Cores or clock?

February 24, 2009 9:34 PM

Help me sort out the tradeoffs between a faster dual core or a slower quad core processor.

I have a desktop PC that I do all of my day-to-day computing on. The only processor intensive stuff I do is gaming and video editing with Vegas 8. Unfortunately, the newer games are getting a little sluggish, I've moved up from MiniDV to AVCHD video, and my 2.13Ghz Core 2 Duo isn't really cutting it anymore. I'd like to upgrade the processor, and it looks like I can get a Core 2 Duo in the 3Ghz range or a Core 2 Quad around 2.3Ghz for about the same price. My motherboard will handle either processor just fine.

My dilemma is whether I should go for cores or clock speed. It still seems that most games only support 1 or 2 cores, so that's one for clock speed. My video editing software will use four cores, but I'm not sure how much advantage I would get over two cores with the faster clock. I'm mostly concerned about performance when editing; rendering performance is secondary but nice-to-have.

Any ideas?

posted by indyz to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Memory, HD setup?
posted by mhuckaba at 10:08 PM on February 24, 2009

How much memory do you have? More memory and a 64-bit OS will do wonders for video editing. That might be enough of a boost to hold you over until you can get a full system upgrade.

I would go with the quad core. Recent program and games have been taking advantage of multiple cores. Video editing definitely gets a good boost from it. The argument COULD be made that more cores are better for even games that only take advantage of 1 core, since background processes won't eat into the core that is running the game... but if I were you I would look for some actual benchmarks between the two for gaming.

In regards to gaming, I think that the video card is going to determine performance more than any of those processors (for most games).
posted by nickerbocker at 10:12 PM on February 24, 2009

One of our workstations is a multi-purpose beast, and hands down I have to recommend Quad core. It's buttery smooth no matter what we throw at it. It's an older box (relatively speaking) but has worked very well under a variety of harsh conditions from video to 3d content development, to a renderfarm node, to gaming.

Quick specs:
Motherboard: ASUS P5K Deluxe
CPU: Quad core (2.53gHz)
RAM: 8GB
Video: Geforce 8800 series
Hard drives:
OS drive is a 10,000 RPM SATA
Data is 3 x 500GB SATA drives in a RAID5 configuration
OS: Vista 64bit edition

Provided that you have adequate subsystem speed - a good hard drive setup is a must, plenty of ram never hurts (as long as your OS can see all of it), and as nickerbocker said, the video card is often the bottleneck with newer games.... you should be ready to tackle just about anything.
posted by FrotzOzmoo at 11:01 PM on February 24, 2009

I bought a core 2 quad ( q6600 ) and oc'd it from 2.4 to 3.0 on the stock intel heat sink fan. Same performance as the core two duo plus two extra cores for same price.
posted by nuke3ae at 4:57 AM on February 25, 2009

If you're doing video processing, the program you're most likely using is capable of using all 4 quads, which would make it faster in such multi-core applications. In non-multicore apps, the higher speed C2D should be faster than the C2Q.
That said, unless price is an issue...if it's capable of the 3.0 C2D, I'm assuming you're referring to the e8400 in which case your MB should be able to use something better than a 2.3 C2Q, though it might require BIOS flash.

Same performance as the core two duo plus two extra cores for same price.

True, but generally speaking, you can overclock the 3.0 C2D to 3.5 without any voltage increases and it is not incredibly difficult to get 4.0 stable.
posted by jmd82 at 6:22 AM on February 25, 2009

The "new system build" section of Tom's Hardware forum has some really good info on system upgrades and new builds

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum-31-322.html

jmd82 I def agree about being able to get the e8400 up to 4.0. The e8400 and the q6600 are really good processors imo
posted by nuke3ae at 6:42 AM on February 25, 2009

N'th the quad-core option. I run a slightly OC'ed Q6600 and have nothing but good things to say about it. But as others have said, the C2D that you have is a good processor, so I wonder if the bottleneck might be elsewhere.

Can you post your full specs?
posted by coolin86 at 6:55 AM on February 25, 2009

Yeah, if you're doing very heavy multitasking or your stuff can use all four cores, go for the quad. The dual core at the faster clock rate will probably be faster in games, though; a lot of them still can't fully take advantage of multiple cores. But a lot of them aren't CPU-bound either, so check benchmarks.

However, I really agree with coolin86; a 2.13 GHz C2D is a pretty good processor, so it would be interesting to see your full specs.
posted by musicinmybrain at 7:34 AM on February 25, 2009

Not much software is currently designed for multi-threading, but if/when that happens, the more cores the merrier.
posted by JuiceBoxHero at 9:37 AM on February 25, 2009

Thanks for all of the replies. Regarding the specs, I have an older Asus P5B motherboard, 2GB DDR2 800 RAM (although I've ordered 4GB), 7200RPM SATA drives, and I'm still running 32-bit Windows XP. I know I should be on a 64-bit OS, but until now I haven't had much motivation to upgrade from XP. I was thinking about trying the Windows 7 beta, but I'm worried that I could be left hanging if the beta period ends before the official release.
posted by indyz at 11:16 AM on February 25, 2009