number of cpu's cores performance impact

[tryshkhan]

Hello, I'm Robert, and i would like to ask you a question. I own an AMD Athlon II X4 750k , a quad core cpu with no L3 cache with each 2 cores using the same cache. My question is :if i select from bios to use only 2 cores instead of all 4, supposedly with its very own cache, will performance be improved in single threaded games or game with would use only 2 cores?

 

[HardwareExtreme]

No, single core performance will NOT be affected if you disable cpu cores. Additionally, most games use at least 4 cores.
Single core performance is based on a number of things, including clockspeed, and IPC (instructions per clock). Basically, overclocking would give you a boost in single core performance, but disabling cores won't, since all that does is make it so you have two less cores running.

 

[tryshkhan]

but as 2 cores share the same cache, giving them only 2 cores with it's own cache, doesn't help getting the cpu usage ? coz i have low fps with 50% for every each core.

 

[photonboy]

agreed.
Also, Windows and background applications may eat up a big chunk of one of those cores anyway so you don't want to remove those.

(Windows is in general pretty good at thread management to avoid issues with game code thread jumping causing low performance)

Even though the CPU is fairly weak it can still play many games nicely. In fact, depending on what GPU you have upgrading to a new graphics card (like GTX1050Ti) may be the best upgrade you can hope to do for a reasonable amount of money.