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Is it time for Quad Core?

dirtydog said:
What new stuff, you mean i7? Because on the S775 platform the Q6600 - two years old though it is - can be clocked to perform at levels approaching the fastest 45nm quads. Its weaknesses are higher power consumption and the absence of SSE4, but its significantly lower price compared to the 45nm quads balances that out.
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Then wait for all taht to come out and mature and the Q6600 will cost nothing. he doesn't need it now.
 
Heh love the Quad owners digging in for the fight of their life! :D

I understand the scenario all too well, you do a bit of research, make your purchase then a bunch of dudes come along and tell you the made the wrong choice! :o

I don't want to make people feel like they made the wrong choice but rather highlight the benefits of the dual cores. The only problem I have with Quads is they are still ahead of time with not much mainstream benefit, regardless they drain too much power, especially the over-volted, overclocked 65nm chips! :eek:

I know quite a lot of you take no notice of power consumption at the moment but mark my words you will in the future! It won't be endless discussions on getting the most 3D-marks but instead how to knock off a few more watts on your gaming rig to hit 100w full load . . . :cool:
 
Look basically all you dual core owners can bleet about how GTA IV is broken and is a bad port, while us Quad owners can enjoy the game at a decent performance level.

;)
 
even if I could run GTA IV at 100fps I would not play it. The game is terrible and the graphics even worse.

And purchasing a quad for 1 game seems daft.

I have been through literally dozens of quads yet I am still back to using dual core because for gaming and general use I find it much snappier due to the much higher clocks.
 
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And so it goes on and on and on and never goes anywhere at all. Quad or dual does it really matter no matter which you own doesn't make you any more or any less of whatever it is personal choice fgs. This whole debate really is getting boring and the fact is at the end of it the dual fans will still be dual fans and the same for quadies it's pointless. Which one should people get simple look at what you do see what advantages you would gain from whatever one and then factor in your budget and wollah theres your purchase.
 
RizlaKing said:
And so it goes on and on and on and never goes anywhere at all. Quad or dual does it really matter no matter which you own doesn't make you any more or any less of whatever it is personal choice fgs. This whole debate really is getting boring and the fact is at the end of it the dual fans will still be dual fans and the same for quadies it's pointless. Which one should people get simple look at what you do see what advantages you would gain from whatever one and then factor in your budget and wollah theres your purchase.
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Excellent summary Rizlaking.
GTA IV is a really crap game .
 
You know the main thing is people are happy with what they got, if you got a q6600 under the hood and it's doing the business then that's fair enough.

Thing is though I had a a few 65nm Dual-Core, a 65nm Quad-Core (Q6600) and now a few 45nm Dual-Core (not rich enough to play with 45nm quads!). In my personal experience I didn't find the quad core much use after the "oh-New-Wizz-Bang" factor had worn off, sure it was neat to see four seperate processes in task manager and watch the quad core cream the duals in things like media-encoding and various other synthetic benches but firmly back in the real world it was obvious to me I did succumb to the INTEL media hype and listening to a few old cronies on this board saying things like "oh it's so fast!"

I honestly believe the people that truely benefit from a cheap 65nm quad are most likely not to post on these forums and probably not even able to build a machine themselves, they would be something like a video-editor whos given a system builder £500 to construct them a budget video editing box.

I'm a reasonable guy, I love chatting with you all endlessly about a total load of **** but please please please can the quad lovers start chimming in with some *real* good reasons why a quad is beter than a dual . . . . . . . getting a few extra extraneous FPS (180 vs 150) in some bulla game or twice as quick encoding of the two films you do a week!!!!

Some people are saying their systems were snappier after installing a quad, well clearly these people are not really understanding that to make a system *snappy* is more about Northbridge tRD, system and memory bandwidth than lobbing a few extra power hungry cores at WinXP/Vista. . .

Man some of you are stubborn beyond belief lol! :D
 
Big.Wayne said:
getting a few extra extraneous FPS (180 vs 150) in some bulla game
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Isn't that normally the reasoning behind buying a dual over a quad? :p

For me, the reasons why I keep my quad are:

a) Versatility. If I'm playing games designed for dual, all I'm going to lose is the equivalent of a few hundred Mhz. If I'm playing games designed for quad, I get the full benefit. I don't do that much encoding etc., but it's nice to have the power when it's needed. A quad-core is great for any application and can deal with a crazy level of multitasking, where a dual is more limited in its applications.

b) Tying in with a)... unless you're a hardcore gamer, or you don't use your rig intensively at all... why not get a quad? For the same price, you can get a CPU that only gives up a few hundred Mhz, and for that has twice as many computation cores. Even in the absence of many compelling reasons to buy a quad, I see no compelling reason at all to buy a dual when quads are available for the same price. (Energy efficiency doesn't really concern me - the maximum difference between the two at full load is less than the cost of leaving a light on!)

c) Folding@Home :p
 
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Maybe for the simple fact its more future proof? :confused:

I don't know about you guys but I'm not one of them who upgrades his PC every week, or sits there for hours squeezing out every extra mhz I can. :rolleyes::p

I'm looking to upgrade my mobo/cpu/ram this month, only because I can still get good money back for my socket 939 stuff so it will be a very cheap but worthwhile upgrade, if it wasn't worth anything I would happily keep it, it does everything I need it to perfectly well and fast enough for me.

