Get 8G of RAM now - you probably won't even use all of that. Just make sure to leave a pair of slots free for it (2x4 8G Kit, not a 4x2 8G kit).
Then, if you need more RAM later on, get it once you need it. Until 64-bit programs start to become commonplace (and that has been "Any Day Now(tm)" for a really long time), 8G is more than enough for most gaming PCs.
Sure, RAM is cheap, and you can never have too much. You can also pay for a lot of it that will never get used. If you were planning on getting enough to RAM drive part of it, you could make a case, but 16G isn't quite enough to be able to do that and be able to do much useful with it.
If you are going to go overbudget - do it by upgrading the GPU, not by going from an i5 to an i7. i5 to i7 is a jump you will almost certainly be guaranteed to never be able to notice while gaming. Spending an extra $100 on a GPU - that will be noticeable immediately unless your already spending $500+ on one.
Honestly, I completely see where your coming from. At this point, I think I'm at the point of completely over thinking it and that the base build that I most recently linked is the best option. Although the combo is out of stock and is now requiring me to go with a giga mobo instead but as so many folks have stated, they seem to be very good and preferable. It is pushing the price up, as I look at it now I'm at 964 but some of the shipping charges went up cause sales are over. So may want to wait till thursday for any other special deals but I think at this point I am gonna go with that and call it a day unless anyone else can make a strong case for something else.
I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure there are at least some games that use more than 2 cores. But the performance gains from 2 to 4 cores may be an illusion. I think some portion of the gained performance from 4 core CPUs are due to the increased CPU cache sizes, and not necessarily more cores.
I think it would be interesting if some benchmarks were done with quad core CPUs, with 2 cores disabled, to see how much benefit the increased cache sizes are offering.
Originally posted by jusomdude I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure there are at least some games that use more than 2 cores. But the performance gains from 2 to 4 cores may be an illusion. I think some portion of the gained performance from 4 core CPUs are due to the increased CPU cache sizes, and not necessarily more cores.
There are some, but not a lot, which was the point he was trying to make. I can only think of 3 or 4 off the top of my head. Is it enough to recommend a quad core over a dual core? Absolutely, and I think it's clear the trend is towards actually utilizing 3-4 cores. And even on games that don't scale well past 2 cores, having 2+n cores allows you to play the game well and do something in the background (I almost always have a web browser + some other programs open when I play on my PC) without impacting your game.
And of those games, they tend to plateau out at 4 cores, and I can't think of any games that get a real benefit beyond that. The biggest reason is probably because most of the work is graphics, which is already parceled out to the GPU - there isn't a whole lot left over for a CPU to do past that.
So, then, is it enough to recommend going to more than 4 cores? And there, I don't think so. I do often recommend an FX6300 over a FX4300 - simply because you get 2 more cores for like $20US and I think that presents a very good value. But, whne it comes strictly to gaming, I can't see paying an extra $100 for an i7 over an i5 for 4 more hyperthreaded cores (which may or may not present as much performance increase as AMD's 2 actual cores).
Games won't require more than 8 GB of memory until they're comfortable that the bulk of their playerbase has more than 8 GB. A game that requires hardware that hardly anyone has isn't likely to be successful. Needing more than 8 GB of memory for games could easily be a decade away.
It's also important to recognize that there is an enormous difference between:
a) a game will use hardware X if you have it,
b) a game will perform better if you have hardware X or better than if you don't, and
c) you need hardware X or better in order to play a game.
For a distinction between (b) and (c), I'll cite SSDs. I'm not aware of any games that require an SSD to play, but most will load faster if you have one. That's obviously possible in other ways, too, such as hardware X allowing you to run a game at higher graphical settings.
Plenty of games will use eight cores if you have them. If some substantial portion of the game engine scales well to many cores, why not use them? If you've got more than four logical cores (either a quad core plus hyperthreading or a true 6+ core processor), try checking Task Manager while playing a variety of games. If it shows significant activity on more than four cores, the game is probably using more than four cores.
But (a) does not imply (b); if having eight cores and using all eight runs a game at 70 frames per second, while running the same game at the same settings on a quad core also gives you 70 frames per second, having eight cores doesn't really benefit you in that game. But it doesn't mean that the game isn't using the cores. Maybe it's using the cores to get the CPU part of setting up stuff to pass to the video card to draw done sooner in each frame, but you're still waiting on either the video card or the rendering thread so your frame rate doesn't measurably budge. That's actually very easy to do in a game engine.
