The first test I ran was PC Mark 2005 which includes some
multi-threading elements. Looking at the
results of the benchmarks it’s easy to see that even with a lower clock speed, the
multi-threaded 820 scored almost 700 PC Marks higher than the single core 630. This really shows off what a second core can
do in terms of performance.
Gaming performance is another matter. Looking at the numbers
it’s easy to tell that most games are not written to take advantage of dual
core CPU’s. I thought there was an
outside chance the F.E.A.R might but it looks like that’s not the case. It’s pretty easy to tell that most games are
more GPU bound than CPU bound right now.
The good news is that there are already developers who are looking to
take advantage of this new tech (such as Epic putting support for dual cores in
Unreal Tournament 2007).
While I was working on the review of the chip Nvidia
released the 81.85 version of the drivers which included added support for dual
core CPU’s. They didn’t release a lot
of information about the specifics of this support but since it was relevant to
the review I re-ran all of the benchmarks to see what kind of performance boost
the new drivers actually provided.
For the most part the new drivers provided little to no
boost in framerate (or a slight decrease).
The exception was Doom 3 which saw a fairly significant boost in framerate
with the new drivers. Again as this
technology is refined the more likely you are to see increased in frame rate.
A nice side benefit of using a dual core processor is that
multi-tasking is a lot faster and easier.
When I’m working on items for the site it’s not unusual for me to have
four or five different applications open and with the dual core processor,
performing multiple tasks was a lot faster and more reliable than usual the
single core processor.
If you are building a strictly gaming rig and are just
focused on performance for the next year you may want to pass on the dual core
processors for now. However if you plan
on keeping the processor for a while then the dual core line from Intel is certainly
worth looking as they are priced competitively with single core
processors. They also represent one of
the few hardware purchases that might actually provide faster performance in
the next year or so as software developers learn to program for the new
hardware.
B-
If you’re going to be building an Intel rig there’s no reason to not get a dual core chip. The 820 is a solid entry point into the dual core world.
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