Having spent an extensive amount of time playing games on a dual core Tegra 2 Android tablet, I can only imagine how much better gaming must be on the new quad core Tegra 3-powered Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. Why? Because I don’t have one. Joanna Stern at The Verge does, however, so we’ll let her tell us how it games.
This may look like a giant black metal box on top of my dining room table, but inside said box is AMD’s answer to the gaming PC. This is Codename: Spider. The system combines the AMD Phenom Quad-core processor, the new ATI Radeon 3800 series of graphics cards, and AMD’s 790FX chipset to create what AMD considers not just a computer, but a platform all its own. With the processor, chipset, and graphics all created by AMD and designed specifically to work in conjunction with each other, they are calling it “the ultimate computing experience with amazing scalability and exceptional efficiency.” As a testament to their faith in the system, AMD included both Stranglehold and Crysis with the Spider to aid me in testing system performance. Yes, that Crysis. Bold move, AMD.
Truth be told, I was a complete AMD man until a friend of mine convinced me to ditch my aging Athalon 64 FX for an Intel dual core processor. We’ll see if they manage to win me back with what they’ve packed inside this demo system.
If you’re doing high-end video or 3D rendering or trying to build your own T-1000, then the answer has always been “yes”. As for gaming, well, other than Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander, most titles have been unable to capitalise on the extra grunt afforded by three extra cores.
What about next-gen, then? Like really next-gen? Anandtech got its hands on a variety of dual and quad-core processors and benchmarked them using a beta of the Unreal Tournament 3 demo. A beta of a demo? Yes, you read that right.
So what was the conclusion?
Quite possibly the biggest takeaway from this comparison is the dramatic improvement in multi-threaded game development over the past couple of years. Starting from a point where none of our game benchmarks were multi-threaded just two years ago, here we are today with the latest and greatest from Epic, and seeing huge gains from one to two cores, and promising improvements when moving to four cores.
Quad-core gaming is still years away from being relevant (much less a requirement), but the industry has come a tremendous distance in an honestly very short period of time.
My Q6600-based PC currently sits in disrepair as I wait for new components, but it’s good to know I’ve invested in my gaming future.
Anyone out there with a supergun-like PC? Post your specs!
Unreal Tournament 3 CPU & High End GPU Analysis: Next-Gen Gaming Explored [Anandtech]