It's also important to note that some types of hardware are much more forgiving to you not having as good as would be ideal. If your video card is only half as powerful as necessary to run a game at max settings, that's no big deal to most reasonable people: you turn down a few settings and carry on. But performance tends to fall off a cliff when you run out of memory, and if you only have half as much memory as a game would like to use, it's probably not going to be playable. So developers are comfortable with offering a better gameplay experience for higher end video cards than most of their market has, but not with doing likewise with system memory.
-----
On a personal note, for a project I'm working on, not only will the game use as many cores as you've got, but you actually will see some small benefit from more cores. More cores will let you load things faster, both upon initially entering the game and upon teleporting. The difference between four cores and eight might only mean you save a second of loading time here and there, but there is actual benefit, albeit small. Other than loading, the game will still use as many cores as you've got, but the benefit of more than four cores will at best be a fraction of a percentage point in frame rates outside of some really pathological corner cases.
First of all, there is already 2 games which cannot start without 4 cores, and if u go with a dual core processor, u won't be able to play any Frostbite engine(2/3+ of EA Games), or most upcoming Ubisoft games.
Even if u download a fix to make the game run(which might require actually applying a crack on a legitimate version depending on the game !), you're gonna be greeted by performance so abysmal, you'll be regretting your purchase instantly, anyone recommending 2-core cpus now is not following where the industry is going, and is still stuck in the past.
And i would have agreed that 2 core is enough for the present all the way up until november 2014, however not anymore.
Same with ram, my pc uses 6GB not doing anything with only chrome,steam,battle net and the core programs for my various pc parts. and That's when i don't have many tabs open. At 6/8GB all of your remaining ram is already pre-allocated and u have 0 clean ram available, i'd like to see anyone here run a game that uses 2GB ram and an additional 1GB in secondary processes run properly at this bottleneck(and yes a game doesn't need to be 64 bit to use more than 2GB RAM, ...).
So i'll just ask you are u an avid multitasker and/or keep more than 10 tabs open in your browser(alt-tab regularly or use a second monitor), while running a few extra background programs by default ? If yes u need 16GB of ram. If not 8GB will be enough for you.
Same with ram, my pc uses 6GB not doing anything with only chrome,steam,battle net and the core programs for my various pc parts. and That's when i don't have many tabs open. At 6/8GB all of your remaining ram is already pre-allocated and u have 0 clean ram available, i'd like to see anyone here run a game that uses 2GB ram and an additional 1GB in secondary processes run properly at this bottleneck(and yes a game doesn't need to be 64 bit to use more than 2GB RAM, ...).
Unless you're counting prefetching in that 6 GB total, either you're doing something wrong or else you're being intentionally wasteful because you have a ton and it doesn't matter. I've only got 4 GB of memory, and occasionally it means I have to close some browser tabs while gaming or something like that, but it's otherwise never been a problem. Now, I wouldn't recommend buying only 4 GB today, as it probably won't be enough for all that much longer. But if 4 GB today is enough in spite of Windows wanting well over 1 GB by itself, 8 GB is probably going to be enough for quite a while. For comparison, 2 GB ceased to be enough sometime around 2007 or 2008 or so.
Another important factor is that even if you do need more memory later, it will probably be cheaper to buy that extra memory later. Given a choice between spending $150 on 16 GB today or spending $75 on 8 GB today and then $30 to buy another 8 GB in three years, the latter is cheaper. Indeed, it's likely that buying 8 GB today and also buying 16 GB (16 additional, not just 8 additional to make 16 total) three years from today will be cheaper than buying 16 GB today.
First of all, there is already 2 games which cannot start without 4 cores, and if u go with a dual core processor, u won't be able to play any Frostbite engine(2/3+ of EA Games), or most upcoming Ubisoft games.
Even if u download a fix to make the game run(which might require actually applying a crack on a legitimate version depending on the game !), you're gonna be greeted by performance so abysmal, you'll be regretting your purchase instantly, anyone recommending 2-core cpus now is not following where the industry is going, and is still stuck in the past.
And i would have agreed that 2 core is enough for the present all the way up until november 2014, however not anymore.
Same with ram, my pc uses 6GB not doing anything with only chrome,steam,battle net and the core programs for my various pc parts. and That's when i don't have many tabs open. At 6/8GB all of your remaining ram is already pre-allocated and u have 0 clean ram available, i'd like to see anyone here run a game that uses 2GB ram and an additional 1GB in secondary processes run properly at this bottleneck(and yes a game doesn't need to be 64 bit to use more than 2GB RAM, ...).
So i'll just ask you are u an avid multitasker and/or keep more than 10 tabs open in your browser(alt-tab regularly or use a second monitor), while running a few extra background programs by default ? If yes u need 16GB of ram. If not 8GB will be enough for you.
