TECH Quad Core > Dual Core

[onedownfiveup]

Thinking about building a new computer. I'm not HUGE into gaming. I usually just play Counter Strike Source.

I've been thinking about jumping to a Quad Core. I do video editing with Premiere Pro and Photoshop.

Is it really worth the extra money to go to Quad Core for that type of stuff or should I stick with a bad ass Dual Core like the E8400?

Right now I have the E4500 on a Asus P5PE-VM board.

 

[Peyomp]

Use top, or the windows equivalent process monitor, to see how often you really use both cores a lot.

Personally, I max out both quite often so I know I would benefit from 4.

 

[crontab]

the q's aren't much more expensive the the e's... $20 more, sometimes the same price.

i have a q6600 at a low OC of 3.2 on air and it doesn't sweat no matter what i throw at it. love it.

 

[Limp_Brisket]

get an i7, then you can have 8 cores...






well virtual cores at least

 

[Peyomp]

For what its worth, games being released right now see mild benefit from the 3rd/4th core.

 

[trouphaz]

get an i7, then you can have 8 cores...






well virtual cores at least

i wonder if they'll ever catch up to the sparc coolthreads processors... 8 cores with 8 virtual processors per core for a total of 64 virtual procs.

 

[JustJeff]

I barely ever use the 2nd processor in my dual core setup. As sad as that sounds... i run a 1ghz cpu for most of the time.

Shows you how much I'm doing

I would say if you are going to upgrade, you might as well. Max up the RAM and the CPU and you should be fine for 5-8 years. There's nothing out there right now that really demands a quad core.

 

[borow22]

i was in the same boat as you i really only play counter strike source from time to time but i only had a pentium 4. I went with the Quad and get well over 100 frames on each map with only a 8600 gts card.

 

[Peyomp]

i wonder if they'll ever catch up to the sparc coolthreads processors... 8 cores with 8 virtual processors per core for a total of 64 virtual procs.

They won't, because the cool threads aren't virtual, are they? There are that many execution paths on the processor. Intel will sorta acheive the same thing with a fuck ton of core but... it will never scale quite as well as cool threads. Probably won't matter though.

 

[trouphaz]

They won't, because the cool threads aren't virtual, are they? There are that many execution paths on the processor. Intel will sorta acheive the same thing with a fuck ton of core but... it will never scale quite as well as cool threads. Probably won't matter though.

yeah, they're not virtual. it is just the easiest way to describe it because they show up to the OS as separate CPUs even though they really aren't.

 

[Peyomp]

yeah, they're not virtual. it is just the easiest way to describe it because they show up to the OS as separate CPUs even though they really aren't.

Ah, so its two real exercution perthways? Or is it more of the... super deep path, so while it hangs it throws other work in stuff?

 

[ady]

i wonder if they'll ever catch up to the sparc coolthreads processors... 8 cores with 8 virtual processors per core for a total of 64 virtual procs.

Intel should have 8 core Processors with hyperthreading out next year on a quad socket platform.

 

[trouphaz]

Ah, so its two real exercution perthways? Or is it more of the... super deep path, so while it hangs it throws other work in stuff?

i believe each core has 8 execution pathways. the way i understand it is:
- there is 1 core that can handle 8 threads.
- each thread will only consume processing time if it has an active process. if the process is not processing, it doesn't use the cpu.
- so, if you have 8 active process, then your processing time is split between 8 processes. if you have 4 active processes, your processing time is split between 4.
- the difference between an 8 thread and an 8 processor system is that 8 active processes on an 8 thread or 8 proc system each have access to 1/8 of the total processing power. but 4 active processes each have access to 1/4 of the processing power on an 8 thread system and still only 1/8 on an 8 proc system.
- the best usage for CoolThreads servers is where you have a lot of processes that spend a decent amount of time doing IO. so, the process will do a little work on the CPU and then make a call to IO. normal systems would then take the process off the cpu and then put a new one in with all of the additional cost of context switching (clearing cpu cache and reloading info for other process). on these, the process actually stays on the cpu in its own execution thread and the other process is in its thread and it can run. so, context switching is greatly reduced.

 

[Peyomp]

I know that coolthreads have 8 parallel execution paths per core. I was asking you about the Intel stuff.

 

[Peyomp]

Intel should have 8 core Processors with hyperthreading out next year on a quad socket platform.

Right, but they're still down by a factor of 8.

 

[trouphaz]

I know that coolthreads have 8 parallel execution paths per core. I was asking you about the Intel stuff.

lol, i'm a unix guy. wtf do i know about PC hardware? i can tell you what a piece of shit the Itanium platform is if you'd like.

 

[Peyomp]

I wish I could get a coolthreads instance in the cloud.

 

[ady]

Right, but they're still down by a factor of 8.

yeah I misread

 

[skinjob]

Ah, so its two real exercution perthways? Or is it more of the... super deep path, so while it hangs it throws other work in stuff?

The way I understand it, Intel hyperthreading does have 2 execution pathways, but not necessarily fulltime. If a thread is not using all the available executions units in the core per clock tick, then the unused execution units can be used by another thread.

 

[gravity]

Photoshop does not use all four unless its applying some filter affects or very few other situations. If your going to run CS4, grab an NVIDIA card and give CUDA a try.