Is it going to be worth going to quad core when it comes out?

[MBrown]

Is it going worth it to go quad core when it comes out or just stick to dual core? It seems it would be a huge waiste of money to me. What do you guys think?

 

[Vegitto]

It will cost a waist of money, but it won't be a waste.

 

[Duvie]

For gamer yes!! talk is still years away from games really being programmed to take adantage of dual cores, with no assurances of how multithreaded they actually will be....

The only areas I have seen where 4 cores really may help is Cad rendering....The P XE 840 did better here then its 840 D brother. It appears from data showing dual-core dual opterons it did phenomenally well in these areas....

However there are lots of apps that just canttake advantages effectively of the 4 cores so unless you are the multitasking king it is likely this is for professional type or those who like to brag!!!

Though that may change more by the time they arrive....

 

[furballi]

The current hype about dual core centers around multi-tasking. Most modern PCs spend 95% of the time running at less than 40% CPU load. I would NOT buy a board today with the expectation of upgrading to a dual core CPU in 2 years.

Go with an AMD 3000 Venice and overclock it to +3500 speed. If you're lucky, then you may get a chip that can hit +4000 speed with a small increase in core voltage.

 

[sbuckler]

Quad core has twice performance of dual core. By the time it comes out games and other apps will be built from the ground up to run multi-threaded so you can expect a massive performance increase over dual core. If you've got the money to burn you'll obviously upgrade to quad core.

 

[MBrown]

^I already have a 3500+ winchester. I just started this thread just to see if I should wait for quad core and m2 or just upgrade to an X2 with my 939.

 

[Vegitto]

It depends. As far as I know, nobody knows if these X2's are bandwidth-starved, since sM2 will come with DDR2. Now, that might be a good thing, but it also may be a bad thing. DDR2 provides excellent bandwidth, but very poor timings.

 

[Pabster]

It remains to be seen.

Quad-core sounds interesting. But there will need to be A LOT of bandwidth to fully "fund" all 4 cores. It will be interesting, for sure.

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

MMMM. 8 way Quad Cores all running Folding@Home. I will soar in the rankings!

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: furballi
The current hype about dual core centers around multi-tasking. Most modern PCs spend 95% of the time running at less than 40% CPU load. I would NOT buy a board today with the expectation of upgrading to a dual core CPU in 2 years.

Go with an AMD 3000 Venice and overclock it to +3500 speed. If you're lucky, then you may get a chip that can hit +4000 speed with a small increase in core voltage.

Not necessarily true......

Multitasking is reat for gamers since they know their main app wont take adantage of the 2nd core...For me the hype has been using it on apps that are already multithreaded. I may not do as much multitasking as I do know but both my video and CAD projects will done faster. Most reviews still do single task testing so I dont know wher eyou can say the hype is centered on Multitasking. That is something gamers use to justify themselves getting an expensive chip that may not outperform their current single core chip now...

however if you had paid any atention to users strating to report their results...

TMPGenc (video encoding) increased as much as 85-90%..using the 2nd core quite effeciently...

CAD apps like 3dsmax, Viz renderer, ADT2004, Povray, etc as well increase anywhere form 70-90% with use of the 2nd core in terms of performance....

So if you make your comment based on gaming alone then you are being short sighted...

 

[Bona Fide]

Quad-core...wait at least 2-3 years for that to have serious impact. Even with dual-core out right now, almost 99% of applications are single-threaded anyway. Dual-core apps will probably come out by the end of this year...a full year after dual-core was introduced.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: Bona Fide
Quad-core...wait at least 2-3 years for that to have serious impact. Even with dual-core out right now, almost 99% of applications are single-threaded anyway. Dual-core apps will probably come out by the end of this year...a full year after dual-core was introduced.

Oh the FUD....

where do you come up with 99% of the apps??? games maybe...damn I am startingto hate you single-minded gamers...

IN the encoding sector more then half of all apps are multithreaded now...

IN the CAD sector more then half of all apps are multithreaded now...

99% is a bogus number and please dont pull stuff out your butt...I would say maybe 1/5 to 1/6th of all CURRENT apps across all the platforms are able to take advantage of SMT....99% is a ridiculous number....

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Once apps begin to be written to use multiple cores, suddenly we'll have three apps each wanting two threads and, even on a quad core, will be bottlenecked again....isn't it lovely?