Most modern games use 3 cores if they are available ( 1 thread for graphics rendering, 1 thread for networking and a main thread for program logic)
Some games will use more cores if present, typically using them for ai. A game that likes lots of cores is civ 5 for example.
It's silly to spec for less than 4 cores (even if your games only using 2 threads, the other 2 are at least spare for handling all the crap that runs in the background on windows)
Originally posted by ShakyMo Most modern games use 3 cores if they are available ( 1 thread for graphics rendering, 1 thread for networking and a main thread for program logic)
Some games will use more cores if present, typically using them for ai. A game that likes lots of cores is civ 5 for example.
It's silly to spec for less than 4 cores (even if your games only using 2 threads, the other 2 are at least spare for handling all the crap that runs in the background on windows)
Network activity doesn't take much processing time. Realistically what games do is to create a bunch of threads, some of which are idle at any given moment, and then let Windows schedule them when they're active.
Most of the processor work typically consists of determining exactly where every object is relative to the camera, as that has to be redone every single frame. Highly complex strategy games that need to dedicate a ton of processor time to AI are an exception to that.
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Some games will use more cores if present, typically using them for ai. A game that likes lots of cores is civ 5 for example.
It's silly to spec for less than 4 cores (even if your games only using 2 threads, the other 2 are at least spare for handling all the crap that runs in the background on windows)
Network activity doesn't take much processing time. Realistically what games do is to create a bunch of threads, some of which are idle at any given moment, and then let Windows schedule them when they're active.
Most of the processor work typically consists of determining exactly where every object is relative to the camera, as that has to be redone every single frame. Highly complex strategy games that need to dedicate a ton of processor time to AI are an exception to that.