Quad-core or Dual-core ? Which one do I pick ?

[Gillbot]

Should this be updated to include Hex core?

 

[Gannef]

Since the last patch World of Warcraft now officialy supports quad cores as well, it gave me a 50%+ performance increase ingame

 

[jhu]

Just wanted to put in a plug for POV-Ray. The beta is multi-threaded. For the stable version, multiple instances can be run to speed up rendering.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

I'm going to get a new computer.. what do you guys think between these processors? it's 100$ difference. what are the pros and cons?


Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-750 quad-core processor [2.66GHz, 1MB L2 + 8MB shared L3 cache]

vs.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-860 quad-core processor [2.8GHz, 1MB L2 + 8MB shared L3 cache]


thanks!

 

[Shmee]

Should this be updated to include Hex core?

lol ya, I would think thats a good idea. or tri core on the AMD side 😀

 

[netxzero64]

for me quad core is the better choice... you can do great gaming on quad cores especially multithreaded games plus you can do a lot of multitasking plus other utilities that takes the benefit of quad processors...

but that's just me =)

 

[dguy6789]

It's rather straight forward. More cores means: 1. Multi threaded applications run much faster. 2. More capability to multi task. 3. Much smoother experience in general. 4. The CPU will be longer lasting in terms of running new robust software in the future.

 

[johnny.dacu]

Nice advices you gave us. Really helpful; i'm in the 3rd category and i didn't know what to use, which is more appropriate. Now i know. Thanks!

 

[Zim]

Quad. Next question...

 

[Docnoq]

My C2D @ 2.33ghz and 8800gts are still workin their way through every game I have played 🙂

 

[Jacky60]

Buying a dual core rather
than quad core now is insane-all else equal buy quad or hexa.

 

[cubeless]

My C2D @ 2.33ghz and 8800gts are still workin their way through every game I have played 🙂

but isn't duke nukem @ 800x600 getting a little old?

 

[sam4u13]

the other day i as extracting win rar 1gb archive on my i5 750 with 4 gb ram which took around 1 min or more with CPU loading of 7% or so, i was thinking it should have taken less than 15 seconds with all 4 procesors working, my conclusions is softwares are not dsign for 4 cores when looking at world processor market and i really wasted money on i5 750

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

the other day i as extracting win rar 1gb archive on my i5 750 with 4 gb ram which took around 1 min or more with CPU loading of 7% or so, i was thinking it should have taken less than 15 seconds with all 4 procesors working, my conclusions is softwares are not dsign for 4 cores when looking at world processor market and i really wasted money on i5 750

Strange to draw such a conclusion based on one application.

Some software is optimized for multiple cores, some software is not.

All 4 cores of my CPU are utilized when I process video.

Many games utilize 2 or more cores.

Adobe software utilizes multiple cores.

I multitask; multiple cores are a big plus.

 

[sam4u13]

this is not one eg. but i tried it with kaspersky running scan n took around 3-4 hrs to deal with 500 gb of data
i donot deny that it would do multitasking by running 2 simultaneous processes but it never ever increased performance or distributed work under 4 cores, its intel failure just to put some transistor club it make a one processors which do not have any interconnnection in between n blamming on software to be prepared to take advantage, in reality processor should be intelligent to deide work on all 4 cores
correct me if iam wrong

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

this is not one eg. but i tried it with kaspersky running scan n took around 3-4 hrs to deal with 500 gb of data
i donot deny that it would do multitasking by running 2 simultaneous processes but it never ever increased performance or distributed work under 4 cores, its intel failure just to put some transistor club it make a one processors which do not have any interconnnection in between n blamming on software to be prepared to take advantage, in reality processor should be intelligent to deide work on all 4 cores
correct me if iam wrong

That's a considerable amount of logic you want to add the the CPU.

Personally, I don't always want my CPU to monopolize all 4 cores with one application. I want to multitask.

As for your examples of using WinRAR and Kapersky, you have a huige bottleneck with regard to speed: your hard drive. UnRARing to my RAMdisk is much faster than UnRARing to my hard drive. If the greatest bottleneck is the performance of the hard drive, it makes little sense to dedicate 4 CPU cores to the operation.

 

[Midwayman]

but isn't duke nukem @ 800x600 getting a little old?

Its more about the dx10/11 games coming out. the 8800 series apparently doesn't like some of then newer versions of dx10. e8500 @ 8800gts 640 in sli and I'm still getting okay frame rates at 1920x1200.