It depends on the type of dual core it is... for instance, an i3 will be treated as 4 core due to hyperthreading, and they actually benefit from it compaired to i7s which rarely do.
There's no way I'd recommend a core 2 or Pentium G.
the i3 series actually is pretty good if you're on a tight budget. I haven't had any problems running with i3 3220. Yeah if you got the money, just buy an i5 or i7, you'll get better performance for some amount of games, but for some the performance difference won't even be noticed if you had an i3.
I've been playing same Battlefield 3, and it runs fine. I was thinking about getting BF4, but since hardline is coming out soon I'm not sure I want to.
DDR3 will not get any cheaper, it's gonna start going up in price in about 6-9 months with a possible minimal decrease in price up until spring(all of course depending how the decrease in price for DDR4 goes, and when full mobo/cpu suport for DDR4 launches)
My Chrome browser is using 3GB now, skype+steam+battle net are using 0.5GB, my graphic driver+sound driver are using 0.2-0.3GB, which while not counting core windows programs comes to around 4GB, my windows 7 is using between 1.5GB-2GB.
If i turn The Secret world on now for instance, its gonna eat up about 1.5GB+ another 0.5GB in secondary processes.
basic math tells me that comes to exactly 8GB, ...
Take a spin around Dragon Age Inquisition and Far Cry 4, tell me how the dual core is working , oh boy are u in a big suprise for next year, if u play flagship,aaa games
hardware requirements and average performance are almost exponential higher for dragon age compared to bf3, and it's basically almost the same engine.
I too am running an old Intel Core duo at 2.6 ghz. My Samsung Pro has more horsepower. But at least I use a AMD 7870. I plan on replacing the MB, Memory, and cpu when Broadwell comes out.
I have seen so many people recommending an i7 for games. While i7 is a very powerful processor, it will be a waste of cores. Can someone give me an example of 2-3 games that actually use more than 2 cores?
The need for 8 virtual cores (4 physical and 4 by hyperthreading) for games is simply stupid. It helps the system response as a whole, but for games, will be completely ignored. The games that use 2 cores, use the 2nd one for certain FX or AI calculations only.
In games you only need raw power per core, which sadly AMD doesn't give with their current product line.
Aim for a 2-4 core, at the highest clock (either stock or overclock) you can get. An i5 for games is more than adequate, again games do not use more than 2 cores.
While changing from a Intel Core Duo (which had 2 cores, but hyperthreading), to an i5 with 4 cores without hyperthreading. You will not see much difference in daily Windows usage (like browsing), because for the OS both chips are 4 cores. But you will see a huge improvement in the games due to the performance difference between those 2 chips at the core level.
For motherboard any cheap motherboard with the specs you want will suffice. Most boards these days allows for 2 way video card for around $130 for the board.
For video cards, check the monthly Tomshardware guide and choose according to your budget. Usually their recommendations are good. The only thing you should keep in mind is that if you have (or plan to have) a big list of Physx titles, then a Nvidia card will be a better choice, othersiwe stay with the recommended on the guide.
Also I saw some people recommending SSD. If you can afford one, get one small one for the OS only. Games, specially MMOs end up upgrading constantly and those SSD have a short lifespan that will probably get burned really fast with those kind of games.
I picked up a 240 gb SSD just before Christmas from Amazon for $75 (have a 120gb now). Will go into the system rebuild.
When I find something I can't run, I'll think about upgrading, but so far haven't found anything. From everything I've seen regarding DAI, it runs fine on i3s. Not interested in FC4. I'll have to see how hardline runs.
Originally posted by Quizzical Games won't require more than 8 GB of memory until they're comfortable that the bulk of their playerbase has more than 8 GB. A game that requires hardware that hardly anyone has isn't likely to be successful.
You say that, and yet Quake was a resounding success, and I credit it for single-handedly pushing hardware forward. You could make a strong case for the original Crysis as well.
Games aren't made or broken on the basis of them pushing hardware, they are made or broken on the basis of it being a good game: a great game can push consumers to the hardware to match it.
That being said, there is a big difference between a good game that struggles on hardware and gets called "unoptimized" and a great game that struggles on hardware and actually pushes people to upgrade hardware.
Originally posted by NightHaveN Also I saw some people recommending SSD. If you can afford one, get one small one for the OS only. Games, specially MMOs end up upgrading constantly and those SSD have a short lifespan that will probably get burned really fast with those kind of games.
I just saw this part and wanted to throw the BS flag. Get and SSD and use it.
