4GHz Quad-Core vs 2GHz Octa-Core

[Kybernarkis]

Hi guys, sorry if this questions has been asked to death. But could somebody break this down for me on a technical level?

Let’s assume I’ve got two Intel or AMD chips of the same generation using the same architecture with all the same specs, but one chip is a 4GHz Quad-Core and the other one is an 2GHz Octa-Core, both having the same amount of total GHz available. In what scenarios (compiling, building light, general usage of the application and editor etc.) in Unreal Engine 4 would the 2GHz Octa-Core chip perform better/work faster/be more efficient than the 4GHz Quad-Core and why?

Some people are saying faster clock speeds are better than more cores for spesific jobs but fails to point out what spesific jobs and why.

[darthviper107]

It depends specifically on which series of processors your comparing. The recently release AMD Ryzen processors are much more similar in architecture to Intel processors than the other AMD processors. On a practical level, some computer programs or even specific operations in a program will be single-threaded, meaning it can only use one thread to do the operation in which case it will be faster to do that thing with a higher clock speed since it can’t use the other processors. In other cases where the operation can take advantage of all threads then the more cores will help.
Usually rendering and simulation will benefit the most from having more cores. You want to have a good balance between them, so a 3Ghz Quad-core would be a good choice.
But again, a note on older AMD processors, the clock speed and number of cores does not compare directly to Intel processors, so if you want to get AMD then get a Ryzen CPU.

[Kybernarkis]

@darthviper107;683822

some computer programs or even specific operations in a program will be single-threaded, meaning it can only use one thread to do the operation in which case it will be faster to do that thing with a higher clock speed since it can’t use the other processors. In other cases where the operation can take advantage of all threads then the more cores will help.
Usually rendering and simulation will benefit the most from having more cores.

Thanks darthviper107, for the reply. Other than rendering and simulation, and talking exclusively about UE4, do you have any other examples on where more cores are more important faster clock speeds and the other way around? If you have any benchmarks comparing different types of CPU’s under different workloads to share that would be amazing. I can only seem to find benchmarks about video editing and such.