That said, more games are taking advantage of quad core now. I don't think it makes sense to get dual cores at this point now that they have the turbo mode if only a few are active.

six core chips- well that's now the "specialty" realm that quads used to occupy.

 

[nemesismk2]

I had Dual Core but then upgraded to a Quad Core CPU and still looking for software which really takes advantage of Quad Core over Dual Core.

 

[ibex333]

I think people are overhyping quad cores a little too much. For most average joes, they are simply... unnecessary.

64bit technology has been touted for many years now... Even my AMD 3200+ 7 years ago had that mysterious "64bit" perk. It was useless to me then, and it is useleless to me now. And I bet it will remain being useless to me for some time to come. I havent found ANY game that would "require" 64bit technology or that would "greatly" benefit from running on a 64bit OS. I max out most games at 60FPS!!! Why in the hell would I need more? As for software, I dont deal with video encoding, photoshop, 3d Max or any of that jazz... A very big number of people dont even know what those are! (short of photoshop off course) There are alway complications with implementing a 64bit OS even now. I tried getting into it, but I discovered that it requires and additional monetary investment into more RAM. But I dont need more than 3.2Gigs... I hardy ever use that whole amount. Ever.. Even when running very modern games.

Why in the hell would I talk about 64bit tech in this thread you may ask... Well, that is because I am trying to make a point. I am trying to say that quad cores are as useless and unnecessary to most folks as 64bit technology is!

If I was to upgrade to a quad core I would want to see a CLEARLY visible, performance boost in my PC overall and in MOST software that I run on it. Right now, it is simply not the case! Everyone is talking about how wonderful quad cores are at multitasking.... What multitasking?! I cant run protoshop, unzip a big rar file and play Crysis on my dual core... Guess what, I went to my friends house, and I cant do that on his quad core either! Untill I can see that kind of performance difference, I really dont see what multitasking people talk about when they mention quad cores. Can anyone give me some clear, concrete examples of the multitasking in question?

Now, I dont want to sound like a hippocryte.. I will be getting a quad core myself soon. But that's not because it's a quad core. It's because these CPUs are becoming very affordable, and Sandy Bridge is simply much faster than my current CPU.


When it comes to WinRAR, I realize it is bottlenecked by my HD. but shouldt I be able to at least run several other programs simultaneously with using WinRAR or scanning my HD for viruses?

Oh.. and I dont play World of Warcraft - It's a waste of money every month, and you'll never be 1337 enough, no matter how much you grind. And Supreme Commander is a horrible game. TA was much better.

 

[toyota]

sorry but there are plenty of games where your cpu alone would keep you from running games at 60fps "maxed out."

and Sandy Bridge is not just faster because it is a quad, its faster because it has much higher ipc than your E5200.

 

[Gillbot]

I think people are overhyping quad cores a little too much. For most average joes, they are simply... unnecessary.

preach it brother!

sorry but there are plenty of games where your cpu alone would keep you from running games at 60fps "maxed out."

and Sandy Bridge is not just faster because it is a quad, its faster because it has much higher ipc than your E5200.

you are also going under the assumption that "average joes" are gamers. I'd bet any amount of money that the "average joe" uses facebook and internet explorer more than anything else.

 

[toyota]

preach it brother!


you are also going under the assumption that "average joes" are gamers. I'd bet any amount of money that the "average joe" uses facebook and internet explorer more than anything else.

average joe doesn't have jack crap to do with my direct response to him. his cpu and/or his gpu would keep many games from running at 60 fps with "max settings" and thats a fact.

 

[Markfw]

average joe doesn't have jack crap to do with my direct response to him. his cpu and/or his gpu would keep many games from running at 60 fps with "max settings" and thats a fact.

I would agree with you. The days of dual-cores for anything EXCEPT IE are gone, especially for gamers.

 

[podspi]

64bit technology has been touted for many years now... Even my AMD 3200+ 7 years ago had that mysterious "64bit" perk. It was useless to me then, and it is useleless to me now. .

64bit allows you to use more than 4gb of RAM total, and allows threads to address more than 4gb of memory at one time. For some of us that is very important...

 

[Gillbot]

average joe doesn't have jack crap to do with my direct response to him. his cpu and/or his gpu would keep many games from running at 60 fps with "max settings" and thats a fact.

I would disagree but the ensuing debate would be pointless. I've run many games "maxed out" with far less hardware than others because I took the time to tweak and optimize everything instead of plug-n-chugging like most people do. Hell, I remember destroying many with my S3 video card in Unreal Tournament, a card which was often laughed at.