Yes, it has a limited lifespan, but so does everything. SSDs will not burn out unnesccarily early just because you patch an MMO on it.
In order to exhaust an SSD early, you basically need to write/rewrite some high multiple of it's capacity, every day, for it to "burn out" before a typical drive's 3-5 year average lifespan. You aren't going to do that playing, or patching, MMOs. Heck, even if you installed a new MMO and patched it every single day you still aren't going to come close to that.
Originally posted by 13lake @Quizzical DDR3 will not get any cheaper, it's gonna start going up in price in about 6-9 months with a possible minimal decrease in price up until spring(all of course depending how the decrease in price for DDR4 goes, and when full mobo/cpu suport for DDR4 launches)My Chrome browser is using 3GB now, skype+steam+battle net are using 0.5GB, my graphic driver+sound driver are using 0.2-0.3GB, which while not counting core windows programs comes to around 4GB, my windows 7 is using between 1.5GB-2GB.If i turn The Secret world on now for instance, its gonna eat up about 1.5GB+ another 0.5GB in secondary processes.basic math tells me that comes to exactly 8GB, ... @Jusomdude Take a spin around Dragon Age Inquisition and Far Cry 4, tell me how the dual core is working , oh boy are u in a big suprise for next year, if u play flagship,aaa games hardware requirements and average performance are almost exponential higher for dragon age compared to bf3, and it's basically almost the same engine.
My Chrome is using 594 MB now and the rest of the processes running are 414 MB. Once I start a game, all will go into a page file anyway since I am running games in fullscreen.
Your point? That your windows and chrome are littered with garbage?
Bioware's last 3 titles aren't using their proprietary engine, and this is the result - 2 of them were utter crap performance wise.
DAI is primarily console title ported on PC and in no way represents hardware requirements of PC games. With the same note, Far Cry 4 is working very fine on G3258. Both are just obscure exceptions.
I have seen so many people recommending an i7 for games. While i7 is a very powerful processor, it will be a waste of cores. Can someone give me an example of 2-3 games that actually use more than 2 cores?
The need for 8 virtual cores (4 physical and 4 by hyperthreading) for games is simply stupid. It helps the system response as a whole, but for games, will be completely ignored. The games that use 2 cores, use the 2nd one for certain FX or AI calculations only.
In games you only need raw power per core, which sadly AMD doesn't give with their current product line.
Aim for a 2-4 core, at the highest clock (either stock or overclock) you can get. An i5 for games is more than adequate, again games do not use more than 2 cores.
While changing from a Intel Core Duo (which had 2 cores, but hyperthreading), to an i5 with 4 cores without hyperthreading. You will not see much difference in daily Windows usage (like browsing), because for the OS both chips are 4 cores. But you will see a huge improvement in the games due to the performance difference between those 2 chips at the core level.
For motherboard any cheap motherboard with the specs you want will suffice. Most boards these days allows for 2 way video card for around $130 for the board.
For video cards, check the monthly Tomshardware guide and choose according to your budget. Usually their recommendations are good. The only thing you should keep in mind is that if you have (or plan to have) a big list of Physx titles, then a Nvidia card will be a better choice, othersiwe stay with the recommended on the guide.
Also I saw some people recommending SSD. If you can afford one, get one small one for the OS only. Games, specially MMOs end up upgrading constantly and those SSD have a short lifespan that will probably get burned really fast with those kind of games.
I picked up a 240 gb SSD just before Christmas from Amazon for $75 (have a 120gb now). Will go into the system rebuild.
@Nighthaven, what games are these that only run on one core? The last game I had that was bound by a single threaded process was Darkfall, the original game. DFUW ran fine on all four cores, last time I played.
I know this because I always leave Resource Monitor open, on a second screen, just to watch performance.
I would agree that the problem games, or programs, are the ones that are bound by a single thread, and that no amount of spare CPU cores will fix it; only better programming, which the customer cannot control, or a higher GHz can help. i7 4790k has the GHz, which is why I like it.
As for the future, UE4 runs on 4+ cores, I think they said they could support up to 8 or 10, and will work to make it run on more.
Originally posted by Ket_Viliano @Nighthaven, what games are these that only run on one core? The last game I had that was bound by a single threaded process was Darkfall, the original game. DFUW ran fine on all four cores, last time I played.I know this because I always leave Resource Monitor open, on a second screen, just to watch performance.I would agree that the problem games, or programs, are the ones that are bound by a single thread, and that no amount of spare CPU cores will fix it; only better programming, which the customer cannot control, or a higher GHz can help. i7 4790k has the GHz, which is why I like it.As for the future, UE4 runs on 4+ cores, I think they said they could support up to 8 or 10, and will work to make it run on more.
