Anyone else failing to see a reason to go quad core?

E

EnderW

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Sep 25, 2003
Messages
11,250
Everyone seems to be hyped up about cheap quad core chips, but why?

Very few application make use of them.
Increased heat.
Increased power usage.
Increased cost.
If OCing, lower OC, which means poorer performance in the majority of applications.

By the time applications come out that make use of them, we'll have native 45nm quad core chips or better.

Am I missing something here? :confused:
 
Mostly for video encoding, etc.
More "Future Technology" friendly.
Bigger E-Penis. :D
 
ferr said:
Multi-tasking, Supreme Commander, 3D Modeling, etc?
Click to expand...
what kind of multitasking are you doing that quad core will help?
I haven't seem any benchmarks that show a big benefit in supreme commander
yes, they are great for 3D modeling, but how many people do that?
 
I spend about an hour a day unzipping files, encoding video, etc... and I want to be able to run other programs. My Core 2 Duo gets bogged down half the time I use it. Am I justified now?;)
 
some people don't upgrade every cycle or two

some people will hope it'll last them 3-5 years
 
There's some good data that benches the Q6600 vs the whatever 2.92 C2D in the Value multi-thread demos where the quad definately was quicker and handled more particles; and also Crysis and UT 2007 developers are looking heavily at in game advantages from quad cores.

I wasn't so eager until I re-read the valve piece. I'm sure that tech is going to be utilized in Episode 2.

I love my e6700, but I think that we're going to see quad core show a big advantage in the Fall when all these AAA games are released.

Hey, I bought one Saturday from mwave for $273. I'm going to see what it can do. If it stinks, I'll put it in the box and wait for the games to catch up.

Maybe I bought into the hype.......I dont know......
 
EnderW said:
what kind of multitasking are you doing that quad core will help?
I haven't seem any benchmarks that show a big benefit in supreme commander
yes, they are great for 3D modeling, but how many people do that?
Click to expand...

any kind of multitasking.
I like to convert divx to DVD. i'm not gonna sit there for an hour or so while the video gets converted and not use my computer.
with a dual you can still surf, chat, do little things that dont take much.
with a quad you could fire up a game over top of that.
I also like to have 10 things going at once. i get distracted easily and go off on tangents of what im doing. Most of the time i will be running 5 IE windows with multiple tabs, MSN with multiple windows, windows media player going, photoshop, bittorent, something burning, and if i get bored ill start up CS:S or Battlefield. Throw in some video editing and its all worth it.
and btw, it seems as though q6600s actually outperform e6600s even in regular things. of course an E6850 would still be faster.

Basically if you think your dualy is working out for you, then stay with it. but i have use for a quad so i ordered one.
 
comming from the opinion of the ¨normal gamer user¨¨

There is nothing that I use that would use all 4 cores now, maybe if im encoding a video or somthing somtime, i can do it overnight, or just wait a little longer for it to be done..

When 4 cores are needed to play games, thats when ill get the 4 cores, but I think the Q6600, even at OCed to 3.5 ghz, will be too slow by that time., and if its not, ill buy it then for like 175 bucks.. I just cant believe that there are THAT many people that will use all the cores before the next gen quad core comes out..So ill wait for that. I think alot of people have a hard time waiting because they read forums like this all day and it gets them psyced up

PS: Although I admit, 2 moniters..playing FPS games online and Alt tabbing when your dead to carry on a AIM or MSN conversation does sound like it would be pretty nice. But duals can do that now more or less...
 
EnderW said:
Everyone seems to be hyped up about cheap quad core chips, but why?

Very few application make use of them.
Increased heat.
Increased power usage.
Increased cost.
If OCing, lower OC, which means poorer performance in the majority of applications.

By the time applications come out that make use of them, we'll have native 45nm quad core chips or better.

Am I missing something here? :confused:
Click to expand...

