Who Says You Need Four Cores?

[Harlech]

I have to agree with the a lot of the other posters.... this review was rubbish, and I feel shows the general decline of Tom's over the last year and a half. I have to spend most of my day one the phone, and as a result, don't have the chance to ferret out research. I used to be able to hit Tom's in the afternoon, catch up on the news, and sort of stay on top of things. Now, Tom's is the least visited site on my list.

This review was all over the place.... sort of like Tom's now. If I want car reviews and news, I will go to a car website. if I want cell phone news, hey... guess what? I'll go to a cell phone news wesbite. (I can -almost- forgive the cell phone news because of it's close link with technology)

Too much effort is spent on glitz and glitter and not enough on substance... and now, apparently, they will let anyone write an article.

 

[Harlech]

[citation][nom]marco151polo[/nom]Why get a Ferrari if all you need to do is drive two miles to and from school, every day?[/citation]

Um... because I want one?

I think the point was missed that it was the REVIEWER who had made the decesion to upgrade, so he felt the desire. What came out of that review IMO is laughable.

Marco, I have to agree with your general premise tho. A lot of money is spent on upgrades when it isn't warranted. That being said, as soon as a user percieves a need to upgrade, it is warranted. The real difference? Is the consumer informed.

 

[nanofear]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/dual-quad,1720-20.html

 

[GameTekHik]

As one that has an older PC (Athlon XP 2000+, A7V333, ATI 9550Pro), it still is snappy for all I do. It may not play the latest and greatest game, but then I've not really played newer games since EVE Online came out. It loads everything very fast (RAID0 ATA133 HDD). Sure it doesn't have XP or Vista, but I'm not interested in running those on this system because I know they will bog it down. I'll only upgrade the OS when I'm finally forced to, which means that I'll procure a new PC at that time as well.

So when does Win2k loose support? 2010? Time to start saving. And when I upgrade within a couple of years, at this time I'm not looking for the Nehalem, but rather one of the current generation that is available now. A $500 build will likely be all I really need anymore for a quad display - however, want is another story...

 

[apache_lives]

[citation][nom]Milleman[/nom]Isn't the P4 rather power consuming? A toaster owen...!That's my own reason why I never bought a P4.[/citation]

Northwood's were tops in there day, the B and C class smashing the AMDs everywhere and without heat/power issues, you seem to be new, or forget things.

GameTekHik when your mainboard dies your forced to get a new one, and why bother with obsolete hardware when you can get newer components for a few bucks more?

XP was "heavy" when it first came out and is still the same today, as is Vista - there equally as heavy as your hardware is obsolete rubbish - there designed for TODAYS hardware not yesterdays, its like me saying my 486 starts windows 3.1 faster then your bloated Windows 2000.

 

[americanbrian]

I can't believe this.

The comments from the UK site aren't here. They used to be. And the editor in question only answers the american comments. I am american, but live in the UK.

please see my comments from the UK board.

"I don't like the poor comparison even though its noted.

Why bother running all the benchmarks only to then say that the chipset tested is irrelevant and to use the 780G.

The main reason for me to use a quad core is so that I can play a game, pause it, start watching a video with my wife, while downloading some awsome anime fansubs at break-neck speed, as well as decompressing some old archives all at once with ZERO slow-down in any application.

seamless multi-tasking is the real benefit that is missed by choosing dual. As also mentioned if you are transcoding video to different formats to burn DVD, BD's and CD's in different resolutions for distribution to different clients/dept's etc. or generally actually USING a computer, not playing with one. Quad makes a whole lot of sense.

Also, why not opt for the old phenom X3 for the sake of this review. its a happy medium. "

comment 2:

"Talk about a guilty editor. No wonder this article is rubbish. It is a real shame to know that author has access to literally 10's of THOUSANDS of pounds/dollars/euros worth of bleeding edge computer gear, but chooses to use a PENTIUM 4. I mean FFS. why is this guy employed at a technical reviewing site when he self confessed taht he doesn't really "GET" whats so special about blazingly fast computers.

Fire this chump."

 

[oblivionlord]

At this point I don't think the author cares about anything further that we have to say.