Please do not put words that no one said into others mouth. The poster has never mentioned single cores.
The point you are largely missing is: If the game can "support" +4 cores/threads, does it also mean better performance?
The answer is simple: No.
Multithreading has very severe diminishing returns and more cores simply won't bring more performance, especially when it comes to gaming.
Do u even understand the point of why i wrote what i wrote, or are u just writing stuff for the sake of writing, and just arguing with me, quizzical and everyone else writing helpful posts, and just countering everything we say simply for the sake countering and never providing any proof why it is or is not better, or why do u think that way.
not to mention providing the most awful pc part combinations i've ever seen, it's almost like you are a dell,cyberpower or another employee came here to suggest similar premade builds countering the whole point of building the pc yourself.
U always come out so condensing and argumentative it's hard to take you seriously even when you're right.
OP is undecided, i5 i7 choice mostly finished, so the only indecision is now between 8GB to 16GB, which frankly depends on how he uses/would use his pc.
So i simply point out what type of computer usage would warrant more than 8GB, so that he can compare it to his own usage and decide if he does need more than 8GB.
I'm writing from the standpoint of the person asking help and using my way of usage as a starting point for comparison, as i regularly have ~30-40 tabs open in chrome.
Closing every non-windows essential process every time before u start a game to be able to play it at all is not normal nor regular pc usage, it's a colossal waste of time which can be avoided by only spending ~$50 more for ram, ...
@Nighthaven, what games are these that only run on one core? The last game I had that was bound by a single threaded process was Darkfall, the original game. DFUW ran fine on all four cores, last time I played.
I know this because I always leave Resource Monitor open, on a second screen, just to watch performance.
I would agree that the problem games, or programs, are the ones that are bound by a single thread, and that no amount of spare CPU cores will fix it; only better programming, which the customer cannot control, or a higher GHz can help. i7 4790k has the GHz, which is why I like it.
As for the future, UE4 runs on 4+ cores, I think they said they could support up to 8 or 10, and will work to make it run on more.
Please do not put words that no one said into others mouth. The poster has never mentioned single cores.
The point you are largely missing is: If the game can "support" +4 cores/threads, does it also mean better performance?
The answer is simple: No.
Multithreading has very severe diminishing returns and more cores simply won't bring more performance, especially when it comes to gaming.
Nighthaven made the claim that games do not run on more than two cores, I refuted him, quite solidly. Know of what you speak, before you post.
Games that can run on multiple cores normally push the edge of performance, with more polygons, more use of the physics engine, and much larger textures. Hence, FPS performance will not likely go up, but graphic fidelity does.
Given the same polys, textures, and physics, multithreaded games have higher FPS when run on mulitcore processors, this can be observed. Try it, you might like it.
Games that can run on multiple cores normally push the edge of performance, with more polygons, more use of the physics engine, and much larger textures. Hence, FPS performance will not likely go up, but graphic fidelity does.
Texture resolution and vertex count have nothing to do with more cores. That's a little more data to read off of a hard drive and pass to the video card once in a while, not something that scales well to more CPU cores. If you really want to do higher vertex counts the right way, tessellation means that the CPU doesn't even know how many vertices there are in the model in a given frame.
Games that can run on multiple cores normally push the edge of performance, with more polygons, more use of the physics engine, and much larger textures. Hence, FPS performance will not likely go up, but graphic fidelity does.
Texture resolution and vertex count have nothing to do with more cores. That's a little more data to read off of a hard drive and pass to the video card once in a while, not something that scales well to more CPU cores. If you really want to do higher vertex counts the right way, tessellation means that the CPU doesn't even know how many vertices there are in the model in a given frame.
Gotta disagree with you on a technicality, texture res ( mostly a memory issue ) and vertex count scale so well with more cores, that it gets passed off to the GPU, which has thousands of cores to do the work. But, I figure that is what you really meant.
My point was that most games run on more than 2 CPU cores, and this has been the case for some time now, ever since C++11 included a thread safe SMP library. In any case, all UE4 games run on 4+ cores, this is now standard.
Originally posted by 13lakeI'm writing from the standpoint of the person asking help and using my way of usage as a starting point for comparison, as i regularly have ~30-40 tabs open in chrome.
Yeah, and you alt-tab during your gaming to chrome constantly or even you play in windowed mode so it needs to be loaded into a memory...
Making suggestions based on extreme, non-standard cases and passing them as norm is not helpful.
