Are quads worth getting?

[looney]

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 or would they just be outdated and somewhat useless.

[Agent]

Its an impossible question to answer without knowing what you use your system for

[Jay]

for gaming, not really at the moment, for anything else, yes.

[aidanjt]

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.

[SiM]

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.

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.

[Jay]

SiM is correct.

[aidanjt]

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.

[cptwhite_uk]

Just stop perpetuating this antiquated fallacy.

That's got to be a signature quote for someone right there

[Rosaline]

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.

[Templar87]

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.

If you could find and link to some benchmarks which support what you're claiming you might persuade people

[Link97]

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.

[Blitzen]

Would the likes of Q6600 and Q6700 still be good in 3 years time though?

Hard to say really.
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.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

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.

[Spud1]

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.

[Timo]

>> 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.

[Agent]

>> 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.

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