Lets talk about Multi-core CPU's

xeenrecoil

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Jan 7, 2003
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Ok fellas lets get right down to it.

Lets talk about why someone might need a dual core CPU.

When I starting thinking about it I was like wtf I dont need no multicore CPU, but then again maybe I do.
My old P4c 3ghz still chews up and spits out anything I throw at it, so why would I need a Dual core CPU?
Well there are several reasons I can think of.

If you are like me and like to farm out your resources to lend an hand to the science community like for instance SETI, the ability to be able to do science almost twice as fast is valuable.
Some do 3D rendering, in their case a dual core CPU would reduce their rendering time by as much as 80%, thats gotta be worth something.
Some games are multi-threaded and capable of taking advantage of multi-CPU/Core systems, although at the time being these are few and far between.

So I had to ask myself is it really worth it for me to get a dual core CPU right now?

Well the answer is; not really.
I dont have a single game that can utilize more then one CPU/Core, and I am not that serious about SETI to warrant shelling out the $700 to build a new computer core right this moment.
So where does this leave me?
Right back where I started, happy with my P4c 3Ghz, waiting for an excuse to go upgrade, and bragging rights just isnt a good enough excuse haha

Lets hear your thoughts on why you think you might need a Dual core CPU. Some interesting and relevant ideas might bring up some points I havent thought about, and thats why we are here isnt it?
 

xeenrecoil

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sup wusy;

yeah man it has definately been awhile, I see you have been busy in my absence 29,000 posts woah, you are gonna be up there with crashman here pretty soon haha, thanks for the input thats good stuff.
p.s i just logged into IRC if you wanna chat.

late
 
errm, how about having more processing overhead available, specifically one core potentially free from all the little apps, OS, virus checkers, anti-spyware, bloatware etc. that infects most PC's. So that all these background tasks can carry on without slowing down your primary app.

A fresh install of windows is nice and 'snappy' yes? all those little apps / updates will slow you down. Ideally you wouldn't have them, but a second core is another way to get around them sucking up resource?
 

pete4r

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Well the answer is; not really.
I dont have a single game that can utilize more then one CPU/Core, and I am not that serious about SETI to warrant shelling out the $700 to build a new computer core right this moment.


Well my closest guess is that you do not have the following games:

1. Age of Empires 3 on Maximum settings (This game will use 99% CPU power on maximum settings with full AA for anything below A64 3200+)

2. Oblivion (It is ok when you are wondering around indoors killing rats at the begining of the game, by when u do step outside the dark tunnels, you will see the mercy of your single core processor, in a gamers word, your Pentium 4 3GHz will get OWNED!!!)

3. Battle for Middleearth II (Again on full settings to explorer the extremely beautiful detailed terran, models and buildings, but when a horder of 5 or more battalion of orcs or goblins or even Rohhirrims coming at you, You better hope that you have at least 2GB of RAM and a Dual-Core processor or a Single Core FX-57 or equvalent, because your Pentium 4 3GHz will again get OWNED!!! and it is gamers like yourself with Pentium 4 and 1GB or less RAM that lags everyone else in the RTS games)

Need i metion more amazing games that is currently out or coming soon.

Processor power is less of an issue in FPS games cause the job to render a respectable and playable frame rates are down to video cards as u do not encounter battles of more than 100 units from close distance.

i.e. Battlefield 2, a nice dual core will help u load the game slightly faster, but once ur in the game, u can hardly see more than 10 units together infront of ur gun sight.

Needless me metioning DVD Rip, MP3 conversions etc etc so u do the maths."!
 

pmr

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well, I don´t need it too. Although I have one with two cpus. I don´t give a crap if a render takes more half an hour than with a single core machine, as long the computer doesn´t freeze, I´m ok.

I've got the macs only because of software purposes( final cut, aperture, etc), and the pc because of some gaming and minor software testing, and even so, I´m very pleased with my overclocked p4.

Cheers.
 

desolationw

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sorry if i confused uz, nero would estimate 13hrs to burn, and would sit 'transcoding' for all but the last 10-15mins when it would actually burn
 
About 5-1/2 years ago, I switching over from a single cpu to a dual proc machine and while maybe not exactly dual core, it is certainly comparible...at that time it was a dual P3 machine, mainly just for kicks and giggles since I got the parts for cheap, but ever since then I've been hooked on the idea of SMP and now dual/multi-core. Admittedly, in the beginning I really didn't see squat by means of performance improvements, except maybe when I hosted multiple sessions of Starcraft and the like.

When I got bored with the P3 I built an AthlonMP (dual 2600's on a Tyan S2466N-4M) machine and that's about when I got into video editing and DVD authoring using Adobe products. For example, when running Premier on a single proc machine, it just chugged and chugged and mostly froze the machine. But with the the SMP machine, it ripped right through the rendering and encoding.

Encoding, decoding, file serving, rendering, and general purpose multitasking is a far smoother experience with the SMP machine. Gaming has seen improvements as well just due to the fact that I can set the affinity of one proc to run only the game with the other left to all other tasks and services. Dual proc/dual core combined with RAID 0 and multiple drives for the OS, content, and data balances the load across the procs and drives to give smooth performance while ripping a DVD, dl'ing from the newsgroups, writing code, running either SETI or Folding, and surfing the web all at the same time.

Now I'm running dual Opteron 250's on a Supermicro H8DCE that I put together last year, 4GB RAM, EVGA 7900GT KO, RAID0 for the OS, a 200GB scratch drive, and 3-320GB in RAID5 via a 3ware controller. Can't see myself going back to single proc machine...
 