Originally posted by HulluckI would like to know how one manages so many tabs in a browser. I get 10 or so open when shopping and that becomes a headache.
Please do not go that route, pointing out apparent flaws, ignorance or just being doubtful makes you so argumentative...
Some posters here are apparently always right, regardless.
Comments
Honestly, I completely see where your coming from. At this point, I think I'm at the point of completely over thinking it and that the base build that I most recently linked is the best option. Although the combo is out of stock and is now requiring me to go with a giga mobo instead but as so many folks have stated, they seem to be very good and preferable. It is pushing the price up, as I look at it now I'm at 964 but some of the shipping charges went up cause sales are over. So may want to wait till thursday for any other special deals but I think at this point I am gonna go with that and call it a day unless anyone else can make a strong case for something else.
I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure there are at least some games that use more than 2 cores. But the performance gains from 2 to 4 cores may be an illusion. I think some portion of the gained performance from 4 core CPUs are due to the increased CPU cache sizes, and not necessarily more cores.
I think it would be interesting if some benchmarks were done with quad core CPUs, with 2 cores disabled, to see how much benefit the increased cache sizes are offering.
There are some, but not a lot, which was the point he was trying to make. I can only think of 3 or 4 off the top of my head. Is it enough to recommend a quad core over a dual core? Absolutely, and I think it's clear the trend is towards actually utilizing 3-4 cores. And even on games that don't scale well past 2 cores, having 2+n cores allows you to play the game well and do something in the background (I almost always have a web browser + some other programs open when I play on my PC) without impacting your game.
And of those games, they tend to plateau out at 4 cores, and I can't think of any games that get a real benefit beyond that. The biggest reason is probably because most of the work is graphics, which is already parceled out to the GPU - there isn't a whole lot left over for a CPU to do past that.
So, then, is it enough to recommend going to more than 4 cores? And there, I don't think so. I do often recommend an FX6300 over a FX4300 - simply because you get 2 more cores for like $20US and I think that presents a very good value. But, whne it comes strictly to gaming, I can't see paying an extra $100 for an i7 over an i5 for 4 more hyperthreaded cores (which may or may not present as much performance increase as AMD's 2 actual cores).
Games won't require more than 8 GB of memory until they're comfortable that the bulk of their playerbase has more than 8 GB. A game that requires hardware that hardly anyone has isn't likely to be successful. Needing more than 8 GB of memory for games could easily be a decade away.
It's also important to recognize that there is an enormous difference between:
a) a game will use hardware X if you have it,
b) a game will perform better if you have hardware X or better than if you don't, and
c) you need hardware X or better in order to play a game.
For a distinction between (b) and (c), I'll cite SSDs. I'm not aware of any games that require an SSD to play, but most will load faster if you have one. That's obviously possible in other ways, too, such as hardware X allowing you to run a game at higher graphical settings.
Plenty of games will use eight cores if you have them. If some substantial portion of the game engine scales well to many cores, why not use them? If you've got more than four logical cores (either a quad core plus hyperthreading or a true 6+ core processor), try checking Task Manager while playing a variety of games. If it shows significant activity on more than four cores, the game is probably using more than four cores.
But (a) does not imply (b); if having eight cores and using all eight runs a game at 70 frames per second, while running the same game at the same settings on a quad core also gives you 70 frames per second, having eight cores doesn't really benefit you in that game. But it doesn't mean that the game isn't using the cores. Maybe it's using the cores to get the CPU part of setting up stuff to pass to the video card to draw done sooner in each frame, but you're still waiting on either the video card or the rendering thread so your frame rate doesn't measurably budge. That's actually very easy to do in a game engine.
It's also important to note that some types of hardware are much more forgiving to you not having as good as would be ideal. If your video card is only half as powerful as necessary to run a game at max settings, that's no big deal to most reasonable people: you turn down a few settings and carry on. But performance tends to fall off a cliff when you run out of memory, and if you only have half as much memory as a game would like to use, it's probably not going to be playable. So developers are comfortable with offering a better gameplay experience for higher end video cards than most of their market has, but not with doing likewise with system memory.
-----
On a personal note, for a project I'm working on, not only will the game use as many cores as you've got, but you actually will see some small benefit from more cores. More cores will let you load things faster, both upon initially entering the game and upon teleporting. The difference between four cores and eight might only mean you save a second of loading time here and there, but there is actual benefit, albeit small. Other than loading, the game will still use as many cores as you've got, but the benefit of more than four cores will at best be a fraction of a percentage point in frame rates outside of some really pathological corner cases.
