Printable View
Looking at how the computing world is shifting, is getting quads actually worth it?
How long till multi threaded apps become common? and Quad become mainstream?
Or does dual cores still have alot of life left in them?
Would the likes of Q6600 and Q6700 still be good in 3 years time though? or would they just be outdated and somewhat useless.
Its an impossible question to answer without knowing what you use your system for ;)
for gaming, not really at the moment, for anything else, yes.
As I've already pointed out in multiple threads, games *already* benefit from more than 2 cores. I don't know how many more times I need to repeat this in order to disspell the misconceived notion that games are still single threaded or whatever confusion people have.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay
Clock for clock you are correct, quad will beat duo. But a 3.0GHz Duo is cheaper than a 2.4GHz quad and it will be faster for gaming.Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
SiM is correct.
No, you're both wrong. Install UT3, Crysis, or any recent game, and find out for yourself, and this isn't even getting into the need for concurrency. Just stop perpetuating this antiquated fallacy.
That's got to be a signature quote for someone right there :DQuote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
The UT3 analysis by AnandTech doesn't seem to agree that quadcore investment is definately better than clockspeed investment - they seem to show a similar increase. Although there did seem to be more potential gains with in the quad core, the bonus was only in the region of 10% - not the sort of gains one would truly expect from proper multi-core usage.
I can't seem to find a current high-quality investigation into crysis, but ExtremeTech looked at the demo and found it wanting when it came to quad core. See also the Tom's Games analysis of the full game, which is dismissive of the gains from quad core.
I'd be happy to look at counter-links if you have any, and of course all this depends upon what you are doing with your system in the background.
If you could find and link to some benchmarks which support what you're claiming you might persuade people :)Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
You can overclock your quaddie anyway.
People can get the Q6600 up to 3.6GHz so not only does it have a fast clock speed, it has lots of cores and is ready for when more things utilise more than 2 cores.
Hard to say really.Quote:
Would the likes of Q6600 and Q6700 still be good in 3 years time though?
What is a fact though is that their usefulness will be alot greater than a dual core. My Q6600 will still be going long after the dual cores have cried enough.
Seeing as how the Q6600 is price very similarly to the E8400, it makes the choice a no brainer.
The Q6600 is the right choice.
-----------------------------------------
Look at my rig in my signature.
Its got a Q6600 @ 3.2ghz atm. Using all the same parts but just swapping out the Q6600 for an E8400 @ 4.0ghz, i would bet whatever you like that the 3D Mark Scores would be higher with the Quad than the Dual.
Synthetic benching i know but still has validity.
If anyone wants to post a benchmark with an E8400 @ 4ghz and using an 8800GTS 512mb to prove this it would be good.
I still think that dual cores will be still relevant for gaming next year as most gamers will still have them in their systems. Quad core processors will have a longer useful life as more applications make better use of the additional cores though. However investing the money saved buying a dual core processer in a better graphics card will probably see more gains in games IMHO.
As agent said first - it really depends on what you use your system for.
In terms of single application performance you will not see much benefit, if any, in the vast majority of applications and games by switching to quad core. The majority of even those benefits will be due to optimisations and changes made to the CPU itself (eg more cache, optimised architecture).
Were you would notice a big improvement however is in multi tasking (assuming your running vista or linux). The OS is quite clever at assignin cpu time, and if you have 4 cores different applications can and often will be split accross your cores. As there is more CPU time available to each application, they can all run faster. Now you really need more RAM available to maximise this benefit, but it does mean that you can be happily playing Crysis while also encoding HD video for example, or constantly leave outlook in the background without it eating up all your valuable resources.
If you are the type of person who tends to do only 1-2 things at a time though, you would probably not see much benefit until quad core optimised applications start to appear in the future.
>> How long till multi threaded apps become common? and Quad become mainstream?
Quads ARE mainstream in video/audio/graphics circles, and have been for a year or two.
For multimedia usage the quads own everything out there.
Spot on.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timo
I do a lot of 3D rendering / video production.
These type of apps will take advantage of every core you give it. Quad core is almost double the speed of Dual for these programs :)
As many people have said, it all depends what you want to use it for.
If you are an encoder, gfx designer, renderer, or something along those lines, then they will be very beneficial.
