When will core 2 quads be useful?

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thenewrick

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I currently have the E6750 and I am very happy with it. My idea was to one day upgrade to the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz 12MB L2 Cache. Do you think that the extra cores will actually be useful in real world applications soon, or will the new processors in the future have new features that make the core 2 quad totally worth skipping? It is my current understanding that the core 2 quads currently add very very little benefit over the dual cores.
 
Upgrade your video card. Unless you'd like to mention specific apps you're unhappy with, quad won't matter for now.
 
If you have multi-threaded apps, the quad is a nice upgrade. Also, the extra cache compared to the E6750 might play into the speed of certain things. Will you ever notice the difference? Probably not. It really depends on what you do with it.
 
Many of the newest games such at Red Faction Guerrilla on PC benefits from multi core CPUs.
If you like to game multi core cpu processing is 1 reason to upgrade.
 
video card.
people say that quad cores make no difference in games. many people...
 
It sounds like we're all in agreement about quad cores. I wonder what it'll take for me to ditch my Conroe? Maybe a Westmere in a couple years, when they are cheap.
 
The original post never mentioned gaming and the section of the forums this was posted in doesn't imply gaming so why does everyone jump to graphics card? There are plenty of real world applications that can use a quad core processor but they are limited. Do you do any video encoding, distributed computing or do you just like to be able to run everything at once? If not then your Conroe should do fine for a while.

Also, one of the main new features of Westmere is integrated graphics so if you are only interested in gaming then it doesn't add much.
 
I think that for the majority of people, a dual core will suffice just fine.
 
OP, what apps do you use/intend to use?
Do you want to play games, if so what res, quality and type of games do you want to play?
 
Yeah OP, please tell us exactly what you are doing with your PC. Little benefit over dual cores in what exactly?
 
Using both AMD X2 550 and X4 955 at the same clock speed, I always feel that the quad core is snappier even it is just a normal day to day use.
 
Windows 7, and some drivers can take advantage of multithreads way better then older OSs in the Windows family.
 
jimbowdang said:
The original post never mentioned gaming and the section of the forums this was posted in doesn't imply gaming so why does everyone jump to graphics card?
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Why do you think people jump into forums like this? It's almost always about gaming. Else this thread's 2nd post could have just said "No" and the thread could be closed right then and there.

Do you do any video encoding, distributed computing or do you just like to be able to run everything at once?
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Most people never even consider encoding. Like it doesn't exist for gamers, it's never a concern when buying a processor. One person does it so thousands can receive it and not have to compress their copy. Not all the apps are guaranteed to use all cores anyways. At least the free ones with many options. I do encoding jobs that take days on an E4500, but that's what having more than one computer is for.
 
Auzner said:
Why do you think people jump into forums like this? It's almost always about gaming. Else this thread's 2nd post could have just said "No" and the thread could be closed right then and there.
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There are allot of people on this forum that do ALLOT more than "just" gaming, and the reasons are all across the spectrum....This is the [H]ard forums after all.


Most people never even consider encoding. Like it doesn't exist for gamers, it's never a concern when buying a processor. One person does it so thousands can receive it and not have to compress their copy. Not all the apps are guaranteed to use all cores anyways. At least the free ones with many options. I do encoding jobs that take days on an E4500, but that's what having more than one computer is for.
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I think the majority of people here have encoded a video once or twice, I also know a hell of allot of gamers and most tend to do encoding, whether it be home videos, TV caps or video caps of them playing their favorite game. There are also allot of other reasons such as CAD work, photo manipulation, encryption and yes, even gaming is coming into and will continue to come into its own in gaming.

Making an assumption about a persons needs and requirements off the bat (though maybe not wrong) very often leads to bad and/or confusing advice.
 
yeeesh.



its a really nice cpu that you can get at a good price in certain places, but i dont think you will see much of a bump.
 
I don't need to be scolded anymore for posting "upgrade your video card" by any of you. Get off my back. If my advice was so confusing, where is the follow up question stating that?

When someone actually thinks of upgrading for the sake of their CAD or encoding work, they often always point that out. Because they don't want people telling them to buy the most expensive thing that only benefits games.

Because I don't own a quad core and told someone it's not worth it, that doesn't mean the performance gains are beyond my comprehension. I don't need new people jumping into the thread to tell me all my generalizations are wrong and inappropriate because they can disprove me with their own generalizations.

And what is your point that "the majority here have encoded a video once or twice?" You make it sound like in order to do any type of video processing you HAVE to have quad cores. I'm talking about people who encode on a regular basis, not someone who does it once and goes "oh wow look at the quads go, I totally just made that upgrade worth it with this single job."

