duo core or quad core for 2boxing

[Chidorii]

Hi,
I have a 5 year old PC and was finally thinking of buying a new computer. I like to 2box a lot on one PC and was wondering if FFXI would benefit from having a quad core for 2boxing vs having a duo core.
Are the threading abilities of FFXI and / or the windower good enough to benefit quad cores when it comes to 2boxing on one computer?
If not I'll just stick to a faster duo core PC.

Thanks in advance!

[rezn0r]

i'm on a dual core and haven't tried dual-boxing on a quad core (but i do on my system) and i'm going to have to say it'll run fine either way. get the faster system if you want to for other things, but don't let ffxi be the basis for your choice. ffxi is ancient now and any new hardware can handle two copies of it.

[Zosi]

the threading abilities of FFXI

Are non-existent. Windower doesn't change that at all. The most one instance of FFXI will ever use is 100% of a single core, which is roughly the same whether you're going dual or quad. The advantage would be that if you were running two instances of FFXI on a quad-core, you'd still have lots of CPU power left over for non-FFXI processes, but FFXI itself takes zero advantage of multi-core systems and most likely never will.

It's worth noting that modern CPU cores are perfectly capable of running FFXI without 100% CPU utilization. I run a dual core Athlon 5000+, and my total CPU utilization while dual boxing floats around 50-60% in "normal" situations" and rarely tops 80% unless I'm doing something like Besieged on both characters at once. I don't believe a quad-core would be a substantial advantage unless you're regularly running 3-4 copies, in which case you'd probably run out of video memory before CPU power.

[Keria]

My dual core PC never liked 2 boxing at all ; ; meanwhile my 6 year old PC using a pentium III does it fine...

[fishstix]

My c2d laptop does better than my althon x2 dual core pc :3 But yeah, like Rezn0r said, don't base it off of FFXI. Unless a new game can greatly benefit from quad core, I'd probably use the extra money saved from dual on a better video card.

[Zosi]

If you're using an Athlon 64x2, make ABSOLUTELY sure that you install the "AMD Dual-Core Optimizer" from here.

It gave me a noticeable performance increase on FFXI, particularly during dual boxing.

[RKenshin]

I have a dual core on a PC that's a good 2 years old, and I've had as many as 4 instances of FF going without much trouble (settings were way done of course). But I can easily run 2-3 at good settings (including registry changes) without problems.

FF is very light on the machine, don't need a super computer or anything of the type.

[Scorp]

This is probably the best place for this without a new thread;

I'm sizing up a new computer, only pc games I really play are CnC generals, half life 2 and ffxi. I buy new games on console. Sadly it has to be a laptop, I'm looking at some of the £300-£500 dual core models on the market.

If the processor is the same spec and dual core in a laptop does that mean its the same pound for pound as it were with a desktop, or are the chips different/weaker etc. (Sorry noob question but never really did the laptop thing before).

something between or including,

This

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/spec ... ml?NNB-612

or this;

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/spec ... ml?NNB-598

[Ferien]

You may get better responses in the tech support forum, but generally mobile chips will throttle themselves based on your current load and power settings, resulting in varied clock speeds. However, from what I recall (it's been a while, I may be outdated) they also have a comparably massive amount of on-chip cache. It's not worse per se, just different. Basically, it's good for optimizing power consumption, but potentially bad for a game like FFXI, which relies entirely on the CPU clock for game timing.

[fishstix]

I would go for the dual core laptop, the stats look pretty good, but I would double check on how much video ram the card has. I have a Dell Vostro 1500 that goes for about $600 these days: 1.8 core2duo, 1gb ram, 128mb nvidia geforce 8400m GS. I would recommend not getting Vista on it. I think a PC with the exact same stats would perform better like Ferien said. The video card and other parts are geared more towards efficiency of energy than being powerful. That said, I play on my laptop plugged in, whenever I can. I know it negates the reason for getting a laptop (except when I play in bed). When it's unplugged, running on the batteries, there's a noticeable drop in performance.

[vagus]

FFXI doesn't take much to run. I run a Core 2 Duo 1.8 with 2Gigs of ram. I can duo box with no proglems

[The Stig]

Core 2 Duo @ 2.0ghz here
Laptop, GeForce Go 7400
2gb RAM

Dual boxing no problem here, about 60% CPU usage in crowded areas.

[Vertabreaker]

If you're using an Athlon 64x2, make ABSOLUTELY sure that you install the "AMD Dual-Core Optimizer" from here.

It gave me a noticeable performance increase on FFXI, particularly during dual boxing.

Same here. Rocking AMD X2 dual core. 2 GB of ram and I can dual box without a problem.

[evilpaul]

If the 4-core option is running at roughly the same clockspeed I'd go for that if the price isn't a lot higher as it'll run smoother. If your 2-core choice is clocked a few hundred Mhz faster it may run two instances of FFXI slightly better though. Do any hardware sites still benchmark with that FFXI demo/test from a few years ago?

[Octavious]

Either/Or would own FFXI fine, as mentioned by a few people. If your sole decision is for FF then go with what is more affordable. My current laptop is a DELL Inspiron w/2 GB RAM, GeForceGO 256mb, & 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo and I can safely say it would be able to run 2~3 instances of FFXI without any noticeable FPS drop, maybe 29-->20 for each window, not bad.

I recently had my quad-core desktop delivered and it runs a 2.4 GHz Quad Core w4 GB RAM with only a 256 mb Radeon HD (for the dual DVI for my TV :D). As far as noticeable changes to FF, I never drop below 29 FPS on either window when dual boxing, the only time would be a besiged where one dropped to 25 (i cried;;). In all seriousness as mentioned it will just increase the number of things you can do while playing. On the laptop i haven't had any noticeable lag aside from the FPS drop and I am still able to browse while playing on my laptop. Go for a core 2 duo laptop, I do love sitting on the patio playing FF and watching TV <3.