But because it won't cost me much I've decided to upgrade it, and I'm ONLY looking at quad core tbh because I intend on keeping it for as long as possible, I don't see any point in buying a dual core now unless I was planning to upgrade again in a few weeks or months which I am not.
 
Mattus said:
Energy efficiency doesn't really concern me - the maximum difference between the two at full load is less than the cost of leaving a light on!
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Mattus I think you are making two mistakes here, one is not considering Energy efficiency lol shame on you! :p the second is when you discuss the difference between the power consumption of a dual and quad I gather you have done no conclusive research into it yourself i.e you don't really know what you are talking about and pulling figures from thin air :D


e36Adz said:
Maybe for the simple fact its more future proof? :confused:
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Future Proof, hmmmm . . . .

Never really tackled this one, that is I know the term *Future Proof* very well but I don't think it's a real thing in reality.

I think when you part with your hard earned it's a nice idea to maybe try and maximise your investment and not buy a piece of tech that's EOL or about to be phased out, it makes some sense to pay for extra features that we can't really use but we are promised are emerging technologies, just from my historic experience and beyond the smoke screens of media and forum hype most of the time your wasting your money.

When buying hardware it's my personal mantra that I want at least 90% of the bang right away, buy it, install it, sit back and go "Holy **** what a difference that made!", I'm not talking synthetic benches, I'm talking Night & Day totally gobsmacking noticable, along the lines of swapping out a 17" CRT for a 24" Widescreen . . boom!

The thing I am seeing is a *mass* of brain washed people pulling the most weak excuses out the bag to try and justify their purchases, there is no Night & Day difference and they really seem to struggle with the simple fact they may have been mugged! :o

Future Proof, oh good grief! :rolleyes::p
 
Some people are saying their systems were snappier after installing a quad, well clearly these people are not really understanding that to make a system *snappy* is more about Northbridge tRD, system and memory bandwidth than lobbing a few extra power hungry cores at WinXP/Vista. . .
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I found my Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz snappier to use than an E8600 @4.5Ghz i had briefly, and it was tweaked ;)

As Rizlaking put it, it comes down to each individual case, me personally i prefer a quad - can't really explain much why but have for quite a while.

However I do get tempted to get another E8600 just to push towards 600fsb :D
 
PaulyD said:
can't really explain much why
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Seems to be a trend amongst certain posters! :p

You know I always like to learn myself, whats this? what does that do? how does this work? like a hardware scholar, it's my hobby and it's very rewarding when you break through a technical level of understanding, that sorta personal eureka moment.

Sometimes I can get on my high horse and think after years of playing I know it all but as soon as that happens some bizarre scenario comes along that makes me feel like an utter nOObzilla again, so in light of the humbling experience I've pretty much decided to remain in a constant state of nOObness and that mode I actually seem to be learning more eeee :o

Anyway what the hell am I waffling about? . . . . oh yeah you bunch of nOOblets who think you know it all get off your lofty perches and listen to what some of us are telling you, don't be stubborn or proud, just fess up that actually it's possible to make a mistake from time to time, admit it, learn from it and buy yourself a lovely energy efficient Wolfdale, it will not hold you back in any way and you will using less electric and reduce your power bills, a positive eco friendly move and cash in the pocket!

Energy Efficiency
Energy Efficiency
Energy Efficiency
Energy Efficiency
Energy Efficiency
Energy Efficiency
Energy Efficiency!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Big.Wayne said:
Mattus I think you are making two mistakes here, one is not considering Energy efficiency lol shame on you! :p the second is when you discuss the difference between the power consumption of a dual and quad I gather you have done no conclusive research into it yourself i.e you don't really know what you are talking about and pulling figures from thin air :D
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Well then, let's try and introduce some figures. As lots of us know, a Q6600 G0 at stock has a TDP of 95W. I just looked up the TDP of an E8x00 - it's 65W. So the maximum difference in terms of power drawn between the two is 30W - half the power needed to run an ordinary 60W light-bulb.

Admittedly quad-core power consumption increases faster when OCed, but I think you'd have to be doing some fairly hardcore overclocking before the difference exceeded 60W, for example. Also, remember that these are theoretical maximum figures, so unless you're pegging your CPU with Folding or something, the difference will usually be much smaller.

Conclusion: if you're running an energy-efficient home, swapping out quad-cores for dual-cores ought to come fairly low on your list :) Just turning your rig off for a few hours more every day would make a bigger difference. Wayne, I admire your enthusiasm for duals, but I truly believe that the quad is the right choice for me!

(if you really wanted to get into this, you could even argue that a quad would complete an encoding or rendering job in just over half the time of the equivalent dual, whilst using ~50% more power. So in total, the quad would actually require less energy to do the task. But that's probably taking things too far :D)
 
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