Any programmers out there with a Core i7?

[OrphanBoy]

Hi guys, as per the title - are there any programmers out there who've been working on an i7 machine?

I get the impression that people only believe that high-spec computers are only for gaming or encoding, or with the advent of i7, rendering or CAD. Compiling in particular scales very well with the number of CPU cores but I can't find any decent benchmarks of how Core i7/C2D/C2Q/Phenom perform against each other.
Does anyone have any experience of how much more productive an i7 can be for these sorts of tasks? I'd like to know in particular if the HT makes a lot of difference.

Cheers
Simon

 

[JonJ678]

I suspect it wouldn't help compiling that much. If you compile a program on multiple cores at once it tends to compile differently. I don't remember the specifics, but the first thing to check if code doesn't compile is to run again on a single core.

It would help computer aided design. Currently I have a q9550 holding back an 8800gt in cad, I'd love to change to i7 to improve this. Ridiculous that the processor is the bottleneck when paired with that card.

 

[OrphanBoy]

At the moment we use dozens of CPUs from around my building to compile work concurrently and going to one CPU would take AGES! Normally that's an indication of a build system not having dependencies properly set up.

So...no programmers out there?! Yikes!

 

[mk17]

dare I ask - what in the name of jeebus are you compiling? dozens of distributed cpus? sheesh!!

 

[JonJ678]

I never claimed to be a competent programmer, very much a beginner
I'm also quite curious as to what you're compiling, but no worries if you cant say

 

[Rroff]

I've been compiling some reasonably big programs (entire game source, including tools) and even a core 2 duo crunches through it in under 2 minutes - so its not really a big issue compiling wise.

The biggest productivity boost for programming was swapping to bigger displays - especially 2048x or higher res where you can open 2-3 source files side by side to work on (without any horizontal scrolling) - its even more handy for working in visual studio than multi monitor.

 

[OrphanBoy]

I write low-level tech for a big 1st party console games company...modern games have lots and lots of source code, hence the compile times! I watched some dude write Breakout with Havok the other day (facepalm) and still mess it up (and make the thing frame-out)!

Oh and Rroff, you're so right about that big screen lark - and why oh why doesn't VS let you open a window for a second screen?! Mine only go up to 1600x1200

If you're interested, here's some stuff I did in my own time: http://quake.drunkencoders.com/
I got so many donations for writing the first one that I bought a new video card with the spoils!

 

[Biffa]

Actually you might be surprised, often Mhz is king with many "business" benchmarks.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/intel-ci7-920-p2.html