Clock for clock the quads are identical to the duals (depending on cache and nm process, ie, an e6600 and a q6600 are spot on clock for clock, a\s would a wolfdale be with a yorkfield) Quad cores are most certainly not useless for games either (depending on the genre you play)
If you are primarily an FPS gamer, then a faster dual core would probably suit you better, likewise if you have crossfire or sli, as you will need sheer clock speed to unleash the full potential of your graphics setup.
If on the other hand you like your RTS games, then a quad can be beneficial, especially in supreme commander (and more so with core maximiser 1.03 [free download]) Infact, in Forged Alliance, i have still yet to see a big map with lots of units play smoothly and a 28k 3dmark06 machine :eek::O_o1:
Conclusion:
rendering/video and RTS game = Quad
FPS gaming and general tasks = Dual
I am of the opinion that if you have to ask whether you need a quad then you don't. Those that think, blimey I could really use those extra cores for all my video rendering etc will simply buy one.
V|per's conclusion is the answer.
So Quad core is mainstream in a small section of the market?Quote:
Originally Posted by Timo
As previously stated it's all to do with what you are using your PC for, and how often you are planing to upgrade. At the moment only cirtain types of programs see significant benefits from 4+ cores, and I think it'll be a couple of years before we see a large ammount of programs able to make use of the 4/8 core CPUs.
If you don't want to upgrade for another 4-5 years, then I'd recommend the quad core, but if you'll be replacing your machine in 2 years time you'll probably get more benefit out of the dual core setup, assuming you're not going to be doing a lot of encoding/rendering work, which scales great with as many cores as you can get your hands on.
I'd like to the original poster's question, "will quad cores be a good investment for a good long term investment in computing power?". This is different to if it is worth getting one now, and to me seemed more of a general enquiry. I'm going to assume for the nature of answering this that we are talking with respect to applications which do not already at this time make a quad core a required purchase, since the answer for those is quite obvious :P
To answer this, we need to look at the changing state of the computing market, and the reasons for these changes.
It is commonly believed that Moore's law refers to processor speed, but it in fact is a speculation upon transistor count. It is relatively easy to add more transistors to an integrated circuit, you simply need to use more space on the silicon wafer, or to shrink the size of your transistors.
Processor speed is ultimately governed by how fast the fields within the transistors can form and decay, how one can chain multiple transistors to get valid results considering the time lag (It's been a while since I did my electrical physics, so this is probably not perfectly accurate), and hence how fast the slowest components within can run. It is comparatively run.
On the other hand, adding cores is actually fairly simple to get right. All you need to do is to allocate them some space, and hope no defects occur in manufacturing that break that additional core. There are some design issues to adding cores, but these are simple in comparison to speeding up existing functionality.
When a defect does occur within an additional core, careful design can allow you to disable the broken core and still leave you with a marketable product.
As such, adding cores is massively preferable than attempting to increase processor speed.
Within a processing core, there are often parts with little to do. Some instructions might be delayed as they need a result from an instruction that is still being worked out, others might need information fetching from memory, and others might only use a small part of the core's processing powers. Ideally we want to push more instructions in that will use different details to the slow set, so as to maximise the activity of all parts of the core. We have seen before in Hyperthreading, and shall be seeing again in the Nehalem architecture design, and it is called Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT). When it is done right, it is very similar to adding another core, but when it is done wrong it is, well... hyperthreading :P
Looking at performance graphs for quad cores running highly multi-threaded programs, they appear to be stalling, not getting the maximum possible gain from the additional cores. As such, Nehalem's SMT ability should be quite effective indeed.
Effective SMT is quite hard to build, requiring monitoring of two (or more) threads at once, and making sure that the two threads do not interfere with each other. However, given how much of a processor can lie fallow, the investment in building in this feature is a far more easy route to increase performance than by attempting radical redesigns or by attempting to speed up components.
Given all of the above, it should be no surprise that the processor market is going heavily multi-threaded, both by increasing the core count, and by adding SMT functionality. Intel is due to release Nehalem at the end of the year, a new processor design that will put four, maybe even eight, cores onto one integrated circuit, and each core will have the ability to run two simultaneous threads. I would expect AMD to be working on similar means to increase their threads per processor count.
However, the hardware market is only one side of the equation, as a computer is nothing without software. It is here, not with the hardware, that the importance of multi threading processors will be defined.
