Quad Core - Uses?

[cadder]

Newer versions of Autocad make use of multiple cores.

There are some features in autocad that supposedly will utilize more than one core (regens). But first, this part of autocad is only peformed occasionally, typically only when entering a drawing file. Second, I have tested this in our office with single core, dual core and quad core machines. The fastest machine we have right now is my new dual core machine, roughly twice as fast as our new quad core machine. Compared to my old single core machine, its performance in autocad is roughly the same ratio as its performance in superpi. There is a switch in autocad that will tell it to use only one core. I've played with this switch timing it either way and have not seen any difference in the times. Maybe this is not THE definitive answer, but we can find no evidence that there is any benefit to a quadcore.

To prove I'm not a dual core fanboy, my new home computer is a Q9400. I paid $180 for the Q9400 at microcenter, roughly the same price as an E8500. I wanted the E8500 for autocad at work, but felt like a Q9400 might suit me better at home.

 

[Zorg]

Plus i think a dual 4ghz cpu would wipe the floor with a 2.66 quad.

So your comparing an OCed dual to a stock quad? Do you think that is a sound practice which will give a proper perspective? Of course not, it's ridiculous. I thought I was in an AMD/Intel thread. :lol:

Try comparing an OCed dual to an OCed quad.

An everyday task, AVG virus scan set to fast. It runs all 4 cores on a Q6600 @ a mild 3.2G with a Raptor quite hard. It bounces, but it gets to 100% at times and mostly runs high. The dual would get slammed, the quad crushes your dual. :lol:

Duals are the past, it's over.

If you are getting a machine for the next few years then get the quad, you will be glad you did.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Cadder - Interesting comments. Now I'm wondering what kind of pc configuration the design engineers have and what kind of work they are doing.

 

[gamerk316]

sorry people were saying a highly overclocked p4 would be fine 2 years ago? :lol: :lol: :lol: yeah right.

Even when I joined the forum at the start of last year, there was still the highly clocked P4 argument going around for the final time. Everything is moving toward full dynamic threading (adjusting automatically to the number of CPU/Cores). I see no reason for any PC to be built with less then 4 cores at this point, especially considering the almost noexistant price diffrence between 2 and 4 cores now.

 

[cadder]

Plus i think a dual 4ghz cpu would wipe the floor with a 2.66 quad.

This is not really a fair comparison though, in that you're comparing one overclocked cpu with another that isn't overclocked.
Theoretically a dual core at 4ghz would be about equal to a quad at 2ghz, because the os is handling the multitasking anyway.

I bought an E8500 to run apps that I thought were single-threaded, and overclocked it to a level that I thought would increase performance but still run cool and be reliable. I selected 3.8GHz as my target, achieved that target, and stopped right there without experimenting further. Later on I bought a Q9400 for home use. This cpu has a relatively low multiplier for overclocking but I still got it to about 3.8GHz pretty easily. I actually paid less for the Q9400 than I paid for the E8500, and got almost the same clock speed. So in this case there would be no comparison.

A few months earlier it would have been different, the Q6600 would have been the cpu with similar price to the E8500. Some people OC those to good levels, but from what I read you can't count on it. Maybe you can only count on 3.2 or 3.4 from any random Q6600. But then maybe you could go to 4 or better with any random E8500. So a more fair comparison would be a 3.2 or 3.4 quad vs. a 3.8 or 4.0 dual. I can guarantee you that the winner of that contest will depend entirely on what you want to use the machine for, what programs you are running.

In my case the only way I've tested my quad was to run a full AVG scan in the background while running other apps in the foreground. The only way I could detect anything happening in the background was that when I opened Windows Explorer the folder listing took a little longer to come up. I'm thinking this probably isn't a very good test of dual vs. quad. I'll have to try this on my dual core machine at work.

Wondering about future apps is basically betting on the future. We don't know what or how many apps will be making use of more than one core, or when they will be available, but we have a good idea now what our OS's will be for the next few years. It could be that these apps won't happen for years, and all of us will be on another generation of cpu's by then. But there are other people running apps right now that they know will benefit from more than one core. Each user should evaluate their own needs and make their own choice, even if it is somewhat of a guess. I did that, bought one dual and one quad, and it seems to be working out for me.

 

[Zorg]

The only way I could detect anything happening in the background was that when I opened Windows Explorer the folder listing took a little longer to come up. I'm thinking this probably isn't a very good test of dual vs. quad. I'll have to try this on my dual core machine at work.

Your right it isn't, unless you are scanning a different drive. The drive is busy scanning and has to stop or slow to load your app. The bottleneck is the drive access.

I would be interested about the CPU load in Task Manager while running an AVG full scan at the fast scan setting. Give it a little time to get into the scan a ways.

 

[werxen]

Even when I joined the forum at the start of last year, there was still the highly clocked P4 argument going around for the final time. Everything is moving toward full dynamic threading (adjusting automatically to the number of CPU/Cores). I see no reason for any PC to be built with less then 4 cores at this point, especially considering the almost noexistant price diffrence between 2 and 4 cores now.

theres no price diff between a 2.5 gig dual and an i7?

edit: and just because people were saying an overclocked p4 is still good for high end things such as gaming does not make it a good argument. there is a huge difference between a p4 vs. E8500 vs. Q6600.

 

[Coilz]

Is there any tests of GTA 4(or 5, can't remember) running on Quad Core versus Dual Core? Myself am mostly interesting in gaming and I'm interested in wether or not a low easily OC'ed Quad CPU would be worth it over my current dual core.

 

[werxen]

^ you do not need tests, trust me the quad rapes the duals in GTA4 but the game runs so crappy as it is. it really could have been run decently on a dual if rockstar had programmed the stupid game for PC first then ported it to pc instead of the other way around.... rockstar really messed up yo.