Ghz of processor?

Paddy001 · 02-07-2009 3:31pm #1

When I go into the system of my new laptop, it says it has AMD Turion 64 x2 processors, and 2Ghz with 4GB RAM, my question is, is this 2Ghz for each processor or in total? I'm wondering because it meets minimum spec for most games except for the Ghz, most games have about 2.7Ghz reccommended but do I have 4Ghz or 2Ghz and if its 2Ghz can it be upgraded? And at what cost? It's only about 3 weeks old but never bothered looking at this as it was fairly high spec anyway!

Overheal · 02-07-2009 3:33pm

That is the speed of each core. Youre grand.

For system requirements they expect usually a single core clock speed. However most games being released support multithread (multicore). This isnt normally listed on requirement sheets.

If you really wanna know if you can run over the Req's, go here:

http://systemrequirementslab.com

Paddy001 · 02-07-2009 3:34pm

Thanks, must go and buy a game so!

Effluo · 02-07-2009 3:35pm

Paddy001 wrote: »

When I go into the system of my new laptop, it says it has AMD Turion 64 x2 processors, and 2Ghz with 4GB RAM, my question is, is this 2Ghz for each processor or in total? I'm wondering because it meets minimum spec for most games except for the Ghz, most games have about 2.7Ghz reccommended but do I have 4Ghz or 2Ghz and if its 2Ghz can it be upgraded? And at what cost? It's only about 3 weeks old but never bothered looking at this as it was fairly high spec anyway!

Yeah that's 2ghz per core. That processor should be fine for any game but, you should find out more about your graphics card to see if you can play the games you want to play.

Alanstrainor · 02-07-2009 3:37pm

Unfortunately 2Ghz+2Ghz does not = 4Ghz when it comes to multi core processors. They both work to do more things at once, rather than working together. That being said, i wouldn't worry all that much about the lack of "GHZ" when looking at games, most likely your processor will be fine. It's the graphics card that would probably hold you back the most.

Overheal · 02-07-2009 3:41pm

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Unfortunately 2Ghz+2Ghz does not = 4Ghz when it comes to multi core processors. They both work to do more things at once, rather than working together. That being said, i wouldn't worry all that much about the lack of "GHZ" when looking at games, most likely your processor will be fine. It's the graphics card that would probably hold you back the most.

oh yeah. I should have cleared that up. Each core is 2ghz, but your total clock is not 4ghz, its 2ghz. A multicore game fully utilizing both cores will *technically* be using 4ghz though. However each thread or function of the game (eg. lighting, collissions, physics etc) will only have access to 2ghz at any one instance.

Easiest to think of it as 2 horses with a top speed of 15mph each. Pulling the same wagon they cant go 30mph. not how it works.

stevenmu · 02-07-2009 3:43pm

I think when most things these days list the requirements in Ghz, they are talking about the old Pentium 4 speeds, they don't take into account the fact that the newer Core family do much more work (even on a single core) for the equivalent Ghz figure.

Effluo · 02-07-2009 3:44pm

Overheal wrote: »

oh yeah. I should have cleared that up. Each core is 2ghz, but your total clock is not 4ghz, its 2ghz. A multicore game fully utilizing both cores will *technically* be using 4ghz though. However each thread or function of the game (eg. lighting, collissions, physics etc) will only have access to 2ghz at any one instance.

Easiest to think of it as 2 horses with a top speed of 15mph each. Pulling the same wagon they cant go 30mph. not how it works.

So to sum it up. Processor is fine, but check your graphics card!

marco_polo · 02-07-2009 3:44pm

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Unfortunately 2Ghz+2Ghz does not = 4Ghz when it comes to multi core processors. They both work to do more things at once, rather than working together. That being said, i wouldn't worry all that much about the lack of "GHZ" when looking at games, most likely your processor will be fine. It's the graphics card that would probably hold you back the most.

Yeah, I don't know the specs of the laptop but most likely it that CPU will be bored a fair bit of the time of the time waiting for the GPU to get on with it.

Overheal · 02-07-2009 3:54pm

stevenmu wrote: »

I think when most things these days list the requirements in Ghz, they are talking about the old Pentium 4 speeds, they don't take into account the fact that the newer Core family do much more work (even on a single core) for the equivalent Ghz figure.

Well until the Single cores are phased out more thats going to be the way of it. About 30% of gaming machines anyway according to steam (not accounting for offline or office machines tbh) are still single core.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Some titles have dual core reqs but its still uncommon.

Paddy001 · 02-07-2009 4:22pm

ATI Radeon HD 3200 is my graphics card, as far as I know it has 256MB dedicated, which I know is low, but it has access to the 4gigs of RAM too so I'm hoping that should be more than enough

Overheal · 02-07-2009 4:27pm

Thats plenty. I mean, you wont be maxing out crysis, but I play crysis and other games nonetheless on an even lower spec card than that all the time. This business of having to have max settings all the time is just a mind ****. Not worth it at all.

Paddy001 · 02-07-2009 4:30pm

I already own GTA IV, it asks for AMD Athlon X2 64 2.4Ghz but mines only 2Ghz, definately haven't enough to run that so? But yet it only asks for 1.8Ghz in an Intel Core 2 Duo processor.... That's strange! Going to try it and see how it goes!

Adyx · 02-07-2009 4:42pm

Paddy001 wrote: »

I already own GTA IV, it asks for AMD Athlon X2 64 2.4Ghz but mines only 2Ghz, definately haven't enough to run that so? But yet it only asks for 1.8Ghz in an Intel Core 2 Duo processor.... That's strange! Going to try it and see how it goes!

I have only an AMD Athlon X2 64 2.2Ghz processor and GTA IV runs ok. Any problems I had are due to the ****ty GeForce 8600 GTS and miserable 2GB RAM I have.

Overheal · 02-07-2009 5:00pm

Sometimes I just dont understand people...

Paddy001 · 02-07-2009 5:02pm

Overheal wrote: »

Sometimes I just dont understand people...

Sorry just wanted to make sure... Your right anyway it seems to be running ok. Suppose they have to exagerate requirements so if you complain it doesn't work they say your computer doesn't meet the requirements and it's your fault! Thanks everyone for your help!

sceptre · 02-07-2009 6:47pm

Overheal wrote: »

Easiest to think of it as 2 horses with a top speed of 15mph each. Pulling the same wagon they cant go 30mph. not how it works.

That's a pretty good analogy to be honest. If one of the horses can just about pull a 1000kg load at 15mph, you can assume for simplicity's sake that 2 of them will be able to pull a 2000kg load at the same speed. Or, better again, have the option of pulling 1000kg each of different loads on different roads in different directions at 15mph if you want to stretch out the analogy a bit:)

Unfortunately gauging whether your machine will be able to handle a particular game has become annoyingly more complicated since dual core arrived - not that it was ever really simple since the nvidia v ATI thing (and the few other A or B standards) started.

PogMoThoin · 02-07-2009 6:57pm

If its a crappy console port its usually a bitch to run on a pc. This is what GTA 4 is, it was impossible to run when it was first rushed out in November for the xmas market, shouldn't have been released at all on pc as it was a buggy POS. I even complained myself when I found it difficult to run with a quad at 3.2Ghz :eek:.
Supposedly its much improved with the latest patches, but I lost interest after playing to 40% completion.

Ghz of processor?

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