As of today you do make a valid point. In fact most people buying dual core machines have no real use for them unless they fall into a very small niche group, the folks who do a lot of work in PhotoShop or are heavy into video rendering. I might add the Distributed Computing folk defiantly have a use for both Dual and Quad cores and will no doubt be on the short list for as many cores as possible. And, leave us not forget the server market which is actually where Intel and AMD really fight it out.

The enthusiast market is a very small part of the really big picture when it comes right down to it.

The other side of your coin is more complex, we will continue to see more and more multi core CPUs and the number of cores will continue to increase and eventually all software will all be written around the SMP process.

Not to flame the gaming population in any way shape or form, but, it has never made sense to me to spend major bucks on any computer to play a game. Many gamers were among the first to drop $1500.00 on the first quad cores and $500.00 to $900.00 plus on one or more video cards to play a $50.00 game.

It all boils down to real need vs. perceived need and there is nothing bad there at all. As long as there is a market of some sort, someone will build a product to fill the need.

All this from yours truly who is typing this while looking across my office at 4 full tower dual processor Socket “A” machines, collecting dust I might add.;)




 
Running computational chemistry and molecular dynamic applications.

Obviously if you're some kid in his Mom's basement, you probably don't need quad cores.
 
Ubiquity said:
Running computational chemistry and molecular dynamic applications.

Obviously if you're some kid in his Mom's basement, you probably don't need quad cores.
Click to expand...

The home-brew DNA de-scramblers and open-source molecular engineers of the future will have us gamers to thank for pushing this tech. The availability and liberation of such computational power to the masses could not be achieved if not for techie zeal. So sit down, and shut up about our pushing-30, forever-single, basement-dwelling enablers. Just sit back, and watch the prices drop on computational power... our overgrown enablers sacrifice *their* life-liberties, for *OUR* computational-power-squandering futures!
 
i thought about getting a qc for my video encoding, but to tell you the truth, its not worth the extra 150$ to me. My movies already are done in 20-30min.
 
I'm running an E6300, slowest of them all and it plays my games pretty well. If the price gouging continues I'll just lay low without much effort... I bought the cheapest one of them all cause the price won't come down that much on it anyways and I never put up much to get it to begin with. When Crysis comes out and other good games come out at around that time I'll pickup a quad and possibly a new video card.

Dual cores were fast to begin with!
 
Supreme Commander, Folding, DVD conversion, general buttery smoothness.

Good enough for me. If it's not for you, then that's cool too.
 
well theres really no point to upgrade IMO if you already own a c2d

however, when you are upgrading from a single core chip, and you have the choice between e6850 and q6600, the quad is clearly a better choice. for me at least
 
Is valve going to update it's source engine to take advantage of quads?

That supreme commander report didn't impress me that much with it's quad performance over it's dual performance.
 
Supreme Commander!
Supreme Commander!

Who cares about this game. Not many play this game and it runs smooth on dual core as well. Quad is good for video encoding, folding and other heavy cpu application. I only do next generation cpu upgrades, so this hot deal is not for me.
 
When there's a quad for 114$ and i can overclock it to 3.47ghz, I MIGHT buy it. ;)

But in the meantime there's no reason. I really don't need one. I don't even have a game that utilizes dual core yet why would i need 4?
 
hmz said:
Supreme Commander!
Supreme Commander!

Who cares about this game. Not many play this game and it runs smooth on dual core as well. Quad is good for video encoding, folding and other heavy cpu application. I only do next generation cpu upgrades, so this hot deal is not for me.
Click to expand...

People talk about this game because its a newer game which takes advantage of multiple cores and the performance is there to show that more = better.
 
jmackay said:
People talk about this game because its a newer game which takes advantage of multiple cores and the performance is there to show that more = better.
Click to expand...

Yes, they talk and everyone should upgrade to quad core because SC takes advantage of quad core. That's silly. You know that.
 