1Tanker

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About 5-1/2 years ago, I switching over from a single cpu to a dual proc machine and while maybe not exactly dual core, it is certainly comparible...at that time it was a dual P3 machine, mainly just for kicks and giggles since I got the parts for cheap, but ever since then I've been hooked on the idea of SMP and now dual/multi-core. Admittedly, in the beginning I really didn't see squat by means of performance improvements, except maybe when I hosted multiple sessions of Starcraft and the like.

When I got bored with the P3 I built an AthlonMP (dual 2600's on a Tyan S2466N-4M) machine and that's about when I got into video editing and DVD authoring using Adobe products. For example, when running Premier on a single proc machine, it just chugged and chugged and mostly froze the machine. But with the the SMP machine, it ripped right through the rendering and encoding.

Encoding, decoding, file serving, rendering, and general purpose multitasking is a far smoother experience with the SMP machine. Gaming has seen improvements as well just due to the fact that I can set the affinity of one proc to run only the game with the other left to all other tasks and services. Dual proc/dual core combined with RAID 0 and multiple drives for the OS, content, and data balances the load across the procs and drives to give smooth performance while ripping a DVD, dl'ing from the newsgroups, writing code, running either SETI or Folding, and surfing the web all at the same time.

Now I'm running dual Opteron 250's on a Supermicro H8DCE that I put together last year, 4GB RAM, EVGA 7900GT KO, RAID0 for the OS, a 200GB scratch drive, and 3-320GB in RAID5 via a 3ware controller. Can't see myself going back to single proc machine...
Sounds like a kick*ss machine. Lotta money invested. :wink:
 

krazyIvan

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I think this time next year you will start to see more games and applications make use of Dual Core CPU with the release and inevitable acceptance of Vista. While XP was patched to work with dual core, Vista was built for it. And with Intel’s hot selling CD2 and the much reduced prices on CD2 and X2 the consumer base will have prodded game developers to start doing a good job of Hyper-thread programming by next summer. That also goes for finally seeing 64 bit acceptance.
 

rochin

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Well the answer is; not really.
I dont have a single game that can utilize more then one CPU/Core, and I am not that serious about SETI to warrant shelling out the $700 to build a new computer core right this moment.


Well my closest guess is that you do not have the following games:

1. Age of Empires 3 on Maximum settings (This game will use 99% CPU power on maximum settings with full AA for anything below A64 3200+)

2. Oblivion (It is ok when you are wondering around indoors killing rats at the begining of the game, by when u do step outside the dark tunnels, you will see the mercy of your single core processor, in a gamers word, your Pentium 4 3GHz will get OWNED!!!)

3. Battle for Middleearth II (Again on full settings to explorer the extremely beautiful detailed terran, models and buildings, but when a horder of 5 or more battalion of orcs or goblins or even Rohhirrims coming at you, You better hope that you have at least 2GB of RAM and a Dual-Core processor or a Single Core FX-57 or equvalent, because your Pentium 4 3GHz will again get OWNED!!! and it is gamers like yourself with Pentium 4 and 1GB or less RAM that lags everyone else in the RTS games)

Need i metion more amazing games that is currently out or coming soon.

Processor power is less of an issue in FPS games cause the job to render a respectable and playable frame rates are down to video cards as u do not encounter battles of more than 100 units from close distance.

i.e. Battlefield 2, a nice dual core will help u load the game slightly faster, but once ur in the game, u can hardly see more than 10 units together infront of ur gun sight.

Needless me metioning DVD Rip, MP3 conversions etc etc so u do the maths."!


Ok i dont know what settings you play Oblivion on but my P4 3.4 system is far from owned when i go outside. I play on high settings with my x850xt with bloom and 4x AA. I get on average of 40+ FPS. This is at 1024x768. The lowest FPS i have gotten with this setting is 19. Battle for Middle Earth 2 come on my system has no problems on high settings. My system is far from owned by games and its almost 3 years old. :roll:
 

pete4r

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Ok i dont know what settings you play Oblivion on but my P4 3.4 system is far from owned when i go outside. I play on high settings with my x850xt with bloom and 4x AA. I get on average of 40+ FPS. This is at 1024x768. The lowest FPS i have gotten with this setting is 19. Battle for Middle Earth 2 come on my system has no problems on high settings. My system is far from owned by games and its almost 3 years old. :roll:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=521&model2=565&chart=205

your R-X850XT has a average of 19FPS at 1024 x 768 with no AA but 8AF
the benchmark result above would have been using at least a FX or X2 or Pentium D or higher?

So you saying your Pentium 4 3.6GHz with X850XT get average 40FPS?

U saying THG VGA Benchmarkings are lying?!?! :?
 

rochin

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Feb 9, 2006
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Ok i dont know what settings you play Oblivion on but my P4 3.4 system is far from owned when i go outside. I play on high settings with my x850xt with bloom and 4x AA. I get on average of 40+ FPS. This is at 1024x768. The lowest FPS i have gotten with this setting is 19. Battle for Middle Earth 2 come on my system has no problems on high settings. My system is far from owned by games and its almost 3 years old. :roll:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=521&model2=565&chart=205

your R-X850XT has a average of 19FPS at 1024 x 768 with no AA but 8AF
the benchmark result above would have been using at least a FX or X2 or Pentium D or higher?

So you saying your Pentium 4 3.6GHz with X850XT get average 40FPS?

U saying THG VGA Benchmarkings are lying?!?! :?



I am saying that MY performance on MY system is way better than just a generic system with a x850xt. If i knew how to make a movie benchmark i would. I get 19fpt minimun. I get on average 40 fps yes. I do not have it maxed out i said i have high settings. And just cause a site says my card sucks does not mean it does.

Edit: And did you notice the 7900 in your link does worse than my card? lol i do not trust that benchmark :lol:
 

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