Now to complete the point of the thread, core 2 quads ARE useful right NOW, which is why they exist in the first place. Those who actually use professional software utilize it pretty well. Everyone else like us forum dwellers who will encode one video, or touch up a single photo someday, quad core on 775 really doesn't make the cost beneficial to productivity. I'm pretty sure I've logged more Photoshop hours and encoded more videos than anyone and their acquaintances in this thread combined. I do none of it for a pay check, so nothing is killing me to demand a quad core upgrade. My point is anyone can get by without it. I don't see the point in getting a quadcore with hopeful wishes that some day you may use it to encode. Especially when someone already has an E6/7/8 installed.
 
^^^ I don't think anyone jumped down your throat. Most of that was just throwing out a different opinion. Your opinion is appreciated, but it is not the only one.

The extra $150 or so put into a graphics card will probably be a best upgrade for games. If the OP is doing anything else, the quad is useful. If nothing else, Windows will be snappier as someone else mentioned above. Using multiple applications at the same time? Seems reasonable. Encoding isn't just something for the elite. Just copying CD's to a mobile format using iTunes or some other mp3 encoder is a normal activity.
 
Sorry for the late reply. I game in moderation, no eyefinity bullshit. So my video card is already far too powerful for WoW, and LoL, and Diablo 3/Starcraft 2, L4D2, and any other foreseeable game. My common usage would be to have a game running and tabbed, Firefox running with a few windows including facebook with chats open, bit torrents running often. I also burn DVDs sometimes, which seems to use some decoding and encoding processes. I think everyone mostly agrees with me in that for my usage there is no current upgrade of which I could see a performance difference. The only thing I can think of that would really speed up multi-prog computing would be upgrading from 4 gigs of DDR800 to 8 gigs of DDR1066. My underlying point is that new technology is bunk. Mainstream SSDs are the only technology that I've seen lately that has been impressive. I'm now more excited about USB 3.0 and Sata 3 than GPUs and CPUs.
 
thenewrick said:
Sorry for the late reply. I game in moderation, no eyefinity bullshit. So my video card is already far too powerful for WoW, and LoL, and Diablo 3/Starcraft 2, L4D2, and any other foreseeable game. My common usage would be to have a game running and tabbed, Firefox running with a few windows including facebook with chats open, bit torrents running often. I also burn DVDs sometimes, which seems to use some decoding and encoding processes. I think everyone mostly agrees with me in that for my usage there is no current upgrade of which I could see a performance difference. The only thing I can think of that would really speed up multi-prog computing would be upgrading from 4 gigs of DDR800 to 8 gigs of DDR1066. My underlying point is that new technology is bunk. Mainstream SSDs are the only technology that I've seen lately that has been impressive. I'm now more excited about USB 3.0 and Sata 3 than GPUs and CPUs.
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I don't know...you might see a little boost with a quad core if you're doing all that at the same time, especially with a multi-threaded game.
 
The OS experience seems faster with a quad core over a dual even if games don't IMO.
 
Windows 7 can take advantege of multiple cores better. I know for a fact ATi drivers take advantage of this, I'm not too sure about nVidia, as I havn't done any gaming in a while.
 
They already are plenty useful, and not just for the usual stuff like compiling, encoding, modeling, CAD, and content creation either (which see insane gains with a quad vs. a dual). Games see good gains now in many cases, even. I really hate to quote my own posts on this again, but they really fit the topic perfectly so I'll do it:


GoldenTiger said:
Warhammer Online is threaded for two cores and a bit on a third, per the devs back in beta. Virtually any game that uses dual-core though should see gains as background processes such as AV, Windows (lol), and mp3 players would be offloaded to the extra cores. More and more apps/games are becoming multithreaded. This is the same argument back when everyone claimed dual cores were useless (they weren't at the time, but they still claimed it) as they do quads now. I've argued this better in the past, so I'm going to just quote a couple of previous posts:
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GoldenTiger said:
I moved from a Q6600 @ 3.2ghz to an i7 920 @ 3.7ghz w/ HT, and it is a huge difference for my CPU-bound games such as WAR, Company of Heroes, and World in Conflict... I have tried the same games on 3.8ghz dual-core CPU's and found them to run worse than the Q6600 did. Some games ARE CPU-bound even with "just" 1 overclocked GTX 280 like I have...
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GoldenTiger said:
I can attest to MASSIVE gains going from a Q6600 @ 3.2, to an i7 920 @ 3.7 (I haven't gotten to try pushing for more yet, but it is prime-stable overnight), on my system, with a single GTX 280. Games like Warhammer Online saw literally doubling or more of framerates during large fortress sieges (which I did a lot of both before and after), especially on the minimums according to FRAPS often being nearly tripled most sieges. The capital city, Altdorf, runs at least 80% faster, sometimes double, what it did before at all times no matter how crowded it is now.

