Dual core to quad core upgrade gaming

[tomskinoonoo]

Hey Just got a HIS IceQ X 6950 got 4gig of DDR3 and Im running games like skyrim and crisis ultra 1080 res, but fps must be under 30's its a bit under the point where a game looks 'smooth'. I want it smooth! Ive currently got a Phenom II X2 545 3 Ghz and im thinking its the snag, looking to get a quad but dont want to buy something that wont change anything. any reccomendations? got £100-200 to spend and it will have to be a phenom. Ta!

 

[thently]

Yes for sure get a faster and more core processor. Try this

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-phenom-ii-x4-960t-black-edition-s-am3-30ghz-8mb-cache-95w-retail

Their are 6 core out there too your call.

Thent

 

[jaguarskx]

Most games do not use more than 2 cores, the are some that can use 3 cores, and very few that can use 4 cores. Skyrim and Crysis are examples of games that only use two cores.

A quad core can marginally improve performance of games that only use two cores because background processes can run on the two other cores. But background processes generally do not use much processing power. To ensure games run faster, then you must buy a processor that is clocked faster than your current CPU. Therefore, you need to look for a Phenom II X4 that is faster than 3.0GHz.

Also, after a certain point as long as the CPU is fast enough, you may not see much of an improvement in performance (if any) as long as the CPU is not bottlenecking the graphics card.

 

[jaguarskx]

Here's is the CPU scaling for Skyrim. Having more cores generally does not improve performance.

However, increasing the clockspeed of the CPU does improve performance.

Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html




Here's is the CPU scaling for Crysis Warhead. Again, having more cores generally does not improve performance.

Source: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,661004/Crysis-Warhead-Scalability-of-CPU-clock-speed-and-number-of-cores/Reviews/