores. The q9550 launched and stayed at over 500 bucks for a decent amount of time. The 9450 was over 300. The wolfdale came out sooner had a higher clock and was under 200 dollars. They sold like mad. It was the chip to get for gamers basically until the price drops of the quads. Cheap wolfdale+better GPU was what most gamers purchased. Or the Q6600 G0 stepping and overclocked it.

Yeah but some us actually know how to use our computers and also know about the hw and very recent history of the hw. While kiddies shoot up aliens and convert videos to a ipod.

I have have enough of this childish BS. I am done with all that.

To the OP. The benchmarks will be out in the coming days. You will then see how much better or worse the x6 performs in games compared to the current x4 955/965. The decide if you want to pay the price difference for the performance incread/decrease.

What I believe is going to help these new chips in gaming more than the extra two cores is the turbo. Three cores boosting up 400-500 mhz will have a bigger affect then adding two more cores.

Reply to someguy7

welshmousepk wrote :

people said the same thing about quads. and in less than a year they have gone from enthusiast only parts that offered no real performance, to the defacto standard in most rigs and a recommended spec for most game releases.

you can say my idea is 'silly', but the fact is right now i cannot encode a video for my ipod at the same time as gaming without a performance hit (at least when i play crysis, or BC2).
when i get a 6 core not only can i do my encoding in the background (which will save me a lot of time) i can even leave every other program i normally shut down, running in the background. hell, i could even leave EVE open in the background to do some mining, and still play another game without bad performance.

Well you better have your games on a different drive then your encoding on or the HDD is gonna be bottlenecking.

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Reply to daship

daship wrote :

Well you better have your games on a different drive then your encoding on or the HDD is gonna be bottlenecking.

yes i do, thank you for caring.

someguy, you are a douche. simple as.

im providing reasons why hex-cores may benefit someone. just because YOU have no need for one, doesnt tmean you should call them useless and tell everyone to avoid them. that is amazingly self-centred.

i never said the OP would see performance gains in gaming, i simply mentioned ways that it can benefit him. if you dont like hex-cores and feel like sticking with a quad, fine. but stay out of threads like these and dont go telling people they are useless.

if you feel like re-reading my post, and noticing i never recomended the OP buy one, you may feel a little better. not that i care, you obviously think the world revovles around you, and that your opinion is fact. good luck with that.