quad core

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Merlin
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quad core

Post by Merlin »

I am not really sure I understand the whole quad core phenomenon. Is an AMD Phenom 2.2Ghz basically 4 XP 3200s on one dye?? Isn't it true that almost none, if any at all, of the OSes and software out there will actually use even a dual core much less 4 of them?? I don't see why quad core is even useful, no one can do that much at the same time on a PC and it seems to me that a 2-4 min system restart 2 years ago is now still a 2-4 min restart so the numerous cores are not working on the same thing at once or it would take 1/2 the time. Isn't it better to have 1 or 2 cores running at 5 Ghz than 4 at 2.2??
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ibleet
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Re: quad core

Post by ibleet »

As more and more applications and games utilize "multi-threading", quad cores will become more necessary. I would say that most OS, applications and games do take advantage of more than a single core.

Right now, your best bet is a duel core cpu, hands down, but I expect that to change in the near future. Think of it this way...even if some applications and games aren't multi-threaded, your system can still multi-task much better thanks to the multi-core cpu's, so you end up getting more done in much less time.
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Merlin
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Re: quad core

Post by Merlin »

let me use this example since I have a vivid visual of it....on the CINEBENCH10 test you see a motorcysle picture being rendered with one CPU core from the top only. When it tests Dual core function it does the same render but one CPU starts at the bottom while the other starts at the top. Isnt it true that unless the software tells it to the CPU , whether that consists of four cores or one, will not designate seperate jobs for each core but rather let one core do what it can until the system is taxed to the point of "needing" the other cores to help because you have started another application like virus scan or something? IF I am playing COD4 and the game needs to load the next map it will not use all 4 cores to load that map in 5 seconds versus 15 with one core unless the game knows you have four cores and has the instructions included in its code to use four cores. I had thought that the second third and fourth cores would only really be activated if and only if the preceeding core reaches 100% rather than having each core running at 25%.
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Re: quad core

Post by Apoptosis »

Image

The applications need to support multi-core... some support 2 cores, 3 cores, 4 cores, 8 cores and so on. Cinebench R10 for example works great with 8 cores as you can see in the screen shot above when I last ran it on the SkullTrail enthusiast platform. Games are a whole new beast as more games usually only use 2-3 cores as some games are designed for the XBOX and then ported over to PC, so the fourth core isn't used by the game. That doesn't mean it can be used by other applications like virus scanners and the such.
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Merlin
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Re: quad core

Post by Merlin »

That answers my question. I had thought that like 64 bit was before quad core was now, mostly hardware going way beyond what software would support. I was wrong as you have shown. Thank you for the education.
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