How Many CPU Cores Do You Need?

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great! the only thing it didn't clarify was that dual cores are not twice as fast as single-cores(many people think that a 2 ghz single core, and 4 ghz dual, and 8ghz quad...)
 
[citation][nom]apache_lives[/nom]yet again - no one uses a fresh install platform (windows) with nothing else running - [/citation]

Actually I do exactly that, as do many others - don't make such broad generalizations! :) It's quite obvious that for now and the foreseeable future a fast dual core CPU is the best option for the vast majority of computer users - for example, running an e8400, stock volts overclocked to 3.6 ghz! Try that with a quad core! :) Fast performance, low price and energy savings - we have a winner folks! In my opinion the best overall values right now are the e5200 and Kuma 2.7GHz, made by Intel and AMD, respectively. Both can be very nicely overclocked and will handle almost any task perfectly.
 
[citation][nom]payingattention[/nom]"Intel Core 2 Duo Q6600" isnt that a mistake? PAGE 3 SETUPGood catch![/citation]
Good catch!
 
[citation][nom]slhtonz[/nom]I second martindamp's question... what happens when you run iTunes, lame, antivirus, and winrar on 1-4 cores?But what I'm most interested in is what would happen when you move this to a Corei7. It seems to me that some of the apps that see a slowdown while moving to four cores are likely bumping into bandwidth and bus arbitration overheads, as the Q6600 is essentially two C2D's packaged on the same chip, sharing the FSB. The Corei7 eliminates this bottleneck, and I'd be willing to bet the performance decrease from 3->4 cores goes away as well. And when you play around with the i7, you can toy with Turbo and HyperThreading as well, but it'd be most interesting to directly compare the two architectures based on real cores.[/citation]

Same thing I was thinking. Perhaps the FSB traffic is throttling the performance.

Aside from that - I love the first page pic!
 
Everything is moving to dynamic loading of cores based on the total avaliable. Within 2 years, you'll see the advantages of quads.

I find it odd that two well known quad optimized games, LP:EC and GTA4 aren't sampled to see what their scaling is like though...
 
8 cores since that's the most that Blender can use currently. And with diminishing returns I'm not sure more would be necessary or useful.
 
At first you talked about the ending of the MHz race and entering the core race. This isn't an article geared to show advantages or disadvantages of either. It is simple a without MHz race more cores are better article.

At the 45nm node we could be enjoying a refined dual core running stock 5~6GHz. This would be a costly dual core as it would take up about the same room as current quads. To this point your article needed a 4GHz dual to simulate a return to the MHz race. Granted it may not win any of the quad optimized benchmarks but be near while totally destroying all other duals. Even the quads would go down under games and less optimized programs.

CPU makers are currently producing 6 core server CPU's for sale late this summer. These 6 core models will make their way to PC's by Q4. Due to some of the software tests here being used mostly on server I see little need for 6 cores PC versions. More cores the more overhead so shouldn't the CPU be designed as dual cores that can transition to a quad at lower nm's? Refined back to a dual core to start the process over again.

Using this model till most all software be made quad core optimized. The first quad showed up in 2006 and now its 2009 and the average PC user has seen little performance increase. Software holding back the core race is the problem which we seen both Intel and AMB harping on last year. They harp but continue the core race. Maybe its time for VIA to step up with a massive dual to lay waste to these giants. Massive being their normal crap but focused on making full use of the current nm for a dual core.
 
I think too many people want to hear, you have to buy a quad core, because they got one.

I'm sorry, but the average Joe should buy a dual core. He has no use for more than 2 cores at all.

For gamers it's different. They can either go dual or triple, with triple giving the best advantage for today's games.

Are you into video editing and other heavy cpu programs that require a lot of cores, yes, a quad core probably i7 is best for you.

Next year? Who knows. I can't tell you what we will see next year, but this year I don't really see a lot of changes in software except for win7.

If you can get a faster dual core or triple core, you will get better performance than going for a slower quad core in games and desktop application not optimized for 4 cores. You have to know what you use it for.

I'm not saying a quad is useless, just think that a dual and triple give more bang for the buck, especially for people who are on a budget.
 
Three thoughts to ponder.
One: The small performance increase from 3 to 4 cores in games is most likely due to them leaving one core open to the OS or maybe even the OS itself locking user space threads out of the fourth core. I'm thinking it would be the first one though seeing as the benchmarks see a performance increase that the games don't.
Two: The memory bandwidth peaking at 3 cores mostly happens because no matter what, 1 core will always have a L2 cache to itself. I'm interested in seeing this same test on an i7 or Phenom (Proper Quad Cores) to see if the mysterious peak disappears and to see the benefits of a integrated memory controller with the multiple cores.
Three: Dual cores are a must have for anything these days. Sitting at the desktop more cores are of no use, but as soon as any program (multithreaded or not) maxes out one core you can see significant performance and usability increases from more that one core. Thread switching kills single cores and is easily noticed if you have anything intensive running and try to do anything in another application. For gaming if for no other reason dual cores make it easier to play because you don't have to shutdown anything that isn't supporting hardware to get good performance.
 
