Number of cores/CPU supported in Vista?

[Seraphiel]

Does anyone have links to Microsoft, where they specifically state how many cores on a single CPU, and how many CPU in total are supported by Vista?

If these numbers are different from each version of Vista, please specify.

Thank you.

[markt435]

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_02.asp

http://i12.tinypic.com/4kvaxwo.jpg

[pxc]

Just to expand on the chart above...

Home Basic and Home Premium support 1 CPU socket, with any number of cores. That equals up to 4 cores right now.

The other versions support 2 CPU sockets, with any number of cores. That means up to 8 cores right now.

It's essentially the same split as XP right now. XP Home supports 1 socket and XP Pro supports 2 sockets.

[MScrip]

Just to expand on the chart above...

Home Basic and Home Premium support 1 CPU socket, with any number of cores. That equals up to 4 cores right now.



Since my next computer will have at least 2 cores, and with Vista supporting those cores... what does that do in terms of performance? Do applications have to also support multi-cores? Or is this just marketing speak?

[l3ender]

Since my next computer will have at least 2 cores, and with Vista supporting those cores... what does that do in terms of performance? Do applications have to also support multi-cores? Or is this just marketing speak?

The question of whether applications support multi-core is entirely dependent on the application. For the most part, the majority of applications do not utilize multi-core processors right now. As far as if they NEED to, well that's also dependent on the app.

[djnes]

As time goes on, not only will you see the transitiion to 64 bit computing (for everyone), but you'll see more and more apps written to take advantage of multiple cores. Some applications really don't need multiple cores. Outlook, for example, and maybe the whole basic Office Suite in general, isn't going to realize any real benefits from multi-core processors. Video editing, games, digital content creation will definitely do so on a client side. The majority of major server apps will as well.

[Seraphiel]

Thank you very much for the answers.

[devman]

The question of whether applications support multi-core is entirely dependent on the application. For the most part, the majority of applications do not utilize multi-core processors right now. As far as if they NEED to, well that's also dependent on the app.

I find that other than games, most programs that are CPU intensive are multi threaded, and even some games are now. I know all of my encoding is multi-core aware.