Until very recently, software developers did not have to actively consider the possibility of more than one thread running at a time. Despite this, however, they were encouraged to take up good practices such as using an interface thread and a back-end thread. By doing this they could keep a program appearing responsive whilst processing information. This is possible because even with a single core, no thread can have total dominance (this used to be the case, but modern operating systems prevent this). Threads are swapped in and out, depending upon a number of conditions. As such, it made sense that whilst a networking thread was waiting for the next packet, to have the display thread still update for the user and react to input.
Now it seems that dual core systems are becoming dominant, but software really has not changed much since the single core days. There are a number of reasons for this.
Firstly, there is the fact that it is hard to program highly multi-threaded systems to work at peak efficiency. Even most computer science courses now still only teach basic multi-threading, rather than the techniques you need to get the most from running many threads,
Secondly, most computers really have too few cores - and that includes quad core. Games parallelise very well in theory - the activities of all the NPCs and physics calculations can be done simultaneously. The problem is the amount we can currently run in parallel.
Given N possible simultaneous threads, and M objects (NPCs, physics interactions, etc), you need to divide the objects evenly between the threads in terms of time-to-completion, having on average M/N objects per thread. Ideally this should not be done randomly, but done to minimise the amount each processing thread depends upon the results of any other thread. Both the time to sort, and the time to process are dependant upon the number of objects being looked at. The speed of performing the calculations in parallel, given the need to minimise the data hazards between threads, is effected strongly by the difficulty of sorting the objects into separate sets and by the number of sets that then can be done at once. With only a few threads able to run at once, the speed bonus from running in parallel is lessened yet time is still needed to spread the workload between threads. It is possible to get around the data hazard issue by using more memory, but then you hit issues with memory access times becoming a major factor.
::Edit: I released that I introduced the term 'data hazard' here without explaining what they are and why you want to avoid them. I'm using the term here to mean all the various problems you can get when running multiple threads upon the same overall data set at once. In reality there are a number of different specific terms for each of the various problems that can occur. The simplest problem is that of thread A writing to a memory location, and another thread B reading from it. If thread B is expecting the result of thread A to be there, it must read after thread A writes to the location. If thread B is expecting the original data, and thread A writes the new value in first, then everything gets messed up. As such, you have to be careful about the order in which things are done. There are even more complex issues such as deadlocks, where all the threads are patiently waiting for each other to finish - as they're all being kind and waiting, none can ever complete and allow the rest to finish! I hope that helps you understand better why you can't just let all the threads go at once without being careful beforehand :) And as mentioned, this is only an issue when you are writing to the same memory locations, so you could say "that was the last frame, and we will make a whole new area in memory for the next frame", which means you don't have to worry about any details changing whilst you work, but it needs at least twice as much memory to work! Edit over::
Furthermore, it must be remembered that a game now cannot guarantee any more than a single core really being available to it and it alone. It is reasonable to expect that other processes will always eat up the availability of at least one thread (how many of you game with firefox, IMs, e-mail and explorer windows open in the background?), and if games themselves have seperate input, display and back-end threads, that leaves even fewer open thread slots for the processing to be spread over.
The good news at least is that hopefully that will begin to change. As has already been mentioned, Intel is expected to launch Nehalem by the end of this year, which should offer the ability to run eight threads. Intel is also aggressively encouraging companies to write more and more multi-threaded software, reminding them that the existing scheduling by the operating systems means that they loose little now, but stand to have their programs really benefit as processors can run more and more threads. Games companies are also getting used to writing multi-threaded code, both because of the drive by processor manufacturers, and because to some degree that is how shaders on graphics cards are run.
Much like we have found with the graphics card market, once the developers learn how to multi-thread to full effect, they soon should become able to write code that will need future, even more heavily multi-threading, hardware to run effectively. This point is certainly coming, but I suspect we will have to wait until the average installed hardware base has notably more available threads (at least eight, I suspect).
So, finally we can look back upon the question asked, and see about formulating a proper answer. The hardware market certainly is going more and more towards many simultaneous threads, and it is pressuring the software market to follow. However, the software market is for various reasons lagging behind, and appears to be waiting for the installed hardware base to reach a critical point with available threads for advanced techniques to be applied.