This is a great article. and it is great to see that some applications do use all the cores efficiently.
I run a AMD 720 with Ubutnu 8.10 the one thing I love about my 3 core systems is if an application only using 1 or 2 core (as some do), I still have head room to run other application. with more cores it just means I can do more things at the same time.... :)
 
he does have a valid point tho we allways have somthing running in the background.
 
should have used a phenom 2 for testing instead. the c2qs are not native quad cores, they are native dual cores pressed together... thus the results would be dual core biased.
 
Could it be so that in tested games there are two threats running and one core takes care of backround windows. So when there are two cores they can be used to run both of those two threats and when one more core is added, it can take care of that "minor" oparating system usage and leave those two completely to run the game. This would explain why there is a big step from one core to two and so small from two to three cores.
 
[citation][nom]WheelsOfConfusion[/nom]Very informative! I keep seeing comments regarding which applications or games are good for multi-core versus single etc, it's good to have some hard data. And that's a neat trick for creating a standardized platform for the tests, eliminating the architectural differences between single and various multi-core processors. Since I see a lot of Tom's articles considering power efficiency and read a lot of comments asking for underclock results, it would have been nice to throw some data about power usage with each configuration. Does disabling a core (or three) significantly reduce power consumption? What about temps?[/citation]
it's the exact question i have too please let us know I'm very interested too and I bet many too
 
I recently went from single core to dual core to quad core and still have all three running in my home office. 3ghz single 2.4 ghz dual 2.6 ghz quad. I definitely noticed the jump from single to dual core. The jump from dual to quad was much less noticeable. That basically matches your results. I pretty much just use office surf, the web, and play games.

Since I got the quad core, in a few games like Civ 4 and the Total War series I can keep playing while AVG runs a scan and not really notice its running. In Never Winter Nights Storm of Kahir disk usage gets so slow I cannot play until I turn off the AVG. For Crysis and Far Cry 2 I probably get a 3 or 4 more FPS but it doesn't make a difference really I was hoping my minimum frames might increase but it still gets choppy occasionally. I just got my aftermarket cooler from new egg so I can bump the speed a little more. I'm due for a new video card but was hoping to wait for dx 11 parts.
 
To "beg the question" does NOT mean to "raise the question". It is something totally different. See, for example, http://begthequestion.info/

Please, Tom's journos and especially (!!) EDITORS (!!), get it right.


Arbie
 
nice write up...but it failed to cover in more detail weather or not those seeking maximum performace and that have a quad core and play only games should disabled the 4th care to prevent the loss in performance described in the game benchmarks.

and the possibility that games work better with 3 cores than 4 because of programming.
 
Although there is a clear theoretical advantage to having tri and quad core processors in games within these benchmarks, I wonder if that advantage totally disappears once the graphics settings are set to "gaming" rather the "cpu benchmarking settings." I suspect that the processor is really just a potential bottleneck, but in most real world gaming environments, the GPU bottleneck is reached first.

Still, great article.
I know that this would be hard to do, but could we get a good multitasking benchmark? One of the things I've often suspected is that I get deteriorating performance when I have apps open and go into a game. Might things be nicer if I had three or four cores?

 
[citation][nom]slhtonz[/nom]I second martindamp's question... what happens when you run iTunes, lame, antivirus, and winrar on 1-4 cores?But what I'm most interested in is what would happen when you move this to a Corei7. It seems to me that some of the apps that see a slowdown while moving to four cores are likely bumping into bandwidth and bus arbitration overheads, as the Q6600 is essentially two C2D's packaged on the same chip, sharing the FSB. The Corei7 eliminates this bottleneck, and I'd be willing to bet the performance decrease from 3->4 cores goes away as well. And when you play around with the i7, you can toy with Turbo and HyperThreading as well, but it'd be most interesting to directly compare the two architectures based on real cores.[/citation]


that's an interesting point and it should be looked at.
the implication being that if the 4th core is bottlenecked in the Core 2 architechture then it's pointless to go Quad now for someone like me who was probably going to do it next year
 
I use 2 machines every day, one is a 3.8GHz dual the other is a 3.4GHz quad. I built them that way because of the way that I use them. I noticed on my old single core that if I was downloading from the net, copying folders, or running a virus scan, that the computer was not usable for anything else. I figured I want one core for the window I'm using, one core for the OS to use for its overhead stuff, and one core for the download/copy/virusscan I frequently have running in the background. So I built a quad for that use. When I'm in my office using the dual core, I much less frequently have demanding tasks running in the background. I think there is still a case to be made today for when a fast dualcore is all you need, probably will change in the future.

This is an important thing to keep in mind- I always have a lot of apps running and a lot of windows open, but usually only the foreground window is actually doing anything. I don't need multiple cores for that.

AFAIK the netbooks are still single core. I have considered buying one but now I'm thinking I should get a small laptop with dualcore instead just because I'd hate to be constrained to a single core anymore.

Followups to this article: First compare the equivalent dual and quad core processors. For the cost of the quad core, you could get a dual core that will probably run at least 15% faster clock speed. So for the single and dual core tests, run at the faster clock speed.
Second run the benchmarks with 2, 3 and 4 cores but have a background window running a continuous virus scan to see how the concurrent process slows down the benchmarks.
 
I'm willing to know, how does multi-threading scales up when using Windows 7?? I'm on RC (7100) now and I saw a lot of improvement over the 7000 version on my HP TX1000 and on my Core2Duo desktop (both x64).
 
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