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Quad Core, any point ?
- Thread starter Pygor
- Start date
Like windows will ever EVER EVER use anything more than 20-30% of good dual core, not to mention quad.
The increase comes with application that can make 100% use of quads, and so far this is pretty much only video eiditing/rendering software and other graphic work stuff ( probably some sound encoding as well).
Maybe few game titles can use it too, but as it stands now they hardly ever use more than 70% power of a dual core, so quad will probably have a core or two on idle anyways.
I wouldnt bother with quad for gaming or single/dual apps.
Ofcourse people say " But the games are around the corner !"
Ye sure, show me OCed Q6600 in 6months time, playing 10 newest titles up to date and if any of those will use all the four cores at more than 80% usage I send you 10 quid. Make it even 1yr time and 85%+.
Then, by the time that most of the games will be able to make full use of quads, the current quads will be already too old and you will probably change for new technology anyways
.Current Duals ( 7200/8400 ) have still plenty life and power in it, and will be fine for next 1,5-2yrs, and tbh nowadays if you want to be up-to-date with hardware you have to upgrade at least every year or max 1,5yr.
I dont think the quad will live any much longer than the duals.
Like windows will ever EVER EVER use anything more than 20-30% of good dual core, not to mention quad.
The increase comes with application that can make 100% use of quads, and so far this is pretty much only video eiditing/rendering software and other graphic work stuff ( probably some sound encoding as well).
Maybe few game titles can use it too, but as it stands now they hardly ever use more than 70% power of a dual core, so quad will probably have a core or two on idle anyways.
I wouldnt bother with quad for gaming or single/dual apps.
Ofcourse people say " But the games are around the corner !"
Ye sure, show me OCed Q6600 in 6months time, playing 10 newest titles up to date and if any of those will use all the four cores at more than 80% usage I send you 10 quid. Make it even 1yr time and 85%+.
Then, by the time that most of the games will be able to make full use of quads, the current quads will be already too old and you will probably change for new technology anyways
Current Duals ( 7200/8400 ) have still plenty life and power in it, and will be fine for next 1,5-2yrs, and tbh nowadays if you want to be up-to-date with hardware you have to upgrade at least every year or max 1,5yr.
I dont think the quad will live any much longer than the duals.
It does not matter about the overall usage of the Quad but the responsiveness of the Quad is greater than the dual & i can only speak about AMD CPU's as i don't have an Intel yet but i noticed the difference straight away going from
dual3.6 to quad2.5 in desktop responsiveness & clocked to 2.8 gave smoother game performance than the dual3.6 & now my quad is at 3.0.
I went from an amd dual to an intel quad and i can feel a difference with my system so quad does make a difference also i play supreme commander a game that does use all 4 cores and performance from the dual is vastly improved so the games are coming out and we will see more games\programs making full use of multiple cores. End of the day it is as always down to personal preference i have built my system with a view to it lasting two years i decided a quad gave me a better chance of lasting that long others will disagree 
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Might be different for AMD since phenoms are a lot newer and better technology than X2s'.
It's different story for Intel.
Also I'm on E2200 atm and I dont think my system could have been any faster with everyday use tasks ( movies, music, internet etc - running all at once ).
Same with my friends E8400 in vista, he doesnt need to wait a single fraction of second for anything to open.
I cant understand how you could see any real world difference ( or you can catch 0,1sec?) in normal tasks...
It's different story for Intel.
Also I'm on E2200 atm and I dont think my system could have been any faster with everyday use tasks ( movies, music, internet etc - running all at once ).
Same with my friends E8400 in vista, he doesnt need to wait a single fraction of second for anything to open.
I cant understand how you could see any real world difference ( or you can catch 0,1sec?) in normal tasks...
I went from an amd dual to an intel quad and i can feel a difference with my system so quad does make a difference also i play supreme commander a game that does use all 4 cores and performance from the dual is vastly improved so the games are coming out and we will see more games\programs making full use of multiple cores. End of the day it is as always down to personal preference i have built my system with a view to it lasting two years i decided a quad gave me a better chance of lasting that long others will disagree
Ye that's because you went from 60quid CPU to 140 quid CPU.
We talk about equal CPUs - swap from E8400 to Q6600 and show me the difference in windows.
Its not placebo at all
I had a C2D setup with a fresh install of windows and did the same with a Q6600, just browsing and playing mp3s I noticed windows being a huge amount more responsive - and I put this down to software firewall, AV, all the other startup apps without even considering WXP itself being spread over all the other cores
Unless its an occasional system, that hardly gets used I never specify a dual core when a few extra £ will get you a much more responsive system
(obviously if you put 1GB ram in a quad core this will be awful compared to a 4GB dual core but with every other element being the same , its quad core every time)
Yes Phoenix i upgraded which usually means you go from a lesser product to a superior product 
really don't see why people have to get so argumentative about something that is quite straightforward must be that time of the month.
really don't see why people have to get so argumentative about something that is quite straightforward must be that time of the month.Its not placebo because when the login tune used to get played after the desktop showed up on dual & to now play just before the desktop shows up & 15 or so start up apps loading faster on the quad to where there was a much longer wait on the dual & it used to be maxed out on both cores i also had gone back & forth between the dual & quad 4 times in a day as its only a 5 min swap out as to see if i was loosing out overall with the quad not running at 3.6 like my dual...the quad won at 2.8 & now at 3.0 there is no contest.
Multi tasking is always going to be better with more Cores as the tasks get a share of 4 Cores & not 2 that does not need the apps it self to be multi threaded.
4 single threaded tasks will run smoother on a quad than on a dual.
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Once again responsiveness & usage are not the same thing but maxed out usage will degrade responsiveness from where it was & if you followed what we have been saying its that the main focus was about responsiveness is better its the context switching between tasks that lowers the responsiveness that why over clocking will show gains is some apps games even tho the apps games never maxed out the cores even before hand, it lowers that latency between task switching & a quad core has to do even less task switch per core if you have 4 apps running.
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Completely concur
Dual cores have their place, but for most I would still choose a quad unless REALLY strapped for cash
Yep & good example would be cleaning the home with 4 rooms & cleaning 1 thing in a room then going to the next [taskswitching] & do the same & see how much longer it would take than if you just fully cleaned one at a time.
Its not laggy & it seem you really don't understand.