All other things being equal, would Skyrim run better on a dual or quad core? Like 3.2ghz for example. Anybody know or have a guess?

Quad.

lol quad core.
to help you out in the future ill explain it a bit. dual core means 2 cpu cores in 1. quad core means 4 cpu cores in 1. In human terms thats like having either 2 interns or 4 interns. If all the interns have access to the same equipment (the rest of the computer is the same) and they are all similar (both the dual core and quad core are 3.2GHz) then the 4 interns will outwork the 2 interns everytime.

A lower clocked quad probably wouldnt perform as well as a higher clocked dual. That being said, a quad with a high enough clock speed will almost always perform better.

In skyrim.... i'm getting better performance with an i5 Quad Core @ 2.8ghz vs a i3 dual core with HT @ 3.3ghz... considerably better...

so even with a quad core having a 0.5ghz (500mhz) difference in performance at it's disadvantage... it'll do better.

Lawl. It isn't the cores that are making there difference there. There's a lot more to CPUs than just core count and clock speed people.

That is a poor reference, because in programming terms, each intern is not programmed to do the same tasks. Skyrim only runs better on a quad core because there is some free space for the game to spread out across 2 cores and not have as much competition for CPU time.

If you cut back on the processes running, a dual core would be able to play the game just as well as a quad.

what in the hell are you talking about?

Did i say there isn't other factors involved?

The question was raised..... While MAJORITY of the concerns involving the differences between a quad core vs dual core.... the i3 and i5 designs are VERY similare... however the i5 is obviously quad core.. with hyper threading where as the i3 is a dual core with essentially the same cores however had Hyper Threading giving the computer a false sense of "quad core"

The obvious definitive difference is that the dual cores are usually considered "faster" due to having a frequency advantage resulting in single or dual threaded tasks completely "typically" faster. Unless a program can make good use of triple/quad core cpus that are usually "slower" then some would perseave there being no major advantages of going quad core if the results are marginally different or in the case where a quad core may actually not perform as well due to it's lack of frequency in comparison.

Obviously if you looking.. don't ever consider the lesser number of cores on a cpu being better.. even if the initial results are better.

The answer i gave was simple.


A quad Core i5 running at 2.8ghz is considerably better than a dual core i3 running at 3.3ghz.. specially in this game.

Aah grasshopper, but can nine women have a baby in one month?

Like mentioned, if they're both the same clock speed, then obviously quad. However if the dual core has a higher clock speed, you'll get better results from that.

The whole Quad core vs Dual Core debate.

While Skyrim truely won't on the surface show much usage of more than 2 cores, it does still spread the load on most quad or even octal processors.
So there is a benefit to going with a Quad core system.

As previously stated there is more to a processor than just it's clock speed and how many cores it has (and if it does hyper-threading) this does potentially double it's core count. However once you get upto 8 cores (hyper or real) it starts to only show any difference in benchmarks and less to none impact in gaming compared to a 4 core setup. The industry for most games is still optimising to really make use of 8 or more, but it is there for most games to take advantage of 4.
This makes comparision not so easy when you start adding up the variables for comparing two different processors, even by the same manufactor, let alone to a different one (ie. AMD vs Intel)

You need to take into account it's on-die cache memory per core at each cache level, aswell as newer instructions built into the processor which can make certain tasks far quicker and optimised, also system bus speeds and memory bandwidth (and usually linked supported memory). All make a difference. Better numbers here, tend to improve any potential bottlenecks in a system, which is often a cause of artificial slow down or stuttering. Many fans of extreme computing and gaming know this, I don't doubt you do.

Processor companies for years have focus more of what they boast about to Cores and speed. They rarely talk about anything else unfortunally when advertising their new processor.
This has worked in the favour for Intel whom has often done very well in improving mostly in this area. It's also the easiest for their average user to grasp.
Also when asking for advise you will get those who are fans of either one processor or the other. So hardware reviews are a good source of info, where they often pick apart and test quite well, however be sure to check a few sources, since even review sites have bias.

So to answer your question OP.
You are better of with higher core processor most the time, not purely because has more cores to do the job, but it's usually is newer than it's lesser core comparision and thus all those other things that improve performance are better. However this advice is a bit of a generalisation.

The game uses only two cores, but your computer isn't just running Skyrim, there will be allways processes running in the background, so at least a third core will allways suppose a performance gain.

i5 @ 2.8GHz?
Assuming no overclock; that'll be either a Nehalem i5-760, or a Sandybridge Core i5-2300?

Both of these processors are natural quad cores (not dual core with hyperthreading), and have turbo boosts upto 3.33GHz & 3.1GHz respectively. Ontop of that they have far more cache than any i3 processor.
So it's no wonder a 2.8GHz i5 would perform better than a 3.3GHz i3 - all you're seeing is the benefits of turbo boost & larger cache, not core count.
You also don't state the GPUs, OS, or memory used in said performance comparisons.


A better way of gauging if more cores help Skyrim is to:

1) Disable all turbo boost functions (Vista/7 -> change processor power options)
2) Run the game at absolute minimum graphical settings & resolution (so GPU is definitely not the bottleneck), and disable vsync.(ipresentinterval=0)
3) Benchmark the game on the Quad/Hex/Oct core
4) Disable all but 2 cores (set process affinity)
5) Benchmark the game again

When I do this on my Phenom II X6 using 6 cores, and then 2 cores I see a difference of ~1 fps; a difference small enough to be accountable to noise from background applications.