It's quite clear since he is just being silent about the majority of negative comments.

 

[pocketdrummer]

Everyone needs to take into account that there are some who greatly benefit from multiple cores in a way that DOES scale well. For instance, I am an Audio Engineer, and though I can run 40+ audio tracks with ease, this track count is severely reduced depending on how many MIDI instruments I am running (and their voices etc...).

The software I run was designed to take advantage of multiple cores. As such, a quad-core system is definitely worth it for me.

 

[Guest]

Yeah why didn't you use the 780g? 780G motherboards are about 15-20 dollars more but outperform the 740g by miles.

 

[Ahumado]

I read the comments and it is very clear that these children don't like reading someones opinion if it isn't theirs. Rather than rebut or attempt a worthwhile discussion they pull out the put down, you're an idiot, why bother routine. It's a shame.

Congrats on putting some light on an important issue, which is how we are sold stuff that we don't need but we think we have to have and for all the wrong reasons.

Grow up kids and try to think for yourself and save the attitude.

Ahumado

 

[apache_lives]

Ahumado you just wrote your own opinion, perhaps you should follow your own advice.

What were all pissed at is the fact that the author just seemed to have picked a whole random bunch of equipment and gave us crud results - to me it looks like the article should have been called "Intels duals are faster then AMD's quad's".

What i absolutely hate about all these benchmarks is that when they give us figures its on a fresh system, where as EVERYONE's system out there has Antivirus, download apps, chat apps, multiple internet windows, music, games and alot more all running at once hammering one or two cores - that Q6600, intels oldest quad core will still own in the real world compared to a dual core, and pricing- WHY BOTHER WITH DUAL CORE?

 

[thatmymp5]

OF COS, I DO need 2 + 2 = 4 Cores because it's 747-400 & 8ER Jumbo Jets which it's better than A380 due to Intel is [b]bottlenecked 2 create advance CPU. imao, more more more hee hee hee...that's why u can see those GPU gets block out behind CPU all the times. hhgaha...

 

[retro77]

Anytime you have a mention of an AMD chip all the Intel fanboys come out the woodwork to bash it down.

Not everyone wants or needs a quad core, so open your eyes people and understand this.

 

[g13man]

Nice to see one common axis, the 2.5 gig speed
I was curious why you did not
add the more recent AMD chipsets [more complete and = price to intel]
the Q6600 Intel quad [2.4 gig but price comparable to amd ]
the amd phenom x3 at the price point of the 7200[but at 2.3 gig speed]

 

[apache_lives]

retro77 the Q6600 is older, cheaper, faster and more efficent then any AMD on the market - why dual core when the quad can own there aswell as in the quad core arena, and if it wasnt important, why does AMD produce quads?

 

[Maskman]

I have a 2.66 Yorkfield and my wife a 3.1 Wolfdale. I was hoping that this article would answer the question of which is "better." Perhaps one of the persons with a comment has an opinion. No matter what I do my computer seems the same - I have clocked my CPU up to 3.4 and I can't tell any difference. My impression is that right now there isn't much that really uses all the CPU horsepower of four cores (except Crysis)and the two cores is fine. But I can remember only a short time ago when two cores was such a novelty and now its the minimun.

 

[Guest]

Wow, there are so many tech websites, why do people post on this one simply to complain about each and every article. I just look at benchmark numbers when I am buying my own hardware; I always choose my own hardware. This guy is giving a scenario and trying to build inside of his own guidelines. He wasn't terribly consistent; no biggie. I'm not letting it raise my blood pressure.

 

[headspin]

I'm not sure why there is even any comparison, or why he is upgrading a six year old computer. My last computer was four years old with a 3.2 GHz Hyperthreading processor, and it did fine, but like anything in life that get's old, I needed to upgrade the whole thing. My new computer has an Intel Q6600 Quad Core 2.4 GHz, and never skips a beat when running multiple functions at one time. With a separate 1Gig video card, and 3gig of ram, it helps it to run quietly and smooth. I thought about putting a new CPU in my old computer, but it would have been like putting a brand new transmission in a Ford Model T.