everyone get a quad core

[Katilian]

tiachopvutru said:

Katilian said:

a12331 said:
but when they cheaper than dual cores, they are a steal, and this one is one of the best cpus out there

Firstly, the E8400 is $189.99, so the quad core isn't cheaper. Secondly, it really depends on what you need. The E8400 is a more powerful chip per core than the Q6600 (Faster FSB, Faster Clock, 45nm). As has been mention, for the average user, they'll get more benefit out of the faster dual core than a slower quad core.

 

Actually, if some one runs a whole bunch of applications in the background, wouldn't the quad core be better?

I would consider an average user spamming a whole bunch of windows more than running any kind of extensive applications that might maximize the CPU usage.

 

 

Most of those applications are doing absolutely nothing 99% of the time. Multiple cores only show their true advantage when you are able to max out a single core. If you're running 100 applications, yet they only use 15% cpu time, it doesn't matter how many cores you have, you'll see no advantage because the work could be done by a single core. There are two main places you'll see an advantage:

1) When a single application maxes out a core and you are able to still get work done while it is in the background and

2) When a single application is able to max out numerous cores simultianiously.

The applications which fall into category 2 still tend to be restricted to power users (video/audio encoding, compression, simulations), although some games are finally utilising the power. The majority of the time however will be in example 1, where they fire off some application and while they are waiting for it to finish they do other work.