Quad Core, any point ?

DarkMatter · 21 Jul 2008 at 14:36

i personally think a lot of performance things inside windows are a product of fast ram over a CPU, when i heavily overclock my ram everythign loads so much faster.

Sooner or later we will all be getting quad, octo , dodecahedron etc Cores. But at the present duals are hte best. remember the transition from single - dual ? it will just be the same again from dual - quad =/

Phil2008 · 21 Jul 2008 at 14:45

How long have we had the single core and how long have we had the dual core? If you want to see it in that way the dual core has a few more yrs in it yet,, but then agaim technolgy is moving so much faster then it was yrs ago when we had the single core systems. But saying that I only moved to dual core a yr ago, cos my trusty fx55 cpu was just starting to hold me back on the games front.

DarkMatter · 21 Jul 2008 at 14:51

oh sorry i more ment, i remember buying my opteron 146 and there being a big deal of single core vs dual core and eveyrone saying a single core allthe way, higher clocks better than more cores etc etc but in the end the dual core was defo the way forward. but that was in the end, i feel only in the last 6-12months we have truly seen a good use of dual cores.

badbob · 21 Jul 2008 at 14:53

That's slightly different, as most people load out a single core easily. Do a spybot scan- slow. Virus scan- slow. Compress a file/music/video- slow.

But now you can encode music whilst doing other windows stuff and apart from HD clicking away (ideally on non OS HD) you couldn't tell the difference.

DarkMatter · 21 Jul 2008 at 15:03

ah, well at the time very few applications used dual cores and i dont remmeber XP being good at using dual cores..... but ofc it got adopted and now dual core = the standard and quad core = the new tech.

Phil2008 · 21 Jul 2008 at 15:09

When I moved from my [email protected] to a opty 185@ 2.8, The diff in 1 or 2 games was huge, even tho both cpus were running at the same speed.. For me jumping from dual to quad isnt worth it atm,, When I jump to quad, I want to see the same performance hit like I did going from single to dual core.

badbob · 21 Jul 2008 at 15:33

DarkMatter said:
ah, well at the time very few applications used dual cores and i dont remmeber XP being good at using dual cores..... but ofc it got adopted and now dual core = the standard and quad core = the new tech.

Even so just because a app doesn't mean dual core it's worthwhile. Load out one core (ie a old app that doesn't support threading) on a dual and it's still responsive. Do that on a single core and you have to wait until that process is finished.

DarkMatter · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:09

i thought i made myself clear. of course dual core is worthwhile NOW. About 2years ago, dual core was not much use, it took time for it to be adopted, i remember call of duty 2 being one of the first true dual core games. It is of course now 110% worht having at least a dual core and in time quad core will be the standard and octo core will be the future debate of quad vs octo Etc Etc.

Do you get me now? I am not trying to say dual core is not worht it!!!!!!!!

DarkMatter · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:10

Phil2008 said:
When I moved from my [email protected] to a opty 185@ 2.8, The diff in 1 or 2 games was huge, even tho both cpus were running at the same speed.. For me jumping from dual to quad isnt worth it atm,, When I jump to quad, I want to see the same performance hit like I did going from single to dual core.

yep i 100% agree, the time will come of course when the jump from dual to quad will be 100% worth it and 90% of programs and games will use quad.

Final8y · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:21

Games that i play now that use All 4cores40%-60% cpu useage & are the only games installed atm funny enough.
GRID,DMC4,GOW,LostplanetEC-Colonies Edition,UT3 & not one RTS in the lot.

DarkMatter · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:22

im supprised about a few of them, how much ultilisation of your CPU do they take? ive got GRID and the DMC4 benchmark on my pc at the moment, i didnt realise they used quad core.

Phil2008 · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:23

DarkMatter said:
yep i 100% agree, the time will come of course when the jump from dual to quad will be 100% worth it and 90% of programs and games will use quad.

Basically stick with dual core untill it starts to let you down, then jump on the quad band wagon, like I I did when I made the change over from single to dual core a yr ago. You get a better bang for your buck doing it my way.

Final8y · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:25

DarkMatter said:
im supprised about a few of them, how much ultilisation of your CPU do they take? ive got GRID and the DMC4 benchmark on my pc at the moment, i didnt realise they used quad core.

look on the box of DMC4.
I edited my post.
My Vista cpu meter has a long time graph & some games still hit the CPU even when tabbed to the desktop to check.

DarkMatter · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:29

well i have a q6600 at the moment

i got one last august, and part of me feels it was abit of a waste as it has been unneeded for most of htis year.

its good news that more games than i expected use quad core, i was supprised how well DMC4 ran on my pc, i could max without AA with my q6600 & hd2900xt.

Phil2008 · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:34

8cores next yr umm,, that will take yrs b4 it comes the norm, cos quad isnt the norm yet, and cant see quad becomming the norm for 1 - 1.5yrs yet. basically
softtwere/games are yrs and yrs behind hardware in cpu terms.

Final8y · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:41

Phil2008 said:
8cores next yr umm,, that will take yrs b4 it comes the norm, cos quad isnt the norm yet, and cant see quad becomming the norm for 1 - 1.5yrs yet. basically
softtwere/games are yrs and yrs behind hardware in cpu terms.

Practice makes perfect.
But im not sure that games/SW has to be programmed to a certain amount of cores all the time to get a benefit once the code has gone multi thread.

LostPlanet colonies editions lets you choose from 4-1 simultaneously threads in the game menu.

DarkMatter · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:43

ive only done basic programming, nothing which requires mutliple cores. But i wonder if the code in recent games is just scaleable, i remember readig a article about it a few years back about hte nightmares of doing it.

Phil2008 · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:50

Yeah programming software/games to use multiple cores is vary hard todo apparntly, so if this is the case no software/games will be 100% true dual or quad core if its so hard todo,

edit: Like I said cpus are miles ahead of software.

Final8y · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:58

With the PS3 & XBOX360 it seems like they are learning but it becomes easer once you know how.

RizlaKing · 21 Jul 2008 at 18:48

People have to remember not everyone upgrades every year i upgrade every two years or there abouts and so i went for quad as i felt this would give me a little more future proofing then going with dual again. This subject like all component subjects is very subjective pending on the individual user how many people here saying a quad is not necessary have a 4870 or gtx280 gfx card how many are getting a 4870X2 you don't need it but sometimes it is nice to have something new over what you have had.