8 slower cores vs 4 faster ones.

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Rob Black

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What would be better for Video Editing, a faster single Quad-Core processor (Q6600) or 2 slower Quad-Core processors (2 Xeon E5310 - 8 Cores total) Basically I'm trying to decrease the time it takes to render video. I currently have a E6600 and when I edit HD footage it brings my system down to its knees, it even locks up my system sometimes.

Thanks.
 
Isn't this a software issue? If the software does not take proper advantage of threading the extra cores are just going to wait in line for some processing to do. In that case you are going to be better off with the faster cores.

The thing I dont' know is if a program is set up to take advantage of 2 cores, is it also ready to utilize 8 cores? 16 cores? 300?
 
jakegub said:
Isn't this a software issue? If the software does not take proper advantage of threading the extra cores are just going to wait in line for some processing to do. In that case you are going to be better off with the faster cores.

The thing I dont' know is if a program is set up to take advantage of 2 cores, is it also ready to utilize 8 cores? 16 cores? 300?
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That what I was thinking, I think it would be a lot cheaper to go with a single quad core processor then 2 Quad-Core processors. I think the latest version of Sony Video Vegas supports Quad-Core processors (I'm still researching that), supposedly they are coming out with a 64-Bit edition so it can utilize more then 4GB of ram.
 
You can safely run a Q6600 at 3.2+ ghz. So take that into account. The slower quad core Xeon is in the $350 range and that's for just 1.6ghz I believe.

From a financial standpoint, I'd go with the Q6600.
 
DriveEuro said:
You can safely run a Q6600 at 3.2+ ghz. So take that into account. The slower quad core Xeon is in the $350 range and that's for just 1.6ghz I believe.

From a financial standpoint, I'd go with the Q6600.
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QFT, but of course the price cuts are still a few weeks away, but I agree completely.

Who would want 2 cores when you can get 4 for nearly the same price? :D These types of threads are almost as common in this subforum as "XP vs Vista" in the Operating Systems subforum, geezus. :p
 
bbz_Ghost said:
QFT, but of course the price cuts are still a few weeks away, but I agree completely.

Who would want 2 cores when you can get 4 for nearly the same price? :D These types of threads are almost as common in this subforum as "XP vs Vista" in the Operating Systems subforum, geezus. :p
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Well, true, you will get 4 cores for about the same price... BUT you can get a comfortable OC on a Q6600 of 3.2ghz pretty easy. If you pick up the 1.6ghz Xeons, you can pin mod them to 2ghz. Your Q6600 is still substantially faster (in terms of ghz).

And also, will that software be able to use 8 cores effectively? My guess is no. This would make 4 cores more attractive.

Kinda reminds me of F@H on SMP systems. It runs great on 2 cores. But once you move to 4 cores it doesn't scale as well.

__________________________________________________________

Here is another question to the OP...
How much ram is used typically to do all this rendering? Because 4gb is kinda the limit on a desktop at this point. The new P35 works with 8gb on some boards... but you'll spend just as much on 8gb of DDR3 as you would for FB-DIMMS.
 
4 cores 8 cores, it doesn't matter. If the software is multithreaded it's going to be used; I've never heard of software that is written and it's multithreaded but only for a certain number of cores/processors, that seems a bit silly. Write an app for dual cores and it underperforms on a quad because it doesn't "see" the other 2 cores? See how crazy that sounds?

People are on the single and dual bandwagon and for some reason they think "ok, I have a dual core, but if I buy a quad core nothing will take advantage of it" and that's completely wrong. Every multithreaded app including the most important part of all - the OS itself - will see and use all the cores at their disposal.

Wonder where people got the idea that dual cores were a limitation of some kind... makes no sense to me.
 
But you're looking over the fact that not all programs scale well when you add more cores.

Some programs don't scale well. Some programs will benefit more from 4 faster cores than from 8 slower cores. The increase of additional cores isn't always proportional.
 
Ok i like the HD footage thing, What type of HD footage is that which will bring the Quad Core to its knees ?
 
annaconda said:
Ok i like the HD footage thing, What type of HD footage is that which will bring the Quad Core to its knees ?
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Footage shot in 1440x1080.

My current system is
E6600
ASUS P5N32-E SLI PLUS
2GB CORSAIR XMS2 (PC2 6400)
8800GTX SLI
2TB of HDD space
 
bbz_Ghost said:
4 cores 8 cores, it doesn't matter. If the software is multithreaded it's going to be used; I've never heard of software that is written and it's multithreaded but only for a certain number of cores/processors, that seems a bit silly. Write an app for dual cores and it underperforms on a quad because it doesn't "see" the other 2 cores? See how crazy that sounds?

People are on the single and dual bandwagon and for some reason they think "ok, I have a dual core, but if I buy a quad core nothing will take advantage of it" and that's completely wrong. Every multithreaded app including the most important part of all - the OS itself - will see and use all the cores at their disposal.

Wonder where people got the idea that dual cores were a limitation of some kind... makes no sense to me.
Click to expand...

I think Orthos is a program that specifically only uses 2 cores. I understand that Orthos is a specialized program for testing a dual core processor, but if it can have a limit to the number of processors, then it would be feasible for some other program to have a limit. And that is with scalability set aside. I'm not sure any program scales very well for anything more than four cores because it is limited by other parts of the architecture.
 
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