Intel's new dual core chip's

Are Intel's new dual core chip's any good for gaming.
Have heard there are some problems with some games!
Anyone have any experience gaming with this chip?

clock for clock the new core duo are the best chip on the market for pc.

The only issue you may have is that not all games will make use of both cores, or the games run far to fast due to them being old - gta (the original) runs too fast without certain patches for example

I have the E6400 c2duo and i haven't had any problems gaming at all..

Games wont benefit from two or more cores for another year to 18 months. Mainly due to re learning to do multi thread applications and to learning which bits could use the extra cores (like AI or physics modeling)...

Once this has started the 2nd and 3rd gen multi-threaded games will be spectacular.

rFactor supports multi core cpu's now, more will follow

Yip - Xbox 360 and PS3 are multi-core too so gaming engines are already taking advantage of it and will with increasing speed sooner than some think.

Most if not all development is therefore already done for Multi-core platforms.

A friend of a friend built himself a machine with one of these chips and have been having problems with games.

The game works fine for a while and then it just stalls for a few seconds and then carries on, it will do that every so often. run the same game on a AMD dual core machine and it is fine.

I have heard that the problem is due to the fact that the cpu only uses one core and then when that is at it's max, it changes to the other core, and then vice versa which is why the game stalls.

Myself I will stick with AMD, they may be a little slower, but at least they work and they are cheaper.

Never was a lover of Intel.

that sounds like it needs the same patch that was supplied for amd, amd had a patch put out for xp that allowed xp to make better use of the dual core and to smooth out the glitches. Cant remember what its under though

What patch for AMD?


I have no patch and I have no problems and a work mate who machine I built also have a AMD dual core chip and is a avid games player and have no problems.

It is just Intel, they can't do anything right :-)

That is hte one thing that put me off buying a MAC before I built this thing.

well there was a patch for amd released (I think its been integrated into the amd drivers now or something)

Bit more about the amd patch here


I also found the below along with some other bits of info here
Intel Dual Core Patch
This addresses timing issues with many applications and will help stop crashes and address stuttering / frame rate issues in games.

1. Right click on My Computer, and select Properties.

2. Select the Advanced tab, and click Settings under Startup and Recovery.

3. Click Edit under System Startup and open Notepad.
Add /usepmtimer to the end of the [operating systems] section. For example

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

4. Save the BOOT.INI file and close Notepad.

5. Reboot your system


As to not buying a mac due to intel chips, os-x handles smp better than just about any other os (probably the best out of the home options) on the market so it wouldnt matter which cpu manufacturer apple were using.