Supreme Commander isn't going to be the only quad core game ever. Bioshock and Crysis will both utilize quad core and will both be out within a couple months. How much difference quad core will make for them, and how soon quad core support will become common for games, is up for debate.
 
Anyone who's doing 3d and has seen 4 render buckets flying around the framebuffer . . . that's all the incentive you need for quadcore :D
 
I always wait two or three generations b4 i upgrade(athlon 3000+ to a core 2 6400). So i will upgrade in about 09 to whatever is current. As to answer the question at hand.........i dont think quad core will be used to the fullest for some time,so i dont see a reason to go quad at this point in time unless you encode alot or fold.
 
brhinton89 said:
I always wait two or three generations b4 i upgrade(athlon 3000+ to a core 2 6400). So i will upgrade in about 09 to whatever is current. As to answer the question at hand.........i dont think quad core will be used to the fullest for some time,so i dont see a reason to go quad at this point in time unless you encode alot or fold.
Click to expand...

Or unless you don't upgrade for 4 years... I'm upgrading to quad from an A64 3000+ because I want it to last at least 2 years, and considering the quad core games coming out *this* year, it seems fairly likely that there will be a considerable benefit well before it's time to upgrade again. For someone who will be upgrading again less than a year from now though, something like an E6750 does seem like a much better choice.
 
I'm going to be going with the quad core because I re-encode ALOT of video.

After getting a 50" DLP I found out my encodes that looked good on the 32" LCD didn't look that good. I have around 500 DVDs, so I will need to re-rip and re-encode them AGAIN.

500 DVD's at ~3hrs each to encode to h264 2650kbps AAC 6-ch audio., that's 63 days. If the Q6600 drops 25% off the time it takes to re-encode, that will save me over 2 weeks of encoding time. Well worth $270ish for me.
 
I've been ripping DVDs for my iPod and my AppleTV/360 into H.264, and if Handbrake will use all four cores and speed up encoding then I'll get it.
 
FOLDING! And for the general slew of upcoming games... Bioshock will require a quad core IMO.

But I'm not upgrading till I see some good crysis/ut2k7/bioshock benches showing the quad is as helpful as it is in SC.
 
My Core2Duo E6600 @ 3.4 GHz, always, I mean always, is the best performing processor in the Core2Duo only matches (3v3 and 4v4 Seaton's) that I host in Supreme Commander. It beats the Q6600 by a nice margin. If Q6600 is at -1, I am running +0 or +1. Clock speed beats multiple cores in Supreme Commander. The quad core functionality of Supreme Commander is HYPE. Quad Core lags in a 4v4 just the same as the Core Duos. (The console command for CPU performance is ren_shownetworkstats) The hardware specs of my teammates and opponents are always very similar.

The best test of how well a system runs supreme commander is to join a 4v4 where the host weeds out laggers (older AMDs, pentiums) and then look at the network stats every 10-15 minutes or so. The quad people (they often have SLI systems) never have a significant advantage.

When I ran Sandra on my 3.4Ghz E6600 machine, it showed the reference Q6600 and Q6700s as having a significant performance advantage at stock speeds over my chip. But that is theoretical performance because the benchmark is number crunching that clearly was fully optimized to use more than 2 cores. So the question isn't whether Q6600 is better or not--of course it is--the question is whether games will really tap into what quad can do this Fall and in 08.

Here is the issue as I see it--there is a lot of incentive for game developers to claim that their engine takes advantage of quad core. It makes their product look more forward looking and futureproofed. But in reality there is a difference between taking advantage of multiple cores and being optimized for multiple cores. I'm sure these games will tap into multiple cores like Supreme Commander does, but the real question is whether they are optimized for more than two cores.

I highly doubt that HL2: Episode 2 is fully optimized for four cores. I don't see anything in videos of this game that would lead me to believe that a quad core will add that much. Then again, they might have optimized it because they will want to do it anyway for Episode 3. I just find it hard to believe that the source engine, which is pretty easy to run, is going to max out a dual core, let alone become an argument for quad core.