It all depends on the task it's set to do, and whether you are multitasking and your software/os supports multi processing. Multi core will always outperfom a single core when multi tasking, but at single task with no multi processing support, then the clock frequency kicks in. As OS's are such hugs of system resources these days with all other applications continually consuming your resources for updates, security services and so forth, you will always have better computing exprience regradless of what you are doing with Higher end spec'ed PC. But as most people are limited by budget, the build will always comedown to lifecycle use and value for money. So if you want this advise you should check out some hardware review sites as these sites will always test Games on them. Bells and whistles don't mean playability, it means playability without compromise(for the time being).

Stop with this 'only two cores' nonesense. Click the image link below, discontinue spreading that garbage info around:
http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/6788/skythread03angrydrunks.jpg

The phenomenon you are seeing there is load balancing, not multithreading.

In Skyrim the majority of the work is done by only a single thread; in your situation this single thread is being passed between cores several times a second.
That's why you are seeing some utilization on all cores, rather than full utiisation on a single core.

Whatever is going on with multithreading, load balancing, etc. it cannot be denied that having more cores improves performance; I tried changing the processor affinity for TESV.EXE on my i7, with the following results:

1 core: 25 FPS
2 cores: 25 FPS
3 cores: 43 FPS
4 cores: 43 FPS
5 or more cores: 48-50 FPS

I realize that half of the cores are "virtual" but it is clear that having more than 2 physical cores enables better performance.

It depends on the chip. Tom's found hardly any increase as you go above two cores. Changes in architecture/cache did help though.

http://media.bestofmicro.com/7/G/315196/original/CPU%20Core.png

At first glance your results do seem to contradict the 'two core' crowd. However I think I have a logical explanation.

When running with 1/2/3/4 cores which did you set affinity to?
I believe the core numbering might alternate between physical & virtual cores.

e.g.

So when you set affinity to just two cores (core 0 and core 1), you were actually running the game on just a single physical core.
As hyperthreading yields zero, or negative performance benefits for many applications that would explain why 1 physical + 1 virtual performs no better than just 1 physical.

This would also explain why running on 3 & 4 cores gave the same performance.

Could you retry your test and report what performance you get with setting affinity to increasing numbers of odd/even cores.

E.g.

1) core 0 + core 1 (physical + virtual: should give ~25fps)
2) core 0 + core 2 (physical + physical: should give ~43fps)
3) core 1 + core 3 (virtual + virtual: should give ~43fps)
4) core 0 + core 2 + core 4 (physical + physical + physical: should give ~48-50fps)

I tried the following:

Just core 0, 25 FPS
core 0 & core 2: 43 FPS
core 0, core 2 & core 4: 50 FPS
cores 0, 2, 4 & 6: 50 FPS

It is better with more than 2 cores. Period.

Excellent - that's exactly as expected.

Skyrim utilizes 2 cores, with a 3rd core to prevent CPU load from background applications negatively impacting upon the game's performance.

You're moving the goalposts here. The original declaration was that Skyrim won't use more then two cores and very clearly its capable of doing so and does. What is also pretty clear the higher the cores and clockrates of those cores/abilities is that Skyrim doesn't need to saturate them to do what it does, which is pretty common with games that are heavy in 'pretty things on screen' and not so much the 'thinking that goes on behind the scenes' side.

As for that main thread being thrown around like a ragdoll: Yah I suppose that's why tesv.exe shows 30+ threads typically when you check it out with something like process monitor?

Here lemmie show you the other screen shot I'd made from that pair, this is without combat AI in play:
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/4254/skythread02manydrunks.jpg

According to your theory it should still be using the 8 vcores and lower rates per core, meanwhile nope: not how it works.

I never said the game doesn't have lots of threads; just that the majority of the work is done by one.

As for your example; it seems to me that you are artificially inflating the work done by the AI pathing.
Converting it from what is ordinarily a negligable resource consumer into a thread (or number of threads, depending on how it's implemented) that can be usefully offloaded to another core.
It certainly doesn't seem to be a scenario that is ever encountered in the normal operation of the game.

Ofcourse in an ideal world every one of those threads would be executed on it's own dedicated physical core, but:
1) It's not cost effective
2) the performance benefit would be negligable.

To me this seems like a fairly sensible way of determining how many cores you reasonably need for any given application:

1) Find the thread doing the most work. In the case of Skyrim, it's the main loop.
2) Find it's fraction of the total load. In the case of Skyrim (when operating normally) it's about 60-70% of total load. (0.6-0.7)
3) Take the reciprocal and round up. 1/0.6=1.66 -> 2 cores
4) Add one to absorb load from background processes. 3 cores.

Ergo:
Skyrim itself usefully utilizes 2 cores, and performs best with 3.

I suppose you could apply the same logic to your pathing-heavy example, and you'd probably come up with an answer of 4 or 5 cores for optimal performance.

Just to ask, how often are you or other people watching resources while the game is actually doing something like in the middle of a fight. How I see it is yah Skyrim when 'idling' doesn't need much CPU and yah in a vanilla idle setup I do for sure see one core getting more usage then usually three others operating at about 15% of that first core's rate, meanwhile it was designed in mind that as long as you've got enough room it will take advantage of that during action scenes and as such the FPS won't take a hit. End result is yah when idling Skyrim isn't using that much CPU but when its asked to do more such as one of those town seiges it can and will oblige.

Skyrim can use more then two cores.

It can, but given the rate limiting step is largely sequential you get the most gain from increasing single-threaded performance. So if the choice is between a fast dual core (maybe with hyper threading) and a slower quad core then go for the former.