Something just doesn't add up with Company of heroes. AlexZ posted on the socket 754 topic an in-game screenshot with only 444mb of VRAM utilized. So I took a GTS 250 last night and installed into the system. The one and only difference between 9800GTX+ and GTS 250 is the amount of onboard memory: 512mb, respectively 1024mb.

I started a 6 players game and, as you can see in the screenshots, it takes 739mb out of 1024mb of the GTS 250 and 2.2gb of system ram. Also as the game progresses and the AI players put up an increasing number of units, the framerate drops more and more, indicating a CPU bottleneck similar to how Age of empires 2 plays on a Pentium 3 for example when it slows down to a crawl after reaching high number of units.
Also, at the suggestion of AlexZ - to whom I thank - I took Sysinternals Process Explorer and monitored CPU usage during the game. Both cores where loaded at around 70% indicating the game uses 2 cores. Need a second monitor for real time monitoring.

GeForce GTS 250 seems to be a good choice for the tests as opposed to 9800GTX+ which will suffer from VRAM shortage. I only saw 700 MB VRAM being used in Company of Heroes temporarily. For some reason it then drops to below 500MB, sometimes I see about 600MB. Probably also map size dependent.

RAM usage displayed is probably overall RAM usage, since you have additional background apps that's the reason you see 2.2GB used.

Exactly! MSI afterburner is eating around 400mb of RAM only for itself! 2gb would probably be enough on small maps like that one above if one will disable everything! And I mean everything: msi afterbuner, fraps, Everest/Aida and so on. But than you have Fear, Quake 4 and others who eat RAM for breakfast and you would still hit the page file with just 2gb installed.
After testing a few games my conclusion regarding RAM is clear: for late era Windows XP games - 2005&2006 - 4gb is required and not an extravaganza.

So I replaced the Eizo S2100 with 2 monitors from storage: Samsung 940bf that i bought myself back in 2006 after I enter the workforce and got the first money - and of course the first thing on the shopping list was a brand new system with 2 monitors! 19 inch with 1280*1024 resolution at 75hz. 5:4 - not perfect but good enough for retro gaming.

I did a quick test in Quake 4 at the following settings ( I intentionally disabled AA in order to give GTS 250 breathing room):

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, here it is:

The software that you see on the second monitor is Process Explorer from Sysinternals, a task manager replacement. As the second level of the game begins CPU utilization is pretty low, hovering in the 60-70%. However the moment the fighting starts and there are explosions and NPC shooting the CPU utilization jumps and stays at 80-90% during the remaining of the level!
Welcome to the world of SMT, in the year 2005!

And here it is one more. Company of heroes in the beginning of the battle on the Seine river - a 6 player map. As the fighting gets tougher and more and more units are on the map CPU utilization jumps to around 70-80% making good use of the second core of the Athlon 64 X2 4200.

Wow this is quite thorough, thanks

I built an 939 athlon x2 system back in 2005/6ish.... though i kind of regretted not going the c2d route

The parts are still around, iirc its a 3800 and some sort of asus board and the caps may be going bad.

Thank you.
Installed late last night Microsoft Flight Simulator X from DVD's. Afterwards I installed SP1 and SP2 - they are not cumulative, you need to install in order - and acceleration expansion pack.
I challenge anyone to play this game on any single core CPU such as Athlon 64 or FX-55!
The poor Athlon 64 3500 was destroyed, it only got 5 (yes, FIVE) FPS. The question remaining is: does Pentium 4 with hyperthreading can perform as a "real" dual core or no?
If not than the conclusion is clear: for 2006 games a dual core CPU is a minimum requirement and not optional.
I am "going back" to 2005 to see if one can still use a single core CPU for running games at max details or you already need a dual core!

Need for Speed Carbon and Test Drive Unlimited are other 2 games from 2006 that run poorly on single core. Single cores do not fully cover 2006. For some games you will be turning off all apps and need a small swap file (about 512MB).

If you want full coverage of 2006 then you need dual core. I doubt FX-55 or s754 Mobile Athlon 64 4000+ 2.6GHz (which got sold in Germany today) would help you much.

nd22 wrote on 2026-06-23, 07:32:

Thank you. Installed late last night Microsoft Flight Simulator X from DVD's. Afterwards I installed SP1 and SP2 - they are not […]
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Thank you.
Installed late last night Microsoft Flight Simulator X from DVD's. Afterwards I installed SP1 and SP2 - they are not cumulative, you need to install in order - and acceleration expansion pack.
I challenge anyone to play this game on any single core CPU such as Athlon 64 or FX-55!
The poor Athlon 64 3500 was destroyed, it only got 5 (yes, FIVE) FPS. The question remaining is: does Pentium 4 with hyperthreading can perform as a "real" dual core or no?
If not than the conclusion is clear: for 2006 games a dual core CPU is a minimum requirement and not optional.
I am "going back" to 2005 to see if one can still use a single core CPU for running games at max details or you already need a dual core!

What settings? It should run better than that, and I also think the Athlon 3500 is better than a P4.

If the game isnt multithreaded then HT is wasted, and I think the general guide is it helps up to 20% or so. Of course this is relative to the overall performances of the cpu.

Here are the global settings for Microsoft flight simulator X - as you can see I am testing the original not the steam version:

And detailed settings - every single slider all the way to the right:

At the first lesson when you learn free flight you can even see the FPS: 15.9 and we are not actually flying in the game world!! When the level loads I no longer get an image of the process explorer on the second monitor but i took a few pictures with my phone.

The game scales really well with the Athlon 64 X2 4200: from 5-6 FSP to 10-12 FPS. No socket 939 CPU can play this game at maximum details. I am sorry for the quality of the photo, I used my phone:

I think AM2 + Windsor 3.2Ghz X2 is badly needed for this game. On s939 you may be able to get it work by reducing rendering range a bit, typically I would keep all details on maximum except for drawing distance.

For Microsoft Flight Simulator you probably don't need more than 20 fps, it's a slow paced game. I have a few advanced combat flight sims that don't run that well on s754 but 30 fps is enough for modern aircraft combat. For WW1-WW2 sims you would need 50-60 fps as it's all about dog fights.

I also think AM2 CPU'S are required but not enough altough you could play this game comfortably at 30 fps.
The closer you get to the ground the higher the usage of the second core gets. It actually reaches 100% on both cores at low altitude!

This is becoming unreal!! I installed late last night Call of duty 2, a game released in 2005, from original optical media. As always the latest patch, which in this case is 1.3 is installed. Using the console to test the Moscow level the dual core Athlon 64 X2 4200 shows a definite advantage over the single core Athlon 64 3500!
I did not took any screenshots, will take them tonight, but it seems almost surreal to have games already taking advantage of dual cores in the year they were released to the consumers!
My highest clocked single core Athlon are the 3800 Newcastle and Venice models. Maybe someone has the FX-55 or, even better, FX-57 to test them. It would be very interesting to see if these last models can make up for the "loss" of the second core in 2005 games which are supposed to benefit from high cache levels and clock speeds.