Quad-core or Dual-core ? Which one do I pick ?

[buildingacomputer]

Thank you, Mark.

 

[OfficeLinebacker]

7-zip is multithreaded.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

ConvertxtoDVD used 100% of my CPU, so its multithreaded.

IDK if 7zip is. I think i may be I/O limited with my shitty Seagate 200gb sata1.5 HDD. Sometimes 7zip is painfully slow.

 

[polarbear6]

hey i feel that its been a long time since the i7 hit the stores

so we might as well have a stickie like
"i7 or c2q which should i take "

 

[konakona]

speaking of games, any predictions on how tricores would fare? I bet I am not the only one interested in those 720 BEs.
Theoratically, they should fall right in between duals and quads, right?
I have seen some graphs from anantech's preview of the CPU, but nothing so in-depth getting at the impact of its tri-coreness.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Originally posted by: konakona
speaking of games, any predictions on how tricores would fare? I bet I am not the only one interested in those 720 BEs.
Theoratically, they should fall right in between duals and quads, right?
I have seen some graphs from anantech's preview of the CPU, but nothing so in-depth getting at the impact of its tri-coreness.

Grid uses exactly 75% of my quad core, so there you go. All Xbox 360 ports should be perfect for your build.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
Photoshop CS3 uses all 4 cores extensively. Wonderful for converting large files and running filters. I have seen this confirmed.

I will check out Lightroom 2 when i batch-process sometime this week and see what cores are utilized.

Some filters may make use of quad core, but CS3 itself does not. This is reflected in many tests.

CS4 appears to take better advantage of quads.

 

[Zerohm]

Originally posted by: Krakn3Dfx
I just upgraded from an e8400 @ 3.6Ghz to a q9300 @ 3.3GHz. One thing I've noticed is that I can have a lot more running in the background and have the system be more forgiving when I am gaming. I encode alot of video through Adobe Premier, and if I set the affinity on it to just the last 2 cores, I can totally sit and play Left4Dead while it's running through, which is awesome, because I'm not just sitting there bored waiting for it to finish.

I lost some raw Mhz on a per core level, but what I gained in flexibility with the system when it comes to multitasking was pretty substantial in my case.

Yar, I'm shopping for a new CPU myself and had been looking at e8400s. Now I'm leaning towards quad core. I'm a gamer, but I always have a handful of services and programs programs running, e.g. itunes, avast, ghost, firefox.

 

[pinenuts]

How is CS4 performance over all over CS3? Are the requirements more?

 

[AstroGuardian]

Originally posted by: Scholzpdx
Just letting you guys know, NBA 2k9, Gears of War, Dirt and Alone in the Dark are all multithreaded.

I see 100% use on both of my cores and i get exactly half the fps when i set a game to only run on 1 core. I'm absolutely sure that with this kind of scaling they are bound to be truly multithreaded.

Now if they would only do this with counterstrike!

Counterstrike man? You can achieve highest fps with any Northwood.

 

[AstroGuardian]

Originally posted by: perdomot
I have a Phenom X3 rig and my usual scenario for usage is surfing the web while listening to iTunes and downloading video with Bitcomet at the same time. Only encoding I do is to convert video for watching on iPod. My X3 goes at 2.3 Ghz and I was wondering if an OC'd C2D going at 3.4-3.6 Ghz would be better for how I use my rig.

Not much. Maybe will speed up the video converting, but i guess that's not massive amount of videos?

 

[AstroGuardian]

Originally posted by: apoppin
i missed this thread

i just got q9550-s spec yesterday .. the low power Quads [65w]

i am going to extensively benchmark it [mostly games - about 15] against my e8600 which is currently at 4.0Ghz
- i think i can also push it higher ... stay tuned .. i am finishing up one video card review now and *should* have results on Monday

i'll post preliminary info here, also
[i have PS, also - but i am concentrating on PC games]

I saw the shootout and i think you are making a big mistake. You are testing CPU power in games running at 1920x1200 which at this point is more dependent on the GPU and not the CPU. The GPUs are bottleneck in those tests not the CPUs. That's why you are getting the same frame rates during most tests. You should benchmark at 1028x800 or even 800x600. I remember this being the most important factor when benchmarking CPUs with games. :beer:

 

[Aenslead]

Originally posted by: pinenuts
How is CS4 performance over all over CS3? Are the requirements more?

CS4 performance using GPU instead of CPU has one of the most impressive differences in performance I've seen. Simply put, you can't use many new features WITHOUT a GPU.

And many apps are going GPU, where 4x performance increases are not unexpected. How is a Core i7 with 30% peformance increase (max) over a C2Q atractive against that?

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: Aenslead

Originally posted by: pinenuts
How is CS4 performance over all over CS3? Are the requirements more?

CS4 performance using GPU instead of CPU has one of the most impressive differences in performance I've seen. Simply put, you can't use many new features WITHOUT a GPU.

