Quad/dual and process

[phillyman36]

Hey i have a couple of questions. I know Nehalem is suppose to launch 1st quarter 2009. i am going to upgrade to it when idt does come out. However i am debating on whether it makes sense for me to buy the q9450 instead of a e8400. I play games here and there but i do most video editing. my question is more about response time. For instance when im online download large files( nzbs) im downloading at a rate of about 190kbps. If I open a new window to continue surfing and i type a website in its slow loading that website. Now if i were to get a quad core would this help speed up the process? Im not sure if its because im download if the memory is tied up or if its the cpu. I dont think its my internet connection because i believe i get around 2 mbps. So basically will a quad core help my situation significantly or am i looking at it wrong. Please help me understand and thanks for any responses

 

[degibson]

Improving your CPU will not improve your download speed. Since you already have a dual-core machine (assuming windows isn't idiotic in its scheduling, which probably isn't a true assumption), you won't get very much better response time at quad-core. Now, that said, some video codecs/transcoders are threaded thesed days, so Nehalem should bring a performance boost to them. Games are headed down the multithreaded route, too, so they also should benefit from the Nehalem upgrade.

As for memory contention, it is possible, but only if you're starving your machine (e.g. 128 MB or so -- browsing usually isn't memory intensive). My guess is that your 190kbps down is saturating your upload bandwidth (usually in the neighborhood of 16k-32k for most asymmetric residential connections), and your browsing is suffering from upload contention, not download contention.

 

[hnzw rui]

2mbit/s = 250kbytes/s

Also, that 2mbit/s is theoretical max. Actual speeds are much lower. It's pretty much as degibson explained. It's your internet connection, not your PC.

 

[hans007]

the workstation / enthusiast nehalem is q1 09 or q4 08. the mainstream is not till maybe summer 09. by the way.

 

[piasabird]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819115043

Q9300 Yorkfield Cores are up for sale. 45nm 1333 FSB 6 Meg Cache. Dont really know if it is worth it to spend $300 or not.

Maybe the Q6600 will come down in price.

Make sure the motherboard supports the 1333 FSB.

 

[phillyman36]

Hey thanks for the replies. Even though im doing video editing i may go for the E8400. The q9300 is about 300 bucks the q9450 is 350 bucks. i might as well get the q9450 since the price isnt that far off. Since im going to upgrade to Nehalem in about a year or whenever it does come out and save myself 150+ bucks and maybe upgrade my video card. Im still thinking about it since my original problem was more internet releated