Whilst I believe that the current quad cores actually do not offer enough threads, they are certainly far more future proofed than dual cores. I suspect that it will not be until the end of 2009 that four threads will be considered the normal parallel processing ability of a new computer, and it will probably take until the end of 2010 for software manufacturers to be able to consider their target audience as all being able to run four simultaneous threads. After this, it all depends on the changing nature of the computing market, and so cannot really be speculated upon, but I suspect the average number of simultaneous threads could well start to rise rapidly as fabrication costs lower further.
In conclusion, if you are looking to build a system now, a quad core processor is, price-for-price, going to give you a system that lasts longer and is more proofed against the future changes to the software market.
Rosaline - raising the HEXUS IQ level since July 2007
Wow... Saracen now has competition...
****.
what a great, IQ heavy post, definitely thankworthy... Put simply, yes, a Quad is worth getting, with the only possible exception being if you are gaming, and even then i'd still argue that it's better than a Wolfie. As to which one? Well, Phenom 9850 BE if you're an AMD fan, and a Q6600 if you prefer Intel
One hell of a post Rosaline........will also answer future questions on this topic too :)
Good work Rosaline :).
Rosaline gets a thanks for the effort alone and bonus for the information contained :juggle:.
Do you have any evidence to back your claims...Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
http://www.techspot.com/articles-inf...ng_High_01.pnghttp://www.techspot.com/articles-inf...ng_High_02.pnghttp://www.techspot.com/articles-inf...ng_High_03.png
AMD Phenom X3 processor family performance - TechSpot
I think someone is a quad fanb0y :laugh:
Its seems you are wrong...
You're compairing a new core revision, 1333Mhz FSB CPU to an older core revision 1066Mhz FSB CPU, lets stick to apples-apples shall we? Crank a Q6600's FSB up to 1333Mhz and drop the multipler to 7, and then we can start to talk. Use your brain, benchmarks aren't a replacement for thinking before you speak. And I'll point out that the E8400 only *marginally* beat out the Q6600, on equal footing (a Q9450) it'll get wasted entirely.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
I am not. The reviewers are. And rightfully so. They are in the same price region.Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
Lets stick to comparing same priced apples...Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
We are comparing stock speeds... overclocking is never guaranteed. A Q6600 might bsod at 1333mhz FSB...Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
No need to be rude, especially because you are wrong. These are actually gaming frame rates, not synthetic benchmarks. Your rude comment is very ironicQuote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
So you would compare the almost double priced Q9450 to the E8400 :stupid:Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
Again I ask, do you have any evidence to back your claims?
If you don't then do not bother replying... you will only save yourself from being embarrassed...
You're both making good points of course.
I'd be interested to see the two chips running the same FSB but it would make little difference to the debate I fear.
The fact of the matter is, however good the E8400 may seem or even be, now, it will fade quickly and quietly into nothingness far sooner than the older Q6600 will.
At what could only be considered the same price, the one which has the better long term benefit and the current multitasking benefits is the Q6600, I don't think anyone will argue that.
As demonstrated if you want the absolute best stock gaming performance and flat out refuse to overclock then the E8400 will be better (now and for a little while longer).
What I will say though, is remove the "which bar is bigger" mentality and look at the figures. Neither chip is struggling in any of those games, so you might as well get the quad and reap the benefits of 2 extra cores :) In my most humble of opinions of course.
Ladies! I've long been an advocate of dual proccessor machines for gaming, back in the day my dual core PII showed this quite well, the reason was there where twelvety apps i left open in the background. If its pure FPS you want, and the game makes no use of the other cores, then there is little point buying cores that will remain dormant.
But On Topic.
As it stands, very few programmers know how to use multiple threads. The amount of people i've interviewed for technical programming rolls who's just don't understand the difference between a kernel object for locking, vrs volatile memory are staggering. Here is a very simple performance killer.
All CS courses, should have in the first year an assignment where students are required to build a lockless queue or stack or tree or something, just so they can understand whats going on.
Personally i think that a shift towards functional programming, mabye not as Hascal/CamL people think, more Aspect Orientated Programming (AOP) will allow easyer parralllisation of tasks to be done by the CPU/JIT-er. Abstraction ideas like the .Net events system for WinForms have been re-developed a bit in later versions one of the main changes is the movement away from all the GUI work happening syncronusly. This means that a more modern runtime environment could leverage extra cores with no demand for code changes!
