“Quad Core vs Dual Core” Shootout: Intel’s Q9550s vs. E8600, Part Two
Test Configuration
Test Configuration – Hardware
*Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S (engineering sample reference 2.83 GHz; overclocked to 3.40 Ghz, 3.62 Ghz and 3.99 Ghz).
*Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 (reference 3.33 GHz; overclocked to 3.99 Ghz and 4.25 Ghz ).
* ASUS Rampage Formula (Intel X48 chipset, latest BIOS. PCIe 2.0 specification; crossfire 16x+16x).
* ASUS P5e-Deluxe (Intel X48 chipset, latest BIOS. PCIe 2.0 specification; crossfire 16x+16x).
* 4 GB DDR2-PC8500 RAM (2×2 GB, dual-channel at PC6400 speeds).
* Nvidia GeForce GTX280 (1 GB, nVidia reference clocks) by BFGTech
* ATi Radeon 4870 (1GB, reference clocks) by ASUS
* Onboard SupremeFX-II (ASUS P5e Deluxe motherboard daughter-card)
* 2 – Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives [setup identically, except for the graphics cards]
Test Configuration – Software
* ATi Catalyst 8.12hotfix, highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver; Catalyst AI set to “advanced”
* nVidia Geforce 181.22, high quality driver setting, LOD clamp enabled.
* Windows Vista 32-bit SP1; very latest updates
* DirectX November 2008.
* All games patched to their latest versions.
Test Configuration – Settings
* vsync off in the driver to “application decide” and never in game.
* 4xAA only enabled in-game; all settings at maximum 16xAF applied in game [or in CP except as noted; No AA/AF for Crysis]
* All results show average, minimum and maximum frame rates
* Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
* Vista32, all DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths
NOTE!!
Catalyst 8.12 HOTFIX.
* Improves DirectX10 performance in various applications in multi-core CPU systems
Known issue:
The Catalyst Control Center 3D settings option, Anisotropic Filtering does not currently work when running DirectX 10 applications – Anisotropic Filtering must be enabled within the application
We found with later testing that Catalyst 8.12 and 9.1 are quite similar and in Part III of our Shootout focusing on multi-GPU, we will start with Catalyst 9-2 and the latest Geforce drivers with a much larger sample of actual game benchmarks than presented here.
GTAIV and L4D would have been good games to add to this suite. Looks like there still isn’t a huge difference in dual vs. quad as long as you have enough speed, even in games that are multithreaded, although I think you’ll see bigger differences when you move to your Xfire tests.
Thanks for the comments. L4D is Source Engine and will scale just like HL2 which I will test next. It takes quite a bit of time to create reliable custom timedemos. Look for CoD4 to be added in the CrossFire tests which will be in a more detailed review in a couple of weeks.
In the meantime, I have a nice comparison of Phenom II vs. Athlon X2-6000+ – both with SLI’d GTX280s; probably next weekend. I will present an extreme example of CPU scaling – in some extreme cases, the frame rates doubled with the faster CPU.
Ah, I thought L4D was multi-threaded unlike a lot of Source games, but I could be mistaken.
And I’m looking forward to your AMD shootout, because I essentially have an Athlon 6000+ and I feel I’m CPU-limited in a few games, specifically TF2.
It is true that the newer Source games are enhanced and more demanding than the earlier ones. Multi-threading is probably improved. I probably will pick L4D up as a benchmark, although Source is really not one of the more demanding engines.
Here is the Source Engine Wiki:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Engine_Features
“Multi-core. Source engine games utilize multi-core processors in both the PC and XBox 360 to deliver high-performance gaming experiences.”
The benchmarking is complete on the AMD shootout and I believe you will find the results moving from 6000+ to Phenom II much more extreme than in this current one.
We start out with a 6000+ in an AM2 board – nforce 590 based (Abit AN932x SLI); then we upgraded the board to an AM2+ ASUS Crosshair Formula II board (nforce 780A based), for Phenom II. Benchmarks were run on the performance difference from nforce 590 to 780a with the 6000+. Then with Phenom II. Everything else in the system stayed the same with SLI’d GTX280s. Of course, the OS was reinstalled but stayed as Vista64 throughout the benching.
The source engine shows very little benefit from multi-core. The touted improvements Valve promised (scaling to n-cores) have only been demonstrated in their map building tools, but not in actual games.
It’s also capped at ~300 FPS, so it skews maximum framerates above that.
Nice, makes me feel fine with a dual core still. I had thought that by now quad cores would be implemented better, guess that isn’t the case.
Thanks for the info. I’m just speaking from experience with the Source engine. When I enable multicore support in TF2 (using mat_queue_mode), my framerates (subjectively speaking) jump up by at least 50%. In some spots on maps, my framerate will drop below 30 without mat_queue_mode set to 2, but with it my framerate usually stays above 40. The bad part is that the game likes to crash itself and my system.
Also L4D, even during heavy action, runs (and looks, IMO) much better than TF2, although I haven’t done any testing with the game’s setting itself.