James
MyGaming Alumnus
Watch Dogs: PC specs released, prepare to upgrade
Open-world action hacking game requires a rig ready for a test
Open-world action hacking game requires a rig ready for a test
Games are now being coded to make use of 8 cores/threads, because next gen consoles are technically 8 core machines.
Its not to say it won't run perfectly fine on a i5, its just for "optimal" performance they recommend a 8 core chip.
Probably a stupid question, but what's the difference between cores and threads? I believe my CPU has 4 cores, but 8 threads.
CPU: The "brains" of the computer. Responsable for all computations, loading of data, etc
Core: An individual CPU unit. For instance, a Dual Core CPU can be thought of as having two seperate CPU's in a single package, with their own dedicated registers and cache. [This isn't entirely correct, but its a simlified explanation]
Process: A process can be thought of as a program. When you start a program, it kicks of its process, and all memory that is allocated is allocated at the process level.
Thread: A thread is a unit of execution within a process. One process can have many threads. For instance, you could have a thread to handle User Input, a thread for program control, a few threads for AI managment, a thread for audio, etc. All these threads exist within a single process.
Within most modern OS's, the thread is the smallest unit of execution; the OS schedules threads [usually based on priority], and the CPU spends some time operating on a thread, before swapping in a new one to work on [giving the illusion multiple things can happen at the same time].
On a multiple-CPU or multi-core system, multiple threads could be run at the same time, hence why there is an increasing focus on software parallelization.
Games are now being coded to make use of 8 cores/threads, because next gen consoles are technically 8 core machines.
Its not to say it won't run perfectly fine on a i5, its just for "optimal" performance they recommend a 8 core chip.
Games are now being coded to make use of 8 cores/threads, because next gen consoles are technically 8 core machines.
Its not to say it won't run perfectly fine on a i5, its just for "optimal" performance they recommend a 8 core chip.
The i7-3770 is a quad core chip, with 8 threads...