Multi threading in itself is no pannecia, many anti-virus programs have great problems in allowing multiple threads to access multiple streams (ie FileSystem or Network) concurrently.
It will take a long time before multiple CPUs are fully leveraged, but given that its hard to buy a CPU that isn't dual core at the very least, its only a matter of time before people are forced (all be it kicking and screaming) into the future.
I agree with you completely. I will be getting a quad soon for these reasons. But Jay's original quote is indeed correct, which is what this discussion is about :)Quote:
Originally Posted by staffsMike
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay
I am talking about stock speeds, less than stock, actually, 7x333=~2331.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
That's so highly unlikely, to the point of you being absurd. With the multiplier dropped the core's internal frequency will be lower, and if the FSB doesn't go over 333Mhz I'll eat my hat, my P965 board went *way* over that and still didn't do stupid random crap.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
I'm not being rude, I was stating a fact, you didn't think, you just lept to the defence of a ridiculous myth without fleshing it out in your head. You're even getting confused about what clock parameters I specified because of it. However, flat out calling me wrong because you found some weak/unbalanced benchmarks that remotely call in your favour reeks of arrogance, and childish \:stupid\: signs don't help make you right.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
With dropping the multiplier again, yes, of course. In fact, keep the internal clock the same on both the CPUs, it's the perfect fit because the core design on both CPUs are identical. If your assertion that quad cores are useless for gaming is true, then there will be little to no increase in gaming performance, right? And, price is irrelevant for the purpose of this discussion.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
What?.. Like benchmarks?.. :rolleyes: Again, use your brain, that provides all the evidence you need when you operate it correctly. If you *really* need cute little bar graphs to enlighten yourself, go google for Q9450 reviews and compair performance between that and the E8200 for a proper 1:1 comparison, hell, I wont mind if you compair it to the E8500 if you really must.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
And, again, I point out, this is all without even taking concurrency into consideration, doing *any* semi-intensive work in the background will hurt Dual core performance in games.
If you take a good read at Rosaline's post above you'll have a better understanding of why this is.
if aidanjt is saying.
A quad core, of identical specification to a dual core, will perform faster in game, he is right.
if he is trying to say £200 of quad core, will perform faster than £200 of dual core, he is of course dead wrong.
Even if a game isn't designed to use multithreading, having the whole host OS able to leverage the dormant core(s) for its own bidding will provide a tiny increase itself.
However, if the game has been very badly written, and attempts to use multiple threads you may find it kacks up on a dual core (do to locking issues, race hazards). There where plenty of games circa 98 that did this (thou far more of them just flatly refused to run on anything but 9x, which was only ever single CPU).
What I'm trying to say is, in an identical core hardware design, 4 of the cores will be leveraged sufficiently to outperform a dual core, even if it's internal clock is somewhat slower in modern games. i.e. would an E6800 (discontinued, I know) or even an E6850 beat out a Q6600? Not likely. The E8400 has a number of core design improvements that give it the slight edge to (marginally) beat the Q6600 in gaming. In overall price:performance, the Q6600 has the lead by a mile, if we're talking about two CPUs around the same price range.
but a difference would only be perceptable in the eventuality of the game being CPU limited, not GPU limited.
i have faith that Quadcore will be able to deliver faster computing that dual core, even for gamers during the next year or two.
Even if it wasnt outright faster in terms of a single (non cpu limited) game, the quad is still faster in windows and tis ability to do anything in windows.
i got a Q6600 pushed it to 3.20Ghz without any effects and only a touch of extra volts. you know it woul crush any dual core cpu for the same cash in terms of overall, all round performance.
That is still not stock speed.Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
No it is not. Next will you compare the £40 Nvidia 8500gt with the £200 ATi 3870 X2?Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
When did I say that? No need to lie.Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
If you turn off your fanb0y mode, and turn on your brain, you will realise that they are not benchmarks! They are actually gaming frame rates. :angst:Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
We are talking about a dedicated gaming machine. Stop changing the assumptions...Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
I am not going to reply again... so say what you want, but for a dedicated gaming machine E8400 is better value than Q6600 for today's games... I do agree that quad is more future proof and if you can afford it the better option for multitasking, but that is besides the point.
