why do we need 6 cores?

Luke · 24 Jun 2011 at 23:54

Who says we need 6 cores?
Just because they are available doesn't mean anyone is forced to buy them.

gurusan · 25 Jun 2011 at 02:41

nuttyprot said:
People asked the same question when 4 cores first came out. Now more and more things use the cores it has become standard. Same thing will happen with 6 cores+.

In terms of gaming it's still barely the case. Still really only need 2 cores yet people were saying their Q6600 was "future proof" for gaming which I always said was a load of BS.

OpenToSuggestions · 25 Jun 2011 at 02:46

You don't need 6 cores.

AMD 64 cpu's in circa 2005 where good, but not for being '64 bit'. That part was all marketing and they were good cpus as they outperformed Pentium chips in games. Having 64 but Windows has only been important over the last couple of years, certainly not in 2005!

By the time more than 4 cores matters the AMD 6 core cpu chips as we know them now will be long gone. Similarly with the first gen Sata3 and USB 3 motherboards that were released a year ago.

setter · 25 Jun 2011 at 02:50

gurusan said:
In terms of gaming it's still barely the case. Still really only need 2 cores yet people were saying their Q6600 was "future proof" for gaming which I always said was a load of BS.

Pretty true for the majority of games at the minute. I run an i7 920 @4.2ghz, sli gtx 470's, bfbc2 and mohaa 2010 are the only games i play a lot off, both will utilise 4 cores, theyre more cpu dependent than gpu. as ive played bc2 at playable rates on an 8800gt @1920x1200, obviously no aa/af. Even when i had my 3.8ghz q6600 and 3.8ghz q9550, bc2 played the same as my i7 with a single card. All i7 did was give me the option of sli/xfire and an easy 4ghz overclock.

gurusan · 25 Jun 2011 at 03:09

I dunno about that. I've played BC2 on a 4870, GTX 260, GTX 260 SLI, and 5850 and the 5850 is by far the fastest...it was TERRIBLE on a 4870 at 1080p with 4xAA. Even my 5850 struggles with heavy smoke and explosions, it dips in the 40s which not unplayable but IMO no fun.

My point is that I find it to be primarily a GPU dependent game, as I had a x2 555 and phenom x4, and i5 750, and i5 2500k all overclocked and really saw now difference in terms of CPU performance in BC2

setter · 25 Jun 2011 at 03:20

I play bc2 on the spec in sig, the 470's are on a very very modest clock at 750/1500/1674 on stock volts, 0.987, 1920x1200, all settings on highest, DX11, 32xaa, 16xaf, the cards will do 800 core at 1.012v, but even at the 750mhz clocks, they blitz through bc2 with ease, i used to run gtx 275's in sli, couldnt clock those as they ran to hot even at stock.

arknor · 25 Jun 2011 at 03:58

Gundog48 said:
It's not. Unless you are video encoding regularly, there's no point. I encode regularly and have noticed no discernible difference between my original Phenom x4 and my new 1055T. Fact is, hardly anything can make use of 4 cores, no games can make use of 6. Don't make my mistake and just get a nice i3 or i5, much better choice.

converXtodvd can and so can handbrake much faster than with 4 cores for me

Final8y · 25 Jun 2011 at 08:37

If your very GPU limited then of course your not going to notice any difference.

There are 2 questions here & they seem to get mixed up together.

1) Can a game make use of 4 or more cores.

2) Will i notice a difference.

2 Is very dependant on other factors of an individuals set-up, CPU architecture, multi GPU, resolutions & usage. A dual core will barely cut it now with multi GPU especially more so with AMD CPU.

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/gaming_the_core_debate,2.html

http://www.legionhardware.com/artic...ossfire_cpu_scaling_performance_part_2,2.html

dhruva55 · 25 Jun 2011 at 13:48

Gtiracer said:
In three years time people will be asking

"Why do we need 16 cores?"

More cores is the thing for now until they find a revolutionary new way of creating a processor

haha nice one

wannabedamned · 25 Jun 2011 at 14:30

This question will always be asked now, and people will always answer. "Its not needed" BUT. If i was paying for a new processor now, and there were 6 and 8 cores on the table. I'd rather buy one now, knowing that it wont be long until they do become useful. (depending on price)

Also the answer from Bulldog is so short sighted its unreal. I'm buying a quad core now for 1 reason, Price vs performance. I5 2600k is a good price, a good overclocker and a very good performer(4.6-4.8ghz) If the hex's were similar priced, with similar overclocks. I'd be going for one of those.

If you can afford more cores, Buy more cores, but not at the cost of performance PER core.

Indy500 · 25 Jun 2011 at 15:11

I don't. Only just upgraded to quad core recently, after spending the best part of 4 years using an X2 processor. As far as rendering and other similar tasks go, there's nothing time-sensitive that matters enough for me to need additional CPU cores. The only game I have that makes use of the Phenom is Supreme Commander (even that isn't 100% on all cores).

B1ng · 25 Jun 2011 at 15:21

More modern GFX cards rely more heavily on a fast Multi-core CPU to keep them happy, more so with Nvidia's offerings. Upping from a 2 to 4 core at similar speeds may not affect things much; I suspect the increase in frame rates in the games will occur when you start overclocking.