Call of Duty 4 has seen good gains on my minimum framerate, as has Unreal Tournament 3. I run at 2560x1600 on a Dell 3007WFP-HC monitor... the i7 just kicks ass, and I can imagine the difference between a dual and an i7 especially being as big as the OP is claiming.

Many games nowadays are multithreaded and benefit even if not explicitly triple/quad+ threaded because the OS and other apps run on other cores, let alone the IPC increases etc. It's the same old argument of single vs. dual core previously where I always argued duals helped a lot (which the testing showed they did) but the common thought was to use a high-speed single-core vs. a nearly-as-fast-each-core dual.

I know of a lot of games that make use of multiple threads (Warhammer Online is triple-threaded, by the way, though most of the third-core threading is the sound subsystem per the devs). RTS games especially benefit, flight sims do a lot, RPG's... ditto. Many FPS's even benefit as I can attest to and the benches show on various sites... the most important metric is the minimum framerate.

This, of course, is completely ignoring the desktop productivity benefits it provides... even a person who "just games" will see great benefits.

Differences between my old setup and new mainly are: Q6600 @ 3.2 -----> i7 @ 3.7, 680i -----> X58, 8GB DDR2 @ 800 5-5-5 -----> 6GB DDR3 @ 1560 8-8-8 1T. The rest is identical... I did just pop in an SSD for my OS tonight but the testing I did was prior to that.
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Finally, back around this time in 2007...
GoldenTiger said:
Many tried to advocate quad-cores for quite awhile but were drowned out by people having no clue what they were talking about. MANY games make use of quad-cores today, as was said months ago would be the case. Crysis, UT3, HL2 engine (Ep2, others soon), Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes, World in Conflict, Bioshock, Oblivion (for awhile), multiple copies of any MMO, etc. etc. etc. There will be a bottleneck, but it shouldn't be severe over a well-clocked dual-core. In your position, and I gather you are trying to avoid spending the money, I'd stay with what I had (plus the 8800GT :) ). You're going to see people still claiming all new buyers should go dual-core even today, which is a sad thing that people are spouting without educating themselves first, as though it were gospel. This is just for games... for anything else such as encoding/rendering/audio-work/general desktop use/etc., the quad core just demolishes the dual-core.
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GoldenTiger said:
Basically, in dual-threaded apps, the Q6600 will perform similarly, [...to the E6850...] most games are now, and are becoming, multi-threaded and will thus perform FAR better on the quad-cores from here on out. I run 1680x1050 personally.
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I'm talking about Conroe duel core to Yorkfield quadcore upgrades, not previous gen core 2 quads, or next gen icore cpus.
 
thenewrick said:
Sorry for the late reply. I game in moderation, no eyefinity bullshit. So my video card is already far too powerful for WoW, and LoL, and Diablo 3/Starcraft 2, L4D2, and any other foreseeable game. My common usage would be to have a game running and tabbed, Firefox running with a few windows including facebook with chats open, bit torrents running often. I also burn DVDs sometimes, which seems to use some decoding and encoding processes. I think everyone mostly agrees with me in that for my usage there is no current upgrade of which I could see a performance difference. The only thing I can think of that would really speed up multi-prog computing would be upgrading from 4 gigs of DDR800 to 8 gigs of DDR1066. My underlying point is that new technology is bunk. Mainstream SSDs are the only technology that I've seen lately that has been impressive. I'm now more excited about USB 3.0 and Sata 3 than GPUs and CPUs.
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What reolutions do you run WoW at? Even with my HD4850 and my current CPU in my sig, at some places I am CPU bound and in some places I am GPU bound.

You video card might very well be being held back by your CPU.
 
Hey, I think my Conroe runs most things a little faster with the 1333 FSB, than the Q6600. I run at smaller non-wide screen resolutions but I turn up AA and normal settings. I could see how if I were running games at high resolutions than I may see a slow down with my setup. I guess I don't have the same problems as normal wide-screen high-res users. I basically don't have any problems running anything, is why I wonder why should I ever upgrade? I'm looking years down the line and still not seeing anything very upgrade worthy? What do you guys think, will USB 3, SATA 3, or the GPU stuff being on the cpu of the next gen Intel stuff become the hot new thing?
 
I went from a Core 2 Duo E6600 to a Core 2 Quad Q6600 back when the Q's were new ;)... it was just as big a boost.
 