First of all, there is already 2 games which cannot start without 4 cores, and if u go with a dual core processor, u won't be able to play any Frostbite engine(2/3+ of EA Games), or most upcoming Ubisoft games.
Even if u download a fix to make the game run(which might require actually applying a crack on a legitimate version depending on the game !), you're gonna be greeted by performance so abysmal, you'll be regretting your purchase instantly, anyone recommending 2-core cpus now is not following where the industry is going, and is still stuck in the past.
And i would have agreed that 2 core is enough for the present all the way up until november 2014, however not anymore.
Same with ram, my pc uses 6GB not doing anything with only chrome,steam,battle net and the core programs for my various pc parts. and That's when i don't have many tabs open. At 6/8GB all of your remaining ram is already pre-allocated and u have 0 clean ram available, i'd like to see anyone here run a game that uses 2GB ram and an additional 1GB in secondary processes run properly at this bottleneck(and yes a game doesn't need to be 64 bit to use more than 2GB RAM, ...).
So i'll just ask you are u an avid multitasker and/or keep more than 10 tabs open in your browser(alt-tab regularly or use a second monitor), while running a few extra background programs by default ? If yes u need 16GB of ram. If not 8GB will be enough for you.
Unless you're counting prefetching in that 6 GB total, either you're doing something wrong or else you're being intentionally wasteful because you have a ton and it doesn't matter. I've only got 4 GB of memory, and occasionally it means I have to close some browser tabs while gaming or something like that, but it's otherwise never been a problem. Now, I wouldn't recommend buying only 4 GB today, as it probably won't be enough for all that much longer. But if 4 GB today is enough in spite of Windows wanting well over 1 GB by itself, 8 GB is probably going to be enough for quite a while. For comparison, 2 GB ceased to be enough sometime around 2007 or 2008 or so.
Another important factor is that even if you do need more memory later, it will probably be cheaper to buy that extra memory later. Given a choice between spending $150 on 16 GB today or spending $75 on 8 GB today and then $30 to buy another 8 GB in three years, the latter is cheaper. Indeed, it's likely that buying 8 GB today and also buying 16 GB (16 additional, not just 8 additional to make 16 total) three years from today will be cheaper than buying 16 GB today.
It depends on the type of dual core it is... for instance, an i3 will be treated as 4 core due to hyperthreading, and they actually benefit from it compaired to i7s which rarely do.
There's no way I'd recommend a core 2 or Pentium G.
the i3 series actually is pretty good if you're on a tight budget. I haven't had any problems running with i3 3220. Yeah if you got the money, just buy an i5 or i7, you'll get better performance for some amount of games, but for some the performance difference won't even be noticed if you had an i3.
I've been playing same Battlefield 3, and it runs fine. I was thinking about getting BF4, but since hardline is coming out soon I'm not sure I want to.
@Quizzical
DDR3 will not get any cheaper, it's gonna start going up in price in about 6-9 months with a possible minimal decrease in price up until spring(all of course depending how the decrease in price for DDR4 goes, and when full mobo/cpu suport for DDR4 launches)
My Chrome browser is using 3GB now, skype+steam+battle net are using 0.5GB, my graphic driver+sound driver are using 0.2-0.3GB, which while not counting core windows programs comes to around 4GB, my windows 7 is using between 1.5GB-2GB.
If i turn The Secret world on now for instance, its gonna eat up about 1.5GB+ another 0.5GB in secondary processes.
basic math tells me that comes to exactly 8GB, ...
@Jusomdude
Take a spin around Dragon Age Inquisition and Far Cry 4, tell me how the dual core is working
, oh boy are u in a big suprise for next year, if u play flagship,aaa games 
hardware requirements and average performance are almost exponential higher for dragon age compared to bf3, and it's basically almost the same engine.
I picked up a 240 gb SSD just before Christmas from Amazon for $75 (have a 120gb now). Will go into the system rebuild.
You say that, and yet Quake was a resounding success, and I credit it for single-handedly pushing hardware forward. You could make a strong case for the original Crysis as well.
Games aren't made or broken on the basis of them pushing hardware, they are made or broken on the basis of it being a good game: a great game can push consumers to the hardware to match it.
That being said, there is a big difference between a good game that struggles on hardware and gets called "unoptimized" and a great game that struggles on hardware and actually pushes people to upgrade hardware.
I just saw this part and wanted to throw the BS flag. Get and SSD and use it.
Yes, it has a limited lifespan, but so does everything. SSDs will not burn out unnesccarily early just because you patch an MMO on it.