When used for other things such as rendering, encoding, image editing and the rest, having extra cores means that effectively more work can be done at the same time.

Architecture of the CPU (just look at Sandy Bridge), motherboard, resolution, usage. Everything factors in as to the end results you get from a machine.

KelDG · 25 Jun 2011 at 15:59

Erm.... I don't get these threads, if no one buys new tech then there is no market for software be developed for them.

Look at the 64bit OS market, back when the first 64bit processor came out people were saying "whats the point of a 64bit chip, 32bit is good enough, you can have a whole 4gb of ram in one of these systems". But surprise surprise people are needing more than 4gb of ram and can buy a 64bit operating system because 64bit processors have been introduced into the market.

Same with the single to dual-core change, people would say there is no point in dual as there is not much software to take advantage of 2 cores. Guess what I bet you have at least a dual core now in your machine.

Indy500 · 25 Jun 2011 at 16:26

KelDG said:
Erm.... I don't get these threads, if no one buys new tech then there is no market for software be developed for them.

Look at the 64bit OS market, back when the first 64bit processor came out people were saying "whats the point of a 64bit chip, 32bit is good enough, you can have a whole 4gb of ram in one of these systems". But surprise surprise people are needing more than 4gb of ram and can buy a 64bit operating system because 64bit processors have been introduced into the market.

Same with the single to dual-core change, people would say there is no point in dual as there is not much software to take advantage of 2 cores. Guess what I bet you have at least a dual core now in your machine.

Except most of the market now has 64-bit capable processors (hint: they've existed for almost a decade if you include Itanium) and we've still not seen much software taking advantage of it. Even with 64-bit operating systems shipping on 90% of OEM computers for over a year now.

wannabedamned · 25 Jun 2011 at 16:38

Indeed, but the advantages are apparent in the OS itself regardless, and the software that you would expect to take advantage of high amounts of ram generally does, as do some games, just not many.

With regards to Games, there's quite a lot that use 4 cores. And with Physics being handled by Nvidia cards on card, ATI Card users usually see the Physics being handled by the CPU, and more cores the better for that.

How long have 4core processors been on the market? and they're already giving performance boosts in games, Cant see it long before more cores equal better gains.

If i remember correctly dragon age received massive performance increases when run over a quad core

doggystyle · 25 Jun 2011 at 16:39

Jordan97 said:
I do not know. Why do we need 6 cores?

I don't know either, but it's a good question.

Indy500 · 25 Jun 2011 at 17:20

wannabedamned said:
Indeed, but the advantages are apparent in the OS itself regardless, and the software that you would expect to take advantage of high amounts of ram generally does, as do some games, just not many.

If we're just talking about RAM, then extensions were already possible in 32-bit, Microsoft just chose not to implement them (just as there are memory glass ceilings on some 64-bit MS operating systems). I'm talking about 64-bit code written from the ground up.

wannabedamned said:
With regards to Games, there's quite a lot that use 4 cores. And with Physics being handled by Nvidia cards on card, ATI Card users usually see the Physics being handled by the CPU, and more cores the better for that.

To some extent, yes. Mainly because the consoles of this generation are multicore themselves - otherwise I'd expect slower development given the cross-platform nature of most titles.

wannabedamned said:
How long have 4core processors been on the market? and they're already giving performance boosts in games, Cant see it long before more cores equal better gains.

5 years now, that's a long time in computing terms.

wannabedamned said:
If i remember correctly dragon age received massive performance increases when run over a quad core

I didn't see that, got a link?

wannabedamned · 25 Jun 2011 at 17:53

Did a bit of googling as I couldnt remember where I read it

But here it is, Its dragon Age: Origins. But it says it gets a 70%-75% boost over dual, in certain scenes.
not throughout the game

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...rks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/

Indy500 · 25 Jun 2011 at 18:40

wannabedamned said:
Did a bit of googling as I couldnt remember where I read it

But here it is, Its dragon Age: Origins. But it says it gets a 70%-75% boost over dual, in certain scenes.
not throughout the game

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...rks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/

Interesting, the tri-core Phenom beats the Intel Q6600 there...

sniffy · 25 Jun 2011 at 19:34

why do we need 6 cores?

That really depends on what you're doing with your computer. If the task at hand lends itself to multiple cores then naturally it's a sensible upgrade otherwise you need to ask yourself what's the point.

The interesting thing at the moment is that we're trying to utilise parallel technology with natively sequential programming languages. Obviously we have techniques at our disposal to utilise the extra cores but they're essentially hacks or only work well for very specific situations. That makes it difficult to properly utilise the cores without putting a lot of extra effort into design and testing. There are languages out there that have been built from the ground up with parallelism in mind by implementing the CSP model. You can easily code applications that will definitely be free of race hazards and properly utilise all available cores in an efficient manner but the different style/skill set required means that they aren't seeing widespread use. Old habits die hard and all that. Until we see a change in that sense it really does depend on what you do with your computer. I mostly game along with some coding and an overclocked E7200 treats me well.