QOTW: How many cores/threads does your desktop CPU have?

[Saracen]

My CPU is an old Intel 875K with 4 cores/8 threads. It's probably a bit long in the tooth now, and I'm not far off needing an upgrade, but that choice is very difficult now. I would have liked to have gone with an 8 core AMD processor, but the gaming performance doesn't seem enough of an improvement over what I have already. On the other hand, I don't really want to upgrade to another 4 core/8 thread CPU eight years after I got my current one!

But does that not suggest .... why upgrade at all?

See, that's my issue, too. It just seems that too much time has passed, so an upgrade ought to be due, right? But why? If anything I can realistically upgrade too is not likely to make much difference to my computing life, then why bother?

I mean, money doesn't grow on trees (sadly) so buying an upgrade means several hundred quid not available for something else, and the lack of change in what a computer upgrade does for me, aside ftom having the latest shiny computing toy, and I think .... why bother? What does it gain me? I mean, I want to upgrade, but I have no notion why I do. Maybe it's like climbing Everest .... except that every time we do, manufacturers invent a taller mountain.

[ET3D]

But does that not suggest .... why upgrade at all?

In my experience, if I 'make do' with something, and I know it's a compromise, when I finally upgrade I can feel the difference pretty well.

It's a matter of knowing what you can benefit from. I know that a high end CPU would be wasted on me, but I also know that something cheaper would be a good upgrade to what I have now, so that's worth a buy.

[loccothan]

8/16 AM4 ZEN Behemoth at 3.8-4.1GHz

[Jaffo]

4 cores/threads (i5-4460)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

My CPU is an old Intel 875K with 4 cores/8 threads. It's probably a bit long in the tooth now, and I'm not far off needing an upgrade, but that choice is very difficult now. I would have liked to have gone with an 8 core AMD processor, but the gaming performance doesn't seem enough of an improvement over what I have already. On the other hand, I don't really want to upgrade to another 4 core/8 thread CPU eight years after I got my current one!

But does that not suggest .... why upgrade at all?

See, that's my issue, too. It just seems that too much time has passed, so an upgrade ought to be due, right? But why? If anything I can realistically upgrade too is not likely to make much difference to my computing life, then why bother?

I mean, money doesn't grow on trees (sadly) so buying an upgrade means several hundred quid not available for something else, and the lack of change in what a computer upgrade does for me, aside ftom having the latest shiny computing toy, and I think .... why bother? What does it gain me? I mean, I want to upgrade, but I have no notion why I do. Maybe it's like climbing Everest .... except that every time we do, manufacturers invent a taller mountain.

TBH,I am in the same boat too - there are certain situations where I know I need a CPU upgrade too,and realistically I know a 4C/8T Core i7 would be the best upgrade path for my current workloads,but I also don't want another 4C/8T CPU now. I think I might just wait and see next year now.

[Marenghi]

4/4 for my desktop. Although my lab setup has more, it would be more beneficial to increase the desktop capabilities rather than purchase more hardware for the lab currently

[Saracen]

In my experience, if I 'make do' with something, and I know it's a compromise, when I finally upgrade I can feel the difference pretty well.

It's a matter of knowing what you can benefit from. I know that a high end CPU would be wasted on me, but I also know that something cheaper would be a good upgrade to what I have now, so that's worth a buy.

Define "make do".

In many areas, I know that "making do" involves compromises, things I either can't do (that I want to) or can't do as well. I could, for instance, upgrade my camera. I'd get better low light performance, because signal to noise ratios have improved, I'd get a few extra (and to me, dubious usefulness, features .... built-in GPS) and I'd get a much bigger pixel count.

BUT .... what benefit do I really get from that bigger pixel count. Even with my modest pixel count, I can get A3 printed images the quality of which are eminently sufficient for my needs. I don't have an A2 photo printer at the moment and, currently, no need or desire for one, so larger images with maintained pixel density isn't an issue, and the only other major benefit of increased pixel count is increased ability to selectively crop. Well, I regard that as lazy photography and I'd rather move ti better frame the picture, than crop later.

So really, by "making do" wuth my existing camera, what I'm really doing is resisting manufacturer's attempts to seduce more money out of me for an upgrade I don't need.

