EggXpert

So I've got an Athlon X2 3600 1.9ghz CPU. This dual core CPU is the only reason I get 'respectable' framrates without even having a video card in HL2. 30-50fps

BUT, with the new games coming out that will be taking advantage of dual core CPU and multithreading, what about all those great games before that didn't? For example,

F.E.A.R. doesnt utilize multithreading technology. It was a Dx8 and Dx9 game! For games like this, do dual core CPUs help in ANY way? I mean, if I'm thinkin right, a dual core CPU at 1.9ghz doesnt have a total power of 3.8ghz. It can just do TWICE as much stuff with a speed of 1.9ghz. . .right?

Anyway, my question is, even if the game isn't 'optimized' to take advantage of multithreading technology, does the computer 'by default' use BOTH cores when playing a game like FEAR ? Or does my CPU act as a single-core 1.9ghz CPU in FEAR?

THANKS j/w

Dustin

Well I can say having multi-thread games does use multi-core for better performance, but your question is non-multi-thread games under multi-core only helps to free up the load on the cpu so it doesn't pop into the 100% load easily.  As the actual performance are minimal differences, however the single core using today's applications will significantly slow down the pc.  Dual core is the technology for now, single core good for email, internet, MS office. 

Every single application I use and every single game, even the non multi threaded ones still use more than one core if they are available. More cores do help, sometimes they just run the background processes on secondary cores and let the game use all of it's primary core resorces. At CES, Intel last year had a very impressive demonstration on this and with a core useage graphic display running I can see it on this rig.

A multi-core processor is limited when executing code not designed as multi-threaded. This does not mean that it is totally inefective though. To get a better grasp of how multi-core processors work I will list a few links from Wikipedia - these particular links are very reliable (to any of those out there that would automatically discount information from Wikipedia).

Multiprocessing

Multi-Core Computing

Computer Multitasking

Symmetric Multiprocessing

Simultaneous Multithreading

Parallel Computing

Instruction Level Parallelism

Data Parallelism

Task Parralism