In order to exhaust an SSD early, you basically need to write/rewrite some high multiple of it's capacity, every day, for it to "burn out" before a typical drive's 3-5 year average lifespan. You aren't going to do that playing, or patching, MMOs. Heck, even if you installed a new MMO and patched it every single day you still aren't going to come close to that.
My Chrome is using 594 MB now and the rest of the processes running are 414 MB. Once I start a game, all will go into a page file anyway since I am running games in fullscreen.
Your point? That your windows and chrome are littered with garbage?
Bioware's last 3 titles aren't using their proprietary engine, and this is the result - 2 of them were utter crap performance wise.
DAI is primarily console title ported on PC and in no way represents hardware requirements of PC games. With the same note, Far Cry 4 is working very fine on G3258. Both are just obscure exceptions.
@Nighthaven, what games are these that only run on one core? The last game I had that was bound by a single threaded process was Darkfall, the original game. DFUW ran fine on all four cores, last time I played.
I know this because I always leave Resource Monitor open, on a second screen, just to watch performance.
I would agree that the problem games, or programs, are the ones that are bound by a single thread, and that no amount of spare CPU cores will fix it; only better programming, which the customer cannot control, or a higher GHz can help. i7 4790k has the GHz, which is why I like it.
As for the future, UE4 runs on 4+ cores, I think they said they could support up to 8 or 10, and will work to make it run on more.
Please do not put words that no one said into others mouth. The poster has never mentioned single cores.
The point you are largely missing is: If the game can "support" +4 cores/threads, does it also mean better performance?
The answer is simple: No.
Multithreading has very severe diminishing returns and more cores simply won't bring more performance, especially when it comes to gaming.
How many tabs do u have open in chrome gdemami ?
Do u even understand the point of why i wrote what i wrote, or are u just writing stuff for the sake of writing, and just arguing with me, quizzical and everyone else writing helpful posts, and just countering everything we say simply for the sake countering and never providing any proof why it is or is not better, or why do u think that way.
not to mention providing the most awful pc part combinations i've ever seen, it's almost like you are a dell,cyberpower or another employee came here to suggest similar premade builds countering the whole point of building the pc yourself.
U always come out so condensing and argumentative it's hard to take you seriously even when you're right.
OP is undecided, i5 i7 choice mostly finished, so the only indecision is now between 8GB to 16GB, which frankly depends on how he uses/would use his pc.
So i simply point out what type of computer usage would warrant more than 8GB, so that he can compare it to his own usage and decide if he does need more than 8GB.
I'm writing from the standpoint of the person asking help and using my way of usage as a starting point for comparison, as i regularly have ~30-40 tabs open in chrome.
Closing every non-windows essential process every time before u start a game to be able to play it at all is not normal nor regular pc usage, it's a colossal waste of time which can be avoided by only spending ~$50 more for ram, ...
Nighthaven made the claim that games do not run on more than two cores, I refuted him, quite solidly. Know of what you speak, before you post.
Games that can run on multiple cores normally push the edge of performance, with more polygons, more use of the physics engine, and much larger textures. Hence, FPS performance will not likely go up, but graphic fidelity does.
Given the same polys, textures, and physics, multithreaded games have higher FPS when run on mulitcore processors, this can be observed. Try it, you might like it.
That's because you've got 50 tabs open. Try closing some of them.
Texture resolution and vertex count have nothing to do with more cores. That's a little more data to read off of a hard drive and pass to the video card once in a while, not something that scales well to more CPU cores. If you really want to do higher vertex counts the right way, tessellation means that the CPU doesn't even know how many vertices there are in the model in a given frame.
Gotta disagree with you on a technicality, texture res ( mostly a memory issue ) and vertex count scale so well with more cores, that it gets passed off to the GPU, which has thousands of cores to do the work. But, I figure that is what you really meant.
My point was that most games run on more than 2 CPU cores, and this has been the case for some time now, ever since C++11 included a thread safe SMP library. In any case, all UE4 games run on 4+ cores, this is now standard.
I would like to know how one manages so many tabs in a browser. I get 10 or so open when shopping and that becomes a headache.
Did the op buy a pc yet or still deciding?
Yeah, and you alt-tab during your gaming to chrome constantly or even you play in windowed mode so it needs to be loaded into a memory...
Making suggestions based on extreme, non-standard cases and passing them as norm is not helpful.
You do not refute a statement that games do not really use more than 2 cores with an argument about single cores.
Not going to address the rest of your post as part was address by Quizzical and the rest is not even worthy as it lacks any sense.
Please do not go that route, pointing out apparent flaws, ignorance or just being doubtful makes you so argumentative...
Some posters here are apparently always right, regardless.