The same goes for Bioshock and Epic games has pretty much said that dual core is the sweet spot for UT3. You have to look at the videos of these games and ask yourself what you need the four cores for. There isn't THAT much going on in those games other than some serious graphics. Are you telling me a Core2Duo is going to choke on two first person shooters (both of which feature indoor environments extensively). NOT A CHANCE. Neither of those titles will come close to the CPU utilization of Supreme Commander in a 4v4 match.

The real issue is Crysis, because of the fully destructable environments and the sheer number of elements on screen. Physics seems to play a larger role in this game than the others and they are also marketing the engine bigtime, so futureproofing is important. This is the only game right now that gives me some pause about quad core, because the game itself is just so ambitious that I wouldn't be surprised if it is the first to really take advantage of what quad can do. When you look at all that grass and all those trees swaying in those videos, and the water modeling and what not, a quad core advantage seems more likely.

But all of these games have been in the pipe for a long while--and there is absolutely no install base for quad core right now to make it worth the extra effort. Are quad owners even 1% of all PC owners? Quad core is so far from the mainstream right now that I find it hard to believe this fall's games are going to really tap into it. I think it will be another year minimum before you really need one. Developers will hype quad core functionality to generate interest in the game engine but I think the benchmarks will show a negligible performance advantage. The games will be GPU bound in any event.

All this is speculation, of course.
 
Arcygenical said:
FOLDING! And for the general slew of upcoming games... Bioshock will require a quad core IMO.

But I'm not upgrading till I see some good crysis/ut2k7/bioshock benches showing the quad is as helpful as it is in SC.
Click to expand...

Exactly,I don't know what the rush is? For me Crysis, bioshock and other games that are supposed to utilize quad-core won't be coming out till fall anyway so I'm going to wait until after Christmas to upgrade...Imagine how much the Q6600 will be for the after Christmas sales:eek: !!

Plus like Arcygenical said we will see benchmarks to give us an idea where quad-core processors stand in term of extra performance.
 
Wait until Fall, and also, isn't Penryn supposed to be even faster than the Kentsfield?
 
For me the motivation to go multicore is clear...I often find myself compiling large projects. I can't stand my computer slowing down to a grinding halt. I enjoy watching movies/shows while I work...so I need to be able to do all my work without lag.
 
I love how the OP - original poster opens up an extremely controvercial topic in a very different way than others. If this is another one of those - Q6600 for me? Q6600 vs E6850 OC? topics, I bet everyone including myself are getting SICK and TIRED of those similar thread that we see on a hourly basis.

The OP cracked up a topic with very good solid facts in one perspective and let every other [H] experts filled in the rests that may or may not have being covered. Very smart and HOT topic:cool: :D

Oh, sorry if I have being staying on topic? No, but it doesn't really matter becouse if I ever need to make my points, good chances are it's all already have being covered..;) :p

But I'll still asnwer to one of the all time fav question - Q6600 is my choice. Period.
;)
 
fe_918 said:
well theres really no point to upgrade IMO if you already own a c2d
Click to expand...

as another poster said, some stuff does really bog down my C2D. Over the weekend i did some video transcoding (Mpeg2 to Xvid) and for those ten hours, my system couldnt do any side tasks more strenous then websurfing or playing mp3 without bogging down, i tried watching soem DivXs, only to find that WMP had some serious decoding problems (blocky artifacts on the screen, id say it just couldnt keep up with the decoding)

now i have to admit, i dont spend half my time transcoding video, but when i am, i will be transcoding 20+ hours of video at once, and i want it done fast

that said, most of the reason i just went "w000000000000000t" inside after seeing a xeon x3210 for 215 is off course the e-penis part of having twice as many cores, too bad i made deal with myself not to get unneeded pc parts till years end (but ill be damned if i dont give myself a quad as a new years pressent :D)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top