Is quad core noticeably better than dual core?
- Thread starter RAMA
- Start date
Probably not unless you're planning to run processor-intensive programs, or several potentially "heavy" programs at once.
That said, as a software engineer, I've experienced far fewer instances of UI unresponsiveness with a quad-core machine than I did with a dual-core. There's still swapping delays, but what do you expect, it's Windows. Still better overall with 4.
That said, as a software engineer, I've experienced far fewer instances of UI unresponsiveness with a quad-core machine than I did with a dual-core. There's still swapping delays, but what do you expect, it's Windows. Still better overall with 4.
G
Garrovick
Guest
For the average user, not worth the money. Upgrade memory or video, especialy memory.
I've been looking for a new laptop and have read dual core will fit 99 percent of all tasking.
I've been looking for a new laptop and have read dual core will fit 99 percent of all tasking.
I don't think there is enough applications that take full advantage of the four cores yet. At least that is what I got from Tomshardware.com. In the test I saw they put Intel quad cores vs some of the best Intel dual cores. I think the dual cores had a faster clock speed so they beat the quad cores on most apps but for the few apps that where designed to take advantage of quad core CPUs, the quad cores did do much better.
If you keep your PC for years like I do and have the money I suppose the quad cores are a good envestment though.
If you keep your PC for years like I do and have the money I suppose the quad cores are a good envestment though.
While it is like shouting at the sky for raining - is anyone else thoroughly pissed off that MS never fix Windows most annoying flaws between releases?
They generally make things much worse - modern PCs have incredible power compared to those of ten years ago - but it still takes ages to do a lot of desktop tasks because it takes an hour over opening windows, listing contents etc..
Grrr....
You can turn that off you know, and keep OS components in memory - assuming you have enough memory. Of course whining about things you know little about is more fun, I suppose.
Standard reply for that sort of question: IT ALL DEPENDS.
IF your application takes advantage of all cores (many dont) and IF your OS takes proper advantage of all cores (many dont), then it would be worth it.
YOU have to do some research to see if what you're running will work.
IF your application takes advantage of all cores (many dont) and IF your OS takes proper advantage of all cores (many dont), then it would be worth it.
YOU have to do some research to see if what you're running will work.
There's nothing about Windows that's "fun". I did look around for such an option a few weeks ago; closest I could find was a setting for launching windows as separate processes or the same one. A setting that's difficult to find is only marginally better than no setting at all.
I think I remember you posting "XP's tendency to swap out things" some time ago. I misunderstood at first but after researching I see what you mean. I have XP and honestly I don't know if my performance problems are related to that.
Right now the only annoying performance problems I have noticed are with Firefox 3 or some games. For Firefox 3 it seems like it starts to hog memory till it slows the whole PC down (after running for a few hours/days or viewing lots of streaming videos) but quitting it and starting a new session seems to work. With games it is hardware related for the most part I think.
Any way I can’t think of any every day examples where that swap tendency affects my every day use. Do you know of any every day use examples how this would affect some people?
Right now the only annoying performance problems I have noticed are with Firefox 3 or some games. For Firefox 3 it seems like it starts to hog memory till it slows the whole PC down (after running for a few hours/days or viewing lots of streaming videos) but quitting it and starting a new session seems to work. With games it is hardware related for the most part I think.
Any way I can’t think of any every day examples where that swap tendency affects my every day use. Do you know of any every day use examples how this would affect some people?
Quad cores and large amounts of RAM won't make a difference in average use unless you use programs such as Photoshop, 3d Studio Max, and other software that can utilize multiple cores.
I for example use all of those programs and will be getting a Quad core CPU, 4 GB of RAM and a powerful graphics card (due to occasional/rare gaming and much better display of heay 3d scenes in Max) among other things.
Right now though I'm still using computers with single cores and they get the job done, but those are over 5 year old computer systems and I need an upgrade when I get to London (I'll buy a new powerful laptop).
If you are a gamer (occasional or otherwise) ... then quad cores aren't really that needed as much as a powerful graphics card is.
Even if your CPU is not exactly great but the GPU is the best, games will probably fly on that system.
So unless you have cpu heavy software on your hands, use Core2Duo.
On the other hand, getting a Quad core CPU will make sure you won't have to upgrade for some time.
And most of the CPU's these days are overclockable to gain raw performance if needed (which is handled pretty good with decent coolers).
Plus, quad cores would probably work great on Vista (if you are ... 'keen' on using it that is ... I'm gonna be using XP SP 3).
Leave one core for the OS (
) along with 2 GB of ram while the other three cores and another 2 GB of ram are available for various programs.
Yeah, Vista would be able to use your resources, but I personally prefer to have an OS that can use much smaller amount of resources while diverting everything else to 3d Studio Max and still get everything done.
