How long till Dual Cores get really taken advantage of?

[TheNewGuy8]

So these boards have been full of the Single core vs. dual core debate. The legion of us currently debating an upgrade just can't decide if its worth the extra $100 or so to jump to the X2 3800+ or higher.

So how long to do you all think it will take for Dual cores to really get taken advantage of? As far as I know if the program isn't written for dual core, then the system can't effectively use the 2nd core (it doesn't "know" how to write send every second instruction to the other core, or however it works).

Most games are not dual core at this point, though some are releasing patches, is that right?

What about Windows? is XP dual core? And will Vista take advantage of it?

How about programs such as PS CS2? Or Adobe Premeie?

It's obviously not worth getting dual core now if it's going to be 2 years until you can really take advantage of it.

What do you all think?

And as a sidenote - what is the realistic difference in speed while using, say, PS CS2 on a normal and dual core system? Can anyone provide some kind of relation measure?

 

[stevty2889]

Windows 2K windows XP home, and windows XP pro are all able to use dual cores. There are lots of things that can take advantage of dual cores. PS CS2 I am almost 100% sure is SMP aware, any good video encoding program is SMP aware, as well as rendering programs. Or you can do multiple CPU intensive tasks at the same time, with no big slowdowns. There are really plenty of things that already take advnatage of dual cores, and I wouldn't got back to a single core myself. Both Nvidias and ATI's newest drivers can take advantage of dual cores. There aren't many games optimized for dual core yet, but more will follow. Quake 4 already has a dual core patch, that seemed to make a decent differance.

 

[RussianSensation]

I would say strictly for games, we wont see any serious benefits until late 2006; maybe even later. If you multitask and run many programs in the background while gaming, you'll benefit from dual-core today. But if you expect a framerate boost from dual-cores in the majority of games, that time is still far away. You are better off investing the difference towards a faster videocard.

 

[Matthias99]

Most games are not dual core at this point, though some are releasing patches, is that right?

A few have released patches. It's generally not something easy to add in once you've written a large singlethreaded application. It will likely be a few years before most games are multithreaded in any meaningful way. However, a dual-core CPU can still help with single-threaded applications, since any background tasks will be dispatched to the second CPU.

Also, NVIDIA has added some amount of multithreading into their video drivers, and ATI is working on it as well. The performance difference is not enormous, but it helps a little.

What about Windows? is XP dual core? And will Vista take advantage of it?

"is XP dual core" is an odd question, since it is an operating system, not a CPU.

Windows XP supports multiple processors (both virtual and real), although I don't know if the entire kernel is multithreaded. Vista will also support multiple processors, although again, it may not be a 100% improvement going from 1 CPU to 2.

How about programs such as PS CS2? Or Adobe Premeie?

Photoshop has been multithreaded for years. I believe recent versions of Premiere are as well.

And as a sidenote - what is the realistic difference in speed while using, say, PS CS2 on a normal and dual core system? Can anyone provide some kind of relation measure?

Should be at least a 50-75% speed improvement in doing computationally-intensive filters, etc. I've seen benches of differnet programs in a lot of DC CPU reviews.

 

[fire400]

dual core will handle a lot... it probably won't make things run faster than a single core would compute a game, but you can defintely run loads of stuff in the background when a BF2 game is running on the foreground, assuming you got a badass video card

 

[RaiderJ]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
I would say strictly for games, we wont see any serious benefits until late 2006; maybe even later. If you multitask and run many programs in the background while gaming, you'll benefit from dual-core today. But if you expect a framerate boost from dual-cores in the majority of games, that time is still far away. You are better off investing the difference towards a faster videocard.

:thumbsup:

 

[jc9970]

I encode everyday with CCE (Cinema Craft Encoder) which supports multiple processors, and it cut my encoding time in half when I made the switch to dual core. So it looks like my Dual Core setup is already being taken advantage of.

 

[Griffinhart]

Originally posted by: TheNewGuy8
So these boards have been full of the Single core vs. dual core debate. The legion of us currently debating an upgrade just can't decide if its worth the extra $100 or so to jump to the X2 3800+ or higher.

So how long to do you all think it will take for Dual cores to really get taken advantage of? As far as I know if the program isn't written for dual core, then the system can't effectively use the 2nd core (it doesn't "know" how to write send every second instruction to the other core, or however it works).

Most games are not dual core at this point, though some are releasing patches, is that right?

CoD2 has released a Dual Core Patch. NVidia's video drivers are multi-threaded so all games will get some benefit, though not huge amounts. In reality, Dual Core or Single Core, your video board will be your likely performance bottleneck for games.

What about Windows? is XP dual core? And will Vista take advantage of it?

The term you should have used is Multi-Threaded. And XP, Vista, and All Flavors of Linux are Multi-Threaded Operating systems.

How about programs such as PS CS2? Or Adobe Premeie?

Absolutely. Dual Core Machines get HUGE advantages when running these apps as they have been Multi-threaded forever.

It's obviously not worth getting dual core now if it's going to be 2 years until you can really take advantage of it.

Frankly, if you only play games, then you probably won't see any big advantage in Dual Cores for a long while, if ever. But, there are many compelling reasons to go Dual Core today.

If you do any Video or Photo Editing, that $100 increase is more than worth the money.

Last year I went from a 3500+ to a 4400+x2, and I'm never going back to a single core machine.
What do you all think?

And as a sidenote - what is the realistic difference in speed while using, say, PS CS2 on a normal and dual core system? Can anyone provide some kind of relation measure?

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1655195&enterthread=y
And
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=926660&page=1&pp=20

browse through the threads. You'll see the impressive difference between dual core CPU's and single core machines running identicle tests. They run the same job in nearly half the time of single core processors with the same clockspeed.

 

[TheNewGuy8]

Thanks Griffnhart - that was very helpful. So much to learn all the time.

 

[Viditor]

As a final note, MS has been making noises that Windows Vista will be optimised for DC. I assume that means that it will have at least some SMT functionality in it's apps...

 

[imported_boe]

I'm debating between keeping my current system for another year or buying a new system just so I can get a top of the line video card. I'd like to just put that in my AGP slot but I may have to buy a new system to get the video card I want. The monitor I just ordered requires a DVI-D dual-link graphic card that supports WQXGA (2560 x 1600) resolution. I want something that will give me fast gaming today as well as a year from now. I'm hoping to see some benifit from going to a dual core CPU now so I don't feel silly buying a new system when I could wait another year.