I went from a c2d to a quad and things seem little faster booting up and such. one draw back is quads put out more heat. so you need to consider other factors too. purchasing an aftermarket heatsink (cause stocks suck) case air flow etc etc. I know newer quads are a bit cooler but still usually more core = more heat.
 
I think the faster clock speed and faster FSB is why the Conroes are faster than the q6600s.
 
thenewrick said:
I think the faster clock speed and faster FSB is why the Conroes are faster than the q6600s.
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Most Conroes are FSB = 1066mhz (in fact the E6750/E6850 are the only 1333mhz), Kentsfield Q6600 FSB = 1066mhz

Wolfdale FSB = 1333mhz

Honestly, my impression from reading this thread is you're looking for someone to pat you on the back for sticking with your E6750 chip. If you want to keep it, go for it. If you plan on keeping your computer for the next year or two, the quad is going to help it be more relevant near the end of its lifecycle.
 
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I was hoping someone could give me compelling evidence to consider going quad core. I'm upgrading to Win7 soon, and thought maybe it was time to relook at the quad core idea. I looked into the future of Intel, and their upcoming stuff didn't look that interesting. In fact i think Intel is making their next line of cpus mostly dual core. Oh, and I've been wanting to get your Q9550. My idea is to wait until it is discontinued, and hopefully find one on EBAY for 150. I feel like the faster clock speed, and triple the L2 cache would help, and oh yea the quad core part.
 
I dont understand this thread.
You told us that everything runs just fine and anything in the future you are likely to use will run just fine but want to know how to improve on it.
It seems you dont need to upgrade.
 
I <3 my Q9550...my system feels significantly faster vs. the E8400 I switched from.
 
thenewrick said:
I was hoping someone could give me compelling evidence to consider going quad core. I'm upgrading to Win7 soon, and thought maybe it was time to relook at the quad core idea. I looked into the future of Intel, and their upcoming stuff didn't look that interesting. In fact i think Intel is making their next line of cpus mostly dual core. Oh, and I've been wanting to get your Q9550. My idea is to wait until it is discontinued, and hopefully find one on EBAY for 150. I feel like the faster clock speed, and triple the L2 cache would help, and oh yea the quad core part.
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The fact of the matter is that whether or not a quad core will provide a benefit depends entirely on you. If your current CPU isn't limiting anything you do, then there's no reason for you to upgrade to a quad. However, there are many people who do things like video editing and encoding, running virtual machines, heavy multitasking, and other such things, for whom a quad-core CPU would be very beneficial. If you don't fit that description, then you should stick with what you've got until you do find that it isn't fast enough for your needs.
 
thenewrick said:
I was hoping someone could give me compelling evidence to consider going quad core. I'm upgrading to Win7 soon, and thought maybe it was time to relook at the quad core idea. I looked into the future of Intel, and their upcoming stuff didn't look that interesting. In fact i think Intel is making their next line of cpus mostly dual core. Oh, and I've been wanting to get your Q9550. My idea is to wait until it is discontinued, and hopefully find one on EBAY for 150. I feel like the faster clock speed, and triple the L2 cache would help, and oh yea the quad core part.
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Fair enough...I think a quad core is useful now. I can "feel" a difference in Windows. Some describe it as "snapiness." It just seems like everything opens very smoothly and there is no OS lag. I think it's a worthwhile upgrade since you can have a Q9550 for $150-170 NOW if you shop around or look in the FS/FT section. I got one from vanilla_guerilla for $170 shipped NIB and it's working great (he has more). Plus, you can still sell your CPU for $70-80 (or more), so you're not putting a lot of money into the upgrade.

I agree that on some level the new stuff isn't all that appealing. I like the idea of an i7 setup, but I already had most of the components so dropping in a Q9550 seemed like a good idea. OC it, and I get 85-90% of the performance of an i7 for 20-25% of the cost of upgrading all the components.
 
It all depends on your uses. As I am a photography student, I work in large RAW, PSD and TIFF files. My Q9450 running photoshop flies through these files. A dual core would also work but it would be much slower. If you are just a casual user, get a dual core. You do not need the power of a quad core.
 
What do you guys think about the Q9550S. Slightly less power consumption, less heat. Is this the final 775 socket CPU?
 
thenewrick said:
What do you guys think about the Q9550S. Slightly less power consumption, less heat. Is this the final 775 socket CPU?
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It's not the last LGA775 CPU. And there really isn't much of a difference between it and a standard Q9550. In fact, most newer Q9550s can be undervolted to the same level as the S chips, so you can get the same power savings for a much lower price.
 
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