I for example use all of those programs and will be getting a Quad core CPU, 4 GB of RAM and a powerful graphics card (due to occasional/rare gaming and much better display of heay 3d scenes in Max) among other things.
Right now though I'm still using computers with single cores and they get the job done, but those are over 5 year old computer systems and I need an upgrade when I get to London (I'll buy a new powerful laptop).
If you are a gamer (occasional or otherwise) ... then quad cores aren't really that needed as much as a powerful graphics card is.
Even if your CPU is not exactly great but the GPU is the best, games will probably fly on that system.
So unless you have cpu heavy software on your hands, use Core2Duo.
On the other hand, getting a Quad core CPU will make sure you won't have to upgrade for some time.
And most of the CPU's these days are overclockable to gain raw performance if needed (which is handled pretty good with decent coolers).
Plus, quad cores would probably work great on Vista (if you are ... 'keen' on using it that is ... I'm gonna be using XP SP 3).
Leave one core for the OS (
) along with 2 GB of ram while the other three cores and another 2 GB of ram are available for various programs.Yeah, Vista would be able to use your resources, but I personally prefer to have an OS that can use much smaller amount of resources while diverting everything else to 3d Studio Max and still get everything done.
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If you're going AMD then I wouldn't bother with the Quad Core chips.
Take a gander at www.anandtech.com where they've had a review on AMD's latest chips (The Phenoms). And while they AMD have some chips that do well on price/performance, they are reaching the stage of getting slaughtered by the Core2 range.
I used to have a 2 CPU 400Mhz machine that kick the crap outta my current PC which has the same RAM and HD size, but it run at 1.8Ghz and only has one core.
I build my friend a Dual Core athlon system for 400 bucks and it kicks the crap out of my 1200 dollar machine I built a few years ago, I really want to upgrade my current PC.
CPU = 3500 Athlon
Memory 2GB
Hard Drives, 120GB, 250GB, 300GB, 300GB, 750GB
Video Card = Radeon 9550
Want to get a dual core athlon, 4GB Ram and a couple 750GB drives.
I build my friend a Dual Core athlon system for 400 bucks and it kicks the crap out of my 1200 dollar machine I built a few years ago, I really want to upgrade my current PC.
CPU = 3500 Athlon
Memory 2GB
Hard Drives, 120GB, 250GB, 300GB, 300GB, 750GB
Video Card = Radeon 9550
Want to get a dual core athlon, 4GB Ram and a couple 750GB drives.
Chief amongst my needs are good graphics performance and ability to burn DVDs quickly while still multi-tasking. My old machine couldn't handle it. I must say my new dual core with 3GB of PC6400 DDR2 RAM are pretty amazing at this. I was converting an mkv file while burning a DVD and browsing online yesterday with almsot no slowdown!
RAMA
For compiling large software the quad core is very effective. For example compiling Openoffice takes only about 50 minutes on a newer Intel Core 2 quad as compared to 90 minutes on an older Intel Core 2 Duo (the two CPUs compared have similar clock cycles). Just as an reference an AMD 3500 based system would probably take about 5 hours to compile openoffice.
I am not sure about the AMD quad but at the moment Intel is the king in terms of performance. The upcoming Intel Nehalem core is an absolute beast again. In the Anandtech preview its showing a 30% to 45% increase in performance over the most powerful Intel Quad available (media encoding and 3d rendering were the only two areas tested).
I am not sure about the AMD quad but at the moment Intel is the king in terms of performance. The upcoming Intel Nehalem core is an absolute beast again. In the Anandtech preview its showing a 30% to 45% increase in performance over the most powerful Intel Quad available (media encoding and 3d rendering were the only two areas tested).
Which depends upon your GPU, not your CPU.
Which depends upon your hard drive speed / cache / RAID setup, and the amount of RAM you have. (All DVD drives these days burn at essentially the same rate.)
That is, in point of fact, the exact CPU that I have. And that, friends, is why I don't use Gentoo.
Why has no one suggested "faster disks"? While a speedy CPU, multiple cores, and ample RAM will give your system a lot of "potential," people tend to ignore the remaining bottleneck: disk speed. A lot of what your PC does is disk-bound: loading programs, moving between them (if swap is being used), opening/saving files, etc. While you're configuring a computer, consider opting for a 10,000RPM drive or even a RAID array. You'd be surprised how often system speed is perceived as "slow" because of subpar disks.
If you have a 64-bit OS and enough RAM, this should rarely be a problem.
Of course, on Windows it is a problem anyway, because Windows is swap-happy. Someone claimed there was a way to alleviate that, but declined to give specifics. I haven't been able to find such a setting on my own.