No, you're absolutely correct, it's underclocked.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
Are the 8500 and 3870 GPUs architecturally identical and do they require software specific code loaded on to them to work?.. The analogy is bogus.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
You're perpetuating the myth that quads perform no better for gaming over dual core, for now and the short term future. No?Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
lolwutz t3h fps pwnz j00... Same difference.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
Name me one person on earth that *only* uses their machine *purely* for gaming and nothing else. My assumption is valid as it's completely normal computer use, even gaming computers.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
Frame rate, by its very definition is a benchmark. Its a direct measurement of performance.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
well im about to order my rig, sorry cant reply proerperly
but what i can say is that rif will be for gaming, i also do abit 3d modelling and rendering and also multitasking, as in having lots of prgrammes running at the same time.
the quad is £50 more then the dual core i want, which is the e7200, so ive decided to just spend the £50 and go for the quad, even though im over budget,
is this a wise choice?
i also keep my rigs for a minimum of 4 years,
Well I mean synthetic benchmark then :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Agent
A direct measurement of performance is fine for comparison, as it incorporates a real life difference...
Technically everything we compare anything with is a benchmark... Its the synthetic ones that are less meaningful, the real life ones are good to compare the actual real life, noticeable differences.
Yes, the quad will help enormously for a machine spanning over a 4 year period. Good luck with your build.
Yup, I agree go for the quad...Quote:
Originally Posted by looney
Cheers guys :) will go for it then
Ermm ok....although no one else has mentioned synthetic benchmarks here ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by SiM
Its still irrelevant though. Comparing frame rates via a synthetic benchmark or not, is still a benchmark.
Sorry SIM but that statement is so completely wrong.Quote:
so say what you want, but for a dedicated gaming machine E8400 is better value than Q6600 for today's games
There is no way on this earth that at £130+, the E8400 is better value than the Q6600.
I can guarantee you that my gaming experience is every bit as good as someones with an E8400.
When thats coupled with the fat that the Q6600 is better at EVERYTHING else, how can you say the E8400 is better value.
It simply isnt.
Although a quad core will be more "futureproof" for gaming purposes I hardly believe that a dual core processor will be rendered totally useless for FPS gaming anytime soon!!
The reason is that most gamers will only have a dual core processer anyway. Look at the majority of mainstream(below £700 to £800) gaming systems sold in the last two years- they are still mostly dual cores and probably not running at >3ghz too. Only now are quad core processors becoming more common in lower prices points.
I really doubt that games companies would want to elliminate a large percentage of their sales. Not every game is a tech demo like Crysis was and that was more GPU limited anyway!! I personally think that until games like the future Alan Wake become more common will quad cores be considered the minimum requirement for FPS games.
You have to just look at what your want it for. If you play games and the benches say core 2 is better then get a core 2. If you run apps which have been optimised for quad core then you should get a quad, if the benchmarks agree that there is a performance increase there.
Just as single core CPUs have been replaces by core2/quad, in the next few years core 2 may be replaced by quad/8-core, although there will have to be capable OS/software/hardware support for concurrent processing to take advantage of the processor. This will probably be the limiting factor in the take-up of CPUs with more cores, just as it is now with quad.
Refocussing the thread a little towards the OP's needs. His update of requirements has suggested 3D modelling etc.. which obviously lends itself very nicely to a quad.
You could even game and render at the same time using two cores for each if you wanted to (and had enough RAM) lol
Your Q6600 is overclocked.Quote:
Originally Posted by Blitzen
I am talking about comparing stock E8400 (£126) with stock Q6600 (£136) at this year's games.... No multitasking, no folding in the background, no overclocking, no Q9450, no 3d rendering... Just gaming... I agree, if you do any of these then the Q6600 is better value :)
If anyone can show me a real life gaming measure of a stock Q6600 outperforming a stock E8400 consistently at gaming, then I will admit that I am wrong.