And many apps are going GPU, where 4x performance increases are not unexpected. How is a Core i7 with 30% peformance increase (max) over a C2Q atractive against that?

Heh, you can't run much of anything in Windows w/o a GPU...

I don't believe that any features of Photoshop CS4 are purely GPU-dependent.

 

[Aenslead]

Originally posted by: Flipped Gazelle


Heh, you can't run much of anything in Windows w/o a GPU...

I don't believe that any features of Photoshop CS4 are purely GPU-dependent.

Well, I know. I was refering to optimized GPU aps. For example, H.264 encoding using the GPU, or the zooming, panning, flip features on Photoshop-

 

[Rifter]

I have not read all the responses but thought i would put in my .02 as i just upgraded to a Quad(in sig) over a dual(X2 3800+). It depends on what you are doing, if you use your computer for a streaming media server that transcodes the stream on the fly you really want a quad core if you want to be able to use the computer at the same time as streaming. Transcoding eats your CPU alive especially if going to 1080P output from a highly compressed format. Now with a quad i can stream media while buring a CD and having 10 or so apps open. With old CPU i could not even stream smoothly at 1080P let alone do anything else, i realize the old CPU i was using was slower but i think the quad makes the computer alot more responsive while doing CPU intense tasks(transcoding, encoding etc.) my .02cents

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: AstroGuardian

Originally posted by: apoppin
i missed this thread

i just got q9550-s spec yesterday .. the low power Quads [65w]

i am going to extensively benchmark it [mostly games - about 15] against my e8600 which is currently at 4.0Ghz
- i think i can also push it higher ... stay tuned .. i am finishing up one video card review now and *should* have results on Monday

i'll post preliminary info here, also
[i have PS, also - but i am concentrating on PC games]

I saw the shootout and i think you are making a big mistake. You are testing CPU power in games running at 1920x1200 which at this point is more dependent on the GPU and not the CPU. The GPUs are bottleneck in those tests not the CPUs. That's why you are getting the same frame rates during most tests. You should benchmark at 1028x800 or even 800x600. I remember this being the most important factor when benchmarking CPUs with games. :beer:

oh .. i just saw this

*nonsense* .. who CARES about 800x600? - not a single gamer alive with a modern setup

i am testing at 16x10 and 19x12 - two very popular WS resolutions to *match* what gamer have with a 4870/280GTX class card
- anyone can [and does] show extreme differences at 10x7 - who really cares about non-gaming resolutions ? it is so IMpractical to test there

AND in PART III; my follow up - it becomes important to use Quad core - at 19x12 !! - when you are using multi-GPU; as i tested with 4870x-2 and CrossFireX-3

 

[sindy9001]

Nice work! This will help me a lot!

 

[masterbm]

supreme commander is not mutlicore when I run the game the core 0 will max and core 1 ran 10%

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: masterbm
supreme commander is not mutlicore when I run the game the core 0 will max and core 1 ran 10%

Well, there must be some other reason. It is proven to use more than 2 cores.

 

[wahoyaho]

So what's the deal with Tri-cores?

 

[Maverick2002]

How do you want 3dsmax "validated"? We use C2Qs at work (now a few Ci7s) and in 3D rendering all cores are used (each core represented by its own rendering bucket). As far as interactivity (viewport), I don't believe it's multithreaded - that performance is up to the video card.

 

[ardeegee]

Originally posted by: Maverick2002
As far as interactivity (viewport), I don't believe it's multithreaded - that performance is up to the video card.

I don't know about Max, but Maya is multithreaded in the viewport. Yesterday, I upgraded my Athlon X2 5050e to a Phenom II 810. On the 5050e, when I tried playing an animation in the 4 panel view with all the panels animated (default setting is only the active panel is animated) the animation was very slow. But on the 810, it is full speed. I did screencaps of single panel and 4-panel while animation is running-- on the Core Temp applet view on the left, you'll see that all four cores are being used. Other running tasks in the background will count for no more than 1% of that total, so the rest belongs to Maya (which has 14 threads running).

http://s313.photobucket.com/al...a_quadcore_1_panel.jpg

http://s313.photobucket.com/al..._quadcore_4_panels.jpg

 

[Munky]

A lot of modern games are multithreaded. It doesn't necessarily mean they will benefit from more than 2 cores, but they definitely use more than one core. Some games I tested are Bioshock, Mass Effect, COD 4, Oblivion, and Stalker CS.

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: munky
A lot of modern games are multithreaded. It doesn't necessarily mean they will benefit from more than 2 cores, but they definitely use more than one core. Some games I tested are Bioshock, Mass Effect, COD 4, Oblivion, and Stalker CS.

Add GTA 4, Company of Heroes, Riddick Dark Athena and Nfs Pro Street, which was unplayable for me on dual cores, just like GTA 4.