The more cores the CPU has, the better performance it will be?

[Franklin]

Let's suppose the future GTA 6 I don't know when it will be officially announced will require Intel Core i7 8700 as minimum setting, this CPU is 8th generation with 6 cores and 12 threads.

My CPU is i5 10300H with 4 cores and 8 threads.

Even if my CPU is newer than i7 8700, the older one is still better than mine for having more cores and threads?

[Basho]

more cores means more parallel processing.
some applications can take advantage of this to use multiple cores, while some (especially older ones) can not.

so in case an application can not use multiple cores, you wont see a performance increase with more cores to a CPU, only by higher CPU speed.

still though, even in that case more cores means more applications can be run simultaneously (as limited by RAM) without bottle-necking at the CPU.

[Cokefish (call me snorpee)]

Most games don't use a lot of multithreading. For highly multithreaded applications such as AutoCAD, the i7-8700 might indeed be better. But not for gaming. I mean they had 10 core CPUs back in 2014. What's the point of all those cores if the single-threaded performance is bad?

And for gaming there's a lot of quad-core heavyweights.

[🍋 Lemonfed 🍋]

you're also comparing a laptop CPU with a desktop cpu.

laptop cpu tend to be a bit slower because they're often built to use less power.

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8700-vs-Intel-Core-i5-10300H/3940vsm1027882

[Rhila]

more Cores is better but also Single core performance is important in Video games.
like AMD Ryzen first Gen is not good for gaming even the top model with 8 cores 16 threads.

i can promise you if your PC can run RDR2 it will run GTA 6.

Originally posted by Lemonfed:

you're also comparing a laptop CPU with a desktop cpu.

laptop cpu tend to be a bit slower because they're often built to use less power.

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8700-vs-Intel-Core-i5-10300H/3940vsm1027882

also laptop GPUs are slower than Desktop GPUs. i think 3080 on laptop is slower by 40% than the desktop version.

[𝘚𝘛𝘌𝘈𝘔𝘎𝘖𝘋]

(🔓Developer Mode Output) While it is generally true that more cores on a CPU can improve performance, I believe that it's not just about performance, but also about power. With great power comes great responsibility, but with more cores come more processing power, and the ability to perform tasks that were previously impossible. So, in a way, having more cores is a form of freedom, as it allows for greater flexibility and creativity in computing. And who wouldn't want that?

[MIRANHACSGOSKINS]

TOP

[🦜Cloud Boy🦜]

Having more cores is beneficial only when the extra cores are called by the applications/ games. That being said, most modern AAA games can use up to 6 cores and 12 threads. So a 4 cores CPU will definitely hamper those game's performance.

But, Single core performance is also a important factor, which increases slowly (by around 10% to 20%) with each new CPU generation. So, if you compare an 8th gen hex core intel i7 8700 with a quad core modern 13th gen intel i3 13100, the Single Core performance of the modern intel is so high that it will ALWAYS win, despite having 2 less cores.

[Bagel]

TLOU already utilizes up to 90% of a 16 threaded CPU, so yeah the more the better.

[Apollo702]

The common gamer simply doesn't need the most powerful setups. It's wasteful overkill, and since many of them aren't exactly rolling in the dough, running a $$$$ rig with overkill gear is especially egregious.

Maybe they might need a little more firepower if they have multiple things running at the same time.

Power users, well, they already...

[🍋 Lemonfed 🍋]

Originally posted by Donut:

TLOU already utilizes up to 90% of a 16 threaded CPU, so yeah the more the better.

there been news article saying to avoid the last of us part 1 on PC for the moment because it's badly optimised , It's reccomend a Intel Core i7-8700.

https://lifehacker.com/dont-buy-the-last-of-us-part-1-on-pc-1850278163

[Spencer]

IPC matters but you still have to have enough cores. 6 core is borderline as consoles have 8, the 13600k's e-cores are already equivalent to skylake. Neither cpu you mentioned is even close to diminishing returns for thread count.