Similar logic applies to a PC upgrade. To do it, at a mjnimum I need CPU, mobo and RAM. And for gaming, graphics card too. But I'm not really an avid gamer any more. Why? My close circle of gaming buddies have all either moved away, changed lifestyle (kids leaving less scope for all-night game-fests), emigrated, or retired and lost interest in gaming. Oh, and as I'm NOT agreeing to the T&Cs of environments like Steam, Origin, etc, (the reasons why being beyond this thread) most new release games are denied me anyway.

So my needs are general admin, accounts, WP, spreadsheets, databases etc, for work, and a few hobby things like my photographer (which has some business relevance too), genealogy research, maintaining collections databases like my book collection, and so on.

Thing is, NONE of those uses are processor bound to the point where the current 10 (-ish) year old Intel Quad-core, running at 3Gig-ish, is a bottleneck.

So if I buy a new machine and, in my day to day tasks, the performance increase, while measurable and benchmarkable, make so little difference to my computing experience, then in what sense am I "making do".

In my workshop, I have a lot of modern power tools, but I also have some chisels, a hand saw or two, and bits and bobs that belonged to my father, or even grandfather. Some must be verging on 100 years old. But if they still do the job I need, why "upgrade"?

For me, any PC is a tool ti get a task done, not a hobby it it's own right. I have zero inclination to buy just to own something suppisedly better or faster, because unless it either does something I want but can't currently do, or does what I want to do sufficiently better that it improves my working day, how is it an upgrade.

Or to put it another way, I have a car that does 0-60mph in about 5.3sec, is limited at 155mph, handles beautifully and is great to drive. I could "upgrade" that and take the top speed up to about 190mph, and the 0-60 to around 5.0 or 5.1s, wuth a bit if minor tweaking and a chip change.

But how often, given that this is ONLY a road car, and only used in the UK these days, do I get to use speeds between 155mph and 190mph. Hint = in 40 yearsof driving, I have yet to get any speeding tickets or convictions, any other points or endorsements, or be done for any driving offences.

Just occasionally, very very rarely, the extra acceleration might be marginally nice, byt frankly if any manoeuvre on public roads requires a kevel of power where the existing standard several hundred bhp isn't enough, it's not something U wsnt to be doing anyway. So I could spend the thick end of about £60k "upgrading" to the current version of the same car, or I can just "make do".

I've been tempted to upgrade all three - camera, PC and car - and indeed am currently contemplating Ryzen, but when I stop thinking about the spec of the new models, with their glutzy marketing and retail therapy appeal and and myself quite what the new item does for me that the existing one won't, the answer that comes bellowing back us a resounding "Ummmm .... errrr ..... erm ..... ah, beggar all, really".

And THAT is my point - is an upgrade an upgrade if you can't, or can just barely, notice the difference? Or would I just be another lemming caught uo in carefully manufactured and encouraged "upgraditis for the sake if it"?

[scaryjim]

My most used custom built PC is the HTPC, which has 3 cores, a Phenom II X3 710. ...

Woo, odd core counts for the win

The only machine I both own and regularly use that could be called a desktop is rocking an Athlon II x3 400e (bought off these very forums). Currently coupled with a GTX 750 and 4GB DDR2 in an AM2+ motherboard, and mostly pretending to be a games console (in as much as I'm using it to play controller-friendly console posts and watch DVDs).

I've actually also got a three core build based on a Llano A6 3500 kicking around, but that one is currently sans power supply and optical drive. I guess there was a period a few years back where AMD's 3 core processors looked like an ideal compromise position on the cores/clocks/value spectrum...

[Peter Parker]

4/4 i6600K.

And honestly it's enough for now. I don't do video or image processing, or bitcoin mining or anything else that is trivially parallel. I do compile code (Java) but the test suite can't run very parallel. Perhaps by Coffeelake in 2018 I might find an excuse for 6 core/12 thread?

Anyway, back in my day we didn't have cores, we just had a CPU and and if you wanted to do more work you had to turn on another computer. That's the way it was and that's the way we liked it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbU4Cb4A4-o

[DanceswithUnix]

Sort of 8, it's an FX8350. It was only £125 years ago and still providing superb service. I think the latest CPUs are almost worth upgrading to, but I'm still not there yet.

