SuperNet33 Posted June 22, 2008 Share Posted June 22, 2008 My system is running PERFECT and all I use is ichat, firefox, mail and unison to download from newsgroups. Right now i have a E6420 2.13 Intel Core 2 Duo and I was thinking about upgrading to a Quad Core 6600 but I was thinking to my self, do I really need it??? by the way I have 4GB of ram.. 74GB Raptor HD and a 750GB Samsung hard drive. What do you think, Should I get it? Is it worth it? and if so should my system run the same( as in being stable ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Headrush69 Posted June 22, 2008 Share Posted June 22, 2008 What do you use your computer the most for? Chances are you won't see a huge gain from the quad core (yet) unless you do tasks that can and are designed to utilize the extra cores. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperNet33 Posted June 22, 2008 Author Share Posted June 22, 2008 I use is ichat, firefox, mail and unison to download from newsgroups. Mostly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Headrush69 Posted June 22, 2008 Share Posted June 22, 2008 I use is ichat, firefox, mail and unison to download from newsgroups.Mostly Save your money. (for now) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
titooo Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 Yeah man, savbe the money. if youy just read news, surf the web and things like that a core 2 duo is enough for years I think Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gambit642 Posted June 24, 2008 Share Posted June 24, 2008 This is hardware architecture 101. If a program is multi-threaded, then you can have multiple cores work in tandem to execute the application. Hence, you will see incredible performance. Due to the lack of popularity of multi-core machines, most apps are still single-threaded meaning they lack the complexity for managing multiple processors. Keeping in mind that the processor speed rating is the combination of all the cores (a 2.66GHz Quad-Core is 4 cores running at 665Mhz), if an application can only utilize one core, it cant run faster than 665MHz. So often you will even see a speed decrease on a multi-core machine (if the app is not multi-threaded). One bonus for non-threaded apps is that even if an application manages to hog the entire core, you will see very little impact on your systems performance, which will usually reside on another core. On a single core machine, you tend to see spasms or poor performance when a large app hogs resources. Quad-core is meant more for this purpose, multi-threaded apps; or multi-tasking several non-threaded apps that shouldn't take performance hits from neighboring processes (usually for servers). Dual core is a good balence because you can utilize multi-threading across 2 cores, and still have a decent amount of speed per-core for non-threaded apps. It is a common misconception that quad is faster, just like the miscoception that 64-Bit is faster than 32-bit, When the only concrete advantage is a higher hardware memory capacity and applications are allowed to manage more memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigPimpin Posted June 24, 2008 Share Posted June 24, 2008 I use is ichat, firefox, mail and unison to download from newsgroups.Mostly With that lineup you'd be fine with an old Pentium II. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BTBlomberg Posted June 24, 2008 Share Posted June 24, 2008 Keeping in mind that the processor speed rating is the combination of all the cores (a 2.66GHz Quad-Core is 4 cores running at 665Mhz), if an application can only utilize one core, it cant run faster than 665MHz. So often you will even see a speed decrease on a multi-core machine (if the app is not multi-threaded). I will not be insulting, but this is soooo wrong. If you have a Core2 Duo at 2.66 GHz you have two cores at 2.66 Ghz. If you have a Core2 Duo Quad (yes for some reason they still call them Core2 Duo for the architecture) at 2.66 GHz you have 4 cores at 2.66 GHz. I have a Mac Pro at the office with two 2.8 GHz Quads and each core is definitely at 2.8 GHz. Also, on my Gateway Hackintosh I am writing from now (my $300 Tiger Direct mac pro ;-) ), I have a Core2 Duo 4300 overclocked from 1.8 GHz to 2.4 GHz and I can tell you it is running both cores at 2.4 GHz. Just run Boinc SETI and you will see this is true. It is true that if an app is not multi core optimized you will not get full benefits of it, but apple has been optimizing their apps for Multi Core and many other big apps also use this. ALso, the OS does some core use management. Will you see a huge benefit in the apps you are using? Likely not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pitap Posted June 26, 2008 Share Posted June 26, 2008 I say OC your cpu before you go for an upgrade... for what you do even a single core is an overkill... quad or more is only good for pro/industry level apps for now No you don't divide the clock speed by the number of cores. And no, its not Core 2 Duo Quad, its Core 2 Quad. Core 2 together is the name of the architecture, and then duo means 2 cores, quad means 4 cores Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BTBlomberg Posted June 28, 2008 Share Posted June 28, 2008 Yes Pitap, you are right. I guess I have seen the Quad mixed in with the duo to many places and mis-thought. Also, I think Gambit642's assumption may apply to newer Pentium 4's with Hyper-Threading with is two processes on one core rather than how the new multi-core CPUs work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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