Yup, the OP should get a quad, there is no disagreement there :)Quote:
Originally Posted by staffsMike
Just ran a google search to see what the general consensus is.
e8400 vs q6600 gaming - Google Search
There are people arguing both ways but it does seem that the E8400 is the winner for gaming, even when taking overclocking into consideration as the E8400 can hit 4.2GHz+
E8400 VS Q6600 for gaming? - [H]ard|Forum
E8400 vs Q6600
AnandTech - E8400 vs Q6600 for $200
WHen it comes to gaming you mayaswell go buy an e8200/e8400/e6750/e6550/E6850/E7200 and overclock it over 3.6GHZ :)
SIM fella...thats not what i said.Quote:
If anyone can show me a real life gaming measure of a stock Q6600 outperforming a stock E8400 consistently at gaming, then I will admit that I am wrong.
The E8400 has a VERY slight advantage in gaming, i know that already.
The fact is though, the increase is so minimal that its not even noticeable.
This is why i said that its was wrong to say the E8400 is better value.
Regardless of whether the OP wants a gaming machine or not, the Q6600 is still the better core value wise and longevity wise.
The Q6600 will do all he wants in todays games (more than the E8400 in tomorrows games), and if he decides to start doing other things aswell in the future, the Q6600 will do those better aswell.
Look at my rig...if i swapped the Q6600 for the E8400, can you honestly say my gaming experience would be better or worse. The answer is neither. I wouldnt even notice.
Why when the q6600 is practically the same prices as all those. Thats a real false economy.Quote:
WHen it comes to gaming you mayaswell go buy an e8200/e8400/e6750/e6550/E6850/E7200 and overclock it over 3.6GHZ
There will always be those that swear by quad cores. It's like having a Porsche just in case you decide to drive more spirited or just in case you take it to a track.
If you spend 99% of your time gaming and surfing that web like a lot of my friends then do you really need a quad core CPU? For those who claim that there is no noticeable gaming difference between a stock Q6600 and E8400 then I suggest you check again. I noticed a difference in CNC3 and WoW (sorry, that's all I play at the moment) between my Q6600 @3.6GHz and E8200 @4GHz. The minimum framerate in WoW was the big one especially in densely populated zones.
Sure, you can overclock most Q6600's to 3.6Ghz+ but that's not on stock cooling. Compare that to the E8400 on stock and see what you get, about 3.4-3.6Ghz?
Futureproofing? If you make good use of 2 cores then a quad is clearly the winner for "the future". If you rarely multitask and don't run a lot of background applications then dual will likely suffice for years to come. Although I see the clear advantages in quad cores I don't think they're the best solution for everyone, especially those that don't overclock or multitask.
Forged Alliance _does_ make use of extra cores.... that would be nice to see some benchmarks on that game... :)
I'd vote quad core anyway, Q6600 is the best 'investment' imo.
People going bug-eyed over benchmarks are deluding themselves, nobody uses the bare minimum of Operating System and Application software that's used for benchmarks. Yes, the E8400 only *just* manages to beat the Q6600 in benchmarks, but in real world use, the coin flips around. Every gamer I know, has at a minimum, of Firefox (often with flash ads, or players embedded in pages), {Skype,Ventrillo}, {Live,Yahoo,AOL,Google} IM clients, Steam, and a variety of other software such as AV, AS, as well as other security software running under the DX/OGL overlay. Always treat benchmarks with scepticism, they are almost never indicative of real world performance. In the real world, the additional software load (and general bloat of some of them), will certainly render the E8400's extra MegaHurtz irrelevant as they eat into game engine ticks. The MegaHurtz == better myth has been dispelled long ago, let it stay dead, and put this matter to rest.
At higher res' i'm limited by my GPU - so there's a law of dimishing returns in having a faster core dedicated to the game's process. That's why my quad sits at 3ghz - i just don't need the extra mhz for gaming. period.
However, in the real world, i'm often running tens of other processes concurrently - and having them not needing to steal from the game is such an obvious benefit to me. Stuff the benchmarks - it's just common sense that tells me that having an OS that's built for multicores, running lots of system processes AND third party apps WHILST playing a game is a good thing. That and the fact the system never ends up being unresponsive (comparitively) too.
More cores is good. But the choice is yours..
Used to have single core. Used to do the dual thang. Now on quad - and yes, I do think it's better for it.
This thread is funny, it is just like some time-warp discussion of whether dual core is worth it or do you spend the money on an FX-57 as that gives the ultimate frame rates :D
Programmers do enough competative willy waving that the world does actually catch up before too long. Not as fast as we would like perhaps, but it does catch up.