Quad or Duo for Business

[imported_slipperypete]

Howdy - I need a new PC at work and am wondering if I should choose an Intel quad or duo processor. I will mostly be using business apps but occasionally may need to do something where speed is important. I need to put Vista SP1 on there and also wonder if there is a difference in performance between quads and duos for that OS? I've narrowed my choices down to Quad Q9450 or Duo E8500. Any advice is appreciated.

Pete

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Not many business apps will utilize 4 cores, maybe Excel if your running calcs on a butload of huge linked spreadsheets or something. And if your situation is like mine, most of the apps run off an apps server and the performance is limited more by the bandwidth of or LAN than by CPU power. I would say go with the E8500

 

[GrJohnso]

Well, it depends how many apps you like to run at once... Sure, not many individual apps use multiple cores, but if you run a few things at once, the extra cores can help... So, single app peak speed? 8500... Multiple apps on a regular basis, 9450...

- G

 

[Foxery]

Unless your type of business involves tasks which are demanding enough that you must wait for the computer to run its calculations, it's unlikely that a quad is worth your while.

 

[DSF]

I don't recommend the E8500. It's only 166 MHz faster than the considerably less expensive E8400. It doesn't sound to me like you'll benefit much from four cores though, unless you can be more specific about exactly what applications you run.

Without any additional information, my recommendation would be an E8400 or even possibly an E7200.

 

[Arkaign]

At the risk of getting flamed, I actually think a quad would be worth it at this point. It's notably superior at multitasking, and with the bloat of modern apps, it's easily conceivable that in a couple of years (Windows 7?), dual-cores will start to really drag while trying to juggle all the processes. Our CFO has a 3Ghz C2D with 4GB DDR2, and it starts to drag quite often, only running :

Peachtree '06
Excel/Word/Outlook
ACT 2006
1 or 2 IE7 Windows
AVG Antivirus

Frequent culprits to bad performance seem to be the parasite processes that invariably want to autostart with things like google/itunes/etc. Stupid bastards. If I want to run the program I'll fucking launch it, I don't want that shit running in the background continuously when it's either never used, or maybe used 2-3x a year.

 

[Ratman6161]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
... Our CFO has a 3Ghz C2D with 4GB DDR2, and it starts to drag quite often, only running :

Peachtree '06
Excel/Word/Outlook
ACT 2006
1 or 2 IE7 Windows
AVG Antivirus

...

I would bet that if you look at the actual CPU utilization with those programs running you will find that its very low. Desktop apps generally spend most of their time sitting there waiting for user input with bursts of activity when you do a calculation, etc. But while you are clicking the go button in one app, generating that burst of activity, the other running apps are generally just sitting there doing nothing - waiting for user input. So they are using memory, but not much in the way of CPU power.

So if you want to have a lot of desktop type apps open at once, having a lot of memory (at least enough to prevent excessive page file usage) but CPU is only of secondary importance.

 

[imported_slipperypete]

Thanks for all the info - very helpful.

DSF - thanks and good point. I hadn't thought of that. Those extra 166MHz's could make all the difference, however...

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: slipperypete
Thanks for all the info - very helpful.

DSF - thanks and good point. I hadn't thought of that. Those extra 166MHz's could make all the difference, however...

Unlikely. It's a 5.5% increase in speed. If a process usually takes you half an hour to run on an E8400, you'd only save about a minute and a half with the E8500. Whether that small decrease in processing time is worth the price premium of the E8500 is something only you can answer.

It still would be nice to know exactly what you're doing with the computer to give the most informed opinion.

 

[heyheybooboo]

+1 for the e8400
with business mutitasking you need a 64-bit OS - the cost difference between the e8400 & e8500 will get you another 4Gb of RAM

+1 for Ratman
RAM and HDD I/O over cores

 

[Foxery]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
+1 for the e8400
with business mutitasking you need a 64-bit OS - the cost difference between the e8400 & e8500 will get you another 4Gb of RAM

Well now, that's just silly. An office machine running nothing but a web browser and some Microsoft Office apps won't even reach 1GB most days. Between that and the difference in support for old OSes, Corporate environments definitely don't use 64-bit unless their line of work has a special need. For that matter, check Dell and HP's standard business-class offerings.

The OP has not indicated that his daily activities have special requriements, so he does not need the raw power of a gaming rig.

 

[imported_slipperypete]

Thanks again for all the help.
I will occaisionally have to edit video and audio and do large find/replace functions in text files. I think I will go with the E8400 and get more RAM.

DSF - thanks for your help - I was speaking tongue-in-cheek