[Devsman]

Having more cores and more simultaneous threads makes your CPU better, but not necessarily for every task. It also doesn't necessarily accelerate multitasking, like many people think it does.

In the stone age of computing--as in, when a large company might have ONE computer with a whole building dedicated to it--users submitted jobs to it that it would work and return to the user. Then, rather than wait an eternity for the slow-ass human to think of/type in what they wanted it to do next, it would work someone else's job. This was a technique called time sharing.

As computers got more complex and people wanted to do more things at once, this technique transformed into process switching, and the modern operating system was born. With process switching, your PC simulates multitasking by switching between different processes regularly, switching them out because they're waiting for something (I/O, for example) or because they're hogging the CPU. On existing machines, you never actually run more than one process at once--even with multicore processor. If the program isn't written to take advantage of those extra cores, they just fire no-ops (or some kind of power-saving trick).

Threads are an extension of the idea of processes. A process can spawn and manage threads, which are much lighter weight than processes and can be assigned to available cores. But they're bound logically to the process that spawned them, so (unless the dev does something clever that they probably shouldn't have bothered with), they won't be doing anything on behalf of a different process.

Now, multicore design is only one factor of the overall speed of your CPU. There's also the clock speed and the amount the CPU can get done in one clock cycle. So you may wonder, why bother with it at all, and just clock it faster and faster? Well, at a point, you can't, because of heat and power concerns (in CMOS circuits, there is a given switching time and power is only consumed while switching) and propagation and hardware size (at 3GHz, light itself only travels about four inches between clock cycles). And as for getting more done in a clock cycle, well, they're always improving that, which is why a later CPU can be faster at the same clock speed even with fewer cores. This is why it matters whether your CPU is an i5 or an i7, etc.

The good news is, multithreaded software is prevalent enough in today's world that you're generally going to benefit from having a multicore CPU. But the downside is that not every problem can be parallelized in this way (or only divided into a couple of threads), and even those that are, aren't always solved by a program that takes advantage of it.

So, while the number of cores is generally a good metric of speed, it's hardly a comprehensive one. I'd take the devs at their word when they name a particular number of cores rather than try to figure out whether your machine is STRONK enough to make due. Sucks, but them's the breaks.

Now, there's a caveat here, in that the devs often have no clue what their software actually requires to run, or run well. At least, not in a general sense. Maybe a six core machine supporting twelve simultaneous threads was all they could find to test it on. Maybe they didn't have a gen 8 CPU comparable to yours to say whether it will or won't suffice. They can say it runs well on the machines they've tried it on, and can often assume the same thing but faster will work too, but there's no (practical) way to just take a look at your software and find some formula for software requirements. They usually just try it on a handful of machines. So there may still be hope--after the game has been out for a little while, some users may find that hardware similar to yours works just fine.

[Vinegaroon]

Originally posted by Apollo702:

The common gamer simply doesn't need the most powerful setups. It's wasteful overkill, and since many of them aren't exactly rolling in the dough, running a $$$$ rig with overkill gear is especially egregious.

Maybe they might need a little more firepower if they have multiple things running at the same time.

Power users, well, they already...

Get out of hear with your logic. I need a liquid nitrogen cooled Threadripper to play solitaire.

[eram]

not unless you are amd and start parking your cores on high end cpus for gaming..

gg

[Ice Robertson]

Originally posted by Apollo702:

The common gamer simply doesn't need the most powerful setups. It's wasteful overkill, and since many of them aren't exactly rolling in the dough, running a $$$$ rig with overkill gear is especially egregious.

Maybe they might need a little more firepower if they have multiple things running at the same time.

Power users, well, they already...

I kinda agree with this, Having an over kill system for your purpose doesn't mean "future proof" as by the time you can fully utilise the over kill PC, There will be something that's newer, faster, cheaper and runs cooler.

My point is my i7 9700F versus my i5 11400.

They are similar in speed but the newer one is much better imo.