[cheesemp]

4 core 3570k. Does 99% of everything I want still but I'd like to get a Ryzen mk 2 to go 6c/12t at some point. Its difficult to justify more cores though as programming just hasn't caught up to true multithreading in gaming just yet. Its getting better but when 99% of your customers only have 4 cores you code for 4 cores... I also blame consoles for pushing this limitation too - after all no point in refactoring your AI and graphics code to use more threads than a console has.

[bullencraig]

Media machine - Intel i3 7100 - 2c 4t
Normal machine - AMD A10-7870K - 4c 4t

[RizeAllard]

6 cores 12 threads on my desktop and 4 cores and 8 threads in my laptop. And 4 cores and 8 threads on my service machine.

[AndyM2012]

I have found no need to overcore my i7 920 from its default 4C/8T.

[uBronan]

This far i am pretty sure that most users do not need more than 3 to 4 cores.
I actually have myself a i7 4 core 8 thread and see that i hardly ever use the full potential besides a few games i use it only partially for say 85-90% of the time. Only when i play a game the load goes up to 66%. My pc is heavily loaded because of alot of tools and antivirus products which most people don't use.
In my circle of friends, family and customers i see that my system is almost the most powerfull, there are only 4 people out of the 115 who do have a heavier system. The most used cpu is the i5 series and second best is the i3 series. From those using amd cpu's its kinda a bit different most bought the 6 or 8 core cpu's because they where much cheaper than the intel counterparts even though they supposed to be faster. Non of these people told me maybe to switch to the new ryzen as soon as the R5 and R3 series are released, but many only switch because of the lower power usage not because their is a need for more cores. I disagree with those telling that many games will be released with alot of multi core usage because we already have that option since 1967 ... In all that years that it exists you see that developers stay on the known path and have trouble making the software multi core/threaded, its simply not that easy to make good use of that power because often the multi threading has the opposite effect.
Those who tried multi threaded programming know what i am talking about, when the results do not workout the whole calculation has to be started from scratch and that ends in slowing down instead of speeding up the whole process. Even though cpu and gpu do it is pretty darn fast, if they have to wait for the numbers to be loaded and before it can address everything again that is ages for a cpu and for a gpu thats hundreds of ages waiting. Gpu's are king in multi threaded usage especially in scientific calculation depending on the complexity of the calculation AMD for simpler instruction sets and nvidia if one needs more control over the calculation because of the somewhat complexer command set available.
So conclusion we all blah alot about multi threaded work, but believe me most of what the general public does is single core work, do not get me wrong single core does not mean it can not be multi threaded.
Because 1 core can handle many threads depending on how demanding that threats are. The only thing is when you have limited threads available you might see a bit slower performance when you reached the max of the cpu to handle. In general thats where the ht/smt comes in and gives you a bit extra headroom to load that extra threads one needs on that moment. But it all depends on the user if he finds it annoying to wait 4 seconds longer before something loads.

[alchemist83]

bah, threads and multicores, you kids don't know how good you have it nowadays. back in my day we only had 4 cores and hyperthreading was a fantasy pipe dream.

still rockin' a 4 core Phenom II 920 from 2009 with DDR2 (remember that ) memory running at a whopping 800mhz.

coupled with a 750ti it still plays everything up to witcher 3 on high settings. why upgrade to anything newer? this still works and you cant even tell the SSD is only running at sata2 speeds.

Well I gotta call BS on this one mate - its just plain offensive to claim that a extremely demanding game like Witcher 3 is running on high with the specs you listed. Your specs don't even cover the min requirements to run it. Where you get off on chatting this? I have a 6600k with a GTX 980 and have trouble running smoothly on high. GTX 750ti = GTX 660 which is the lowest G card to meet min requirements. Getting annoyed at ppl chatting rubbish claiming they a guru cos they havent upgraded since forever. I reckon you'd be lost on a new setup - theory dont cover practical knowledge. DDR2, an old AMD - and AMD's as we all know have taken till know to start getting good, an old Phenom 4 core isn't even on par with a Core2Duo. Full of it