duo/quad cores.

[samsung.204b]

do we already need quad cores cpus? duo cores are so new...

does winxp and win2k fully make use of duo cores? what about vista?

 

[Korialstrasza]

I'd say whether you 'need' it or not depends on who you are.

The average user who plays games, browses the web, and writes emails/word docs will probably not need 4 cores. However, it's worth its weight in gold for video editors and animation dudes.

All depends.

edit: xp utilizes dual cores. I think it works with quads too, but not too sure about that (verification?)

 

[Celestial Avenger]

However, it's worth its weight in gold for video editors and animation dudes.

I need it.

 

[Sunin]

There are games coming out near-term (6mos) that are multithread. They can and will assign threads to individual processors and thus you now have say a quad or octal processor each running at 2Ghz pumping a game at over 8-16ghz. Do we need it? No, but damn it will be fun. I'm hoping in mid 2007. I'm hoping for the ultra efficient 45nm quad or octal cores to be available by then. Hell I'll need the CPU to be efficient if I'm running Quad G80's

 

[drizzt81]

do we already need quad core cpus?

I do and some other people would like them too.

duo cores are so new...

Wow, intel marketing must really have hit a homerun with you. It's called a "dual core" CPU, not "duo core".

does winxp and win2k fully make use of duo cores?

yes, both of these operating systems are able to run with multiple CPUs. While I am not sure how scalable the WinXP or Win2K scheduler is, I would say that for n small, where n is the number of concurrently running CPU cores, the scalability matters little in terms of overall performance.

what about vista?

I would be surprised to see large improvements in this area, since I have only read about Vista's ability to offload TCP processing to a second CPU core, which was different from XP, but that is not likely to have a major effect for desktop performance.