Fast single core or medium speed multi?

[gremlin_mick 10]

Looking to upgrade my PC.

 

Is a fast Pentium single core a better bet than a medium speed Core 2 or Core2Duo?

 

Mainly the machine is used for gaming, nothing hardcore like Crysis or COD, more like Company of Heroes and the like. I WOULD like some speed and OOOmph, but nothing mental. (I'm a cheap git )

 

I cant decide!!

[Trickle 10]

A 3.6 ghz P4 might just be faster than a 1.6-1.8 ghz Core 2 on some older exclusively single threaded applications. Any current software you buy will use at least 2 cores, though. A 3.6ghz P4 will chew through at least as much power as a 3ghz I7 on full bore. A core 2 wont. Most core 2s will overclock >3ghz (depending on motherboard).

 

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=101&p2=92

[orbrey 10]

Get one of the cheap core2's and overclock it. I had an E1200 oc'd from 1.6GHz to 3.2 on stock voltage, and that's a £40 processor

[steelhead31 10]

My 2.4GHz Core2 Duo, is a whole bunch faster than my P4-HT 3.2GHz

[gremlin_mick 10]

Hmmm, I thought as much. Multi >>>> Single.

 

Never occured to me about overclocking a cheap one!

[HarryBustard 10]

This and this may help.

[Guest]

Yep, bottom of the range C2Ds are usually very overclockable. Far more efficient than Pentiums too.

[edovar 10]

with P4s intel just kept bumping up the clock speed instead of actually working out more efficient ways of doing stuff. Chips from amd with much lower clock speeds were still much better. this has changed now with intel multi core

[rich5315 10]

mick ive always been told that when it comes to processors pentiums are the quickest when you want to run just one program at once, if you want to run 3 or 4 things at once an athlon will blind it ive an athlon 9500 quad, 3 yrs old now it blinds my partners intel thats similar the mother board will take 5gb of memory as well

Edited August 13, 2009 by rich5315
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[Guest]

mick ive always been told that when it comes to processors pentiums are the quickest when you want to run just one program at once, if you want to run 3 or 4 things at once an athlon will blind it ive an athlon 9500 quad, 3 yrs old now it blinds my partners intel thats similar the mother board will take 5gb of memory as well

 

Who told you that? I'd love to know what they were on. Also since Intel released the Core 2 Duos and Quads they basically walk all over anything AMD have done. I think some of the newer Phenoms are better.

 

Just go and find some reviews.

[Cyclone 10]

It's not just a number of cores question when you are comparing P4 and C2 processors, the architecture is completely different. As people have already said, the C2 is much more efficient, it does more per cycle and has a shorter pipe line (a major cause of inefficiency in the P4 due to branch prediction being inaccurate).

At the moment I'd take a C2 or i7 over any P4 that's still available. The only reason to go with P4 would be if you're upgrading an existing rig and it can't take a C2.