Intel dual core - quad core - real computing world difference ?

[Mary Fowler Leek]

If purchasing a new system and you had the choice, would you go with the
Intel quad core q6600 ... or stick to the Intel dual core e6850 processor?

XP Pro OS and most used Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Lightroom,
Producer (makes slide shows), Adobe Acrobat v5 Pro, MS Office 2003,
Lightscribe labeling software.

Is the new quad core processor software specific? Must the software be
written to take advantage of the quad processor? If so, then I'd think there
would be no advantage for me, since much of my software is older.

Your help and advice is deeply appreciated.

Mary

 

[Robert Moir]

If purchasing a new system and you had the choice, would you go with the
Intel quad core q6600 ... or stick to the Intel dual core e6850
processor?

Given what you say below I would probably go for the dual core processor
based on performance *today*. I do however think that as you're probably
expecting this to last for a few years, quad core (or more) processors and
software than will take advantage of quad core processors will be quite
common soon enough.

Another big indicator of what differences you might see is how
'processor-bound' the tasks you do are. Even with Photoshop CS3, which does
hammer the processor, you'll also see a lot of RAM and disk activity and
this indicates the need for a balanced system, e.g. there's no point in
having a quad core or top of the range dual core processor if the components
around them are rubbish.

XP Pro OS and most used Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Lightroom,
Producer (makes slide shows), Adobe Acrobat v5 Pro, MS Office 2003,
Lightscribe labeling software.

Is the new quad core processor software specific?

Nope. Software doesn't have to be written for 4 cores to take advantage of
it. It does have to be written for >1 core, however.

Must the software be written to take advantage of the quad processor?

Despite what I said above, there would be enhancements from software that
knew about processors with more than two cores, but it wouldn't be a case
that you would see no advantage at all from more than 2 cores on a
processor.

One thing to keep in mind is that the OS can take advantage of all the
cores, though (if we stick with just Windows for now) Vista is supposed to
do this a bit better than XP. Keep in mind that even a program that doesn't
take advantage of even dual core systems can still perform better on a dual
core system anyway, because the OS can schedule itself and other OS tasks
onto one core and the troublesome app can have the run of the other core.

If so, then I'd think there would be no advantage for me, since much of my
software is older.

I think Photoshop has been multi-processor aware for years now. I think quad
core systems have been common on the mac for some time, which is where a lot
of photoshop heritiage comes from, and I think intel quad-core Q6600s are
older than Adobe CS3 (not sure of this last bit, but I think that's the
case). Therefore you _might_ be pleasently surprised.

 

[Mary Fowler Leek]

Another big indicator of what differences you might see is how
'processor-bound' the tasks you do are. Even with Photoshop CS3, which
does hammer the processor, you'll also see a lot of RAM and disk activity
and this indicates the need for a balanced system, e.g. there's no point
in having a quad core or top of the range dual core processor if the
components around them are .... rubbish.

The following is what I've selected for a new system:


MS Windows XP Pro OS

LX Black - Velocity Micro Signature Case - Pure Aluminum for maximum
cooling, with easily removable front door

LX Aluminum Wheel Kit (LX/GX2 cases only) - Pure aluminum wheels make your
case easy to move, with wheel lock

500 Watt Velocity Micro® Power Supply with Dual Blue Lighted Fans



Genuine Intel® P35 ATX Motherboard with DDR2, PCI Express, 1333MHz FSB, RAID
DP35DP
(this MB will also accept the Quad core Extreme but I don't want to pay for
it)


Intel® Core™ 2 Quad processor Q6600, quad 2.4GHz cores, 8MB L2 Cache

.... Or ... Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6850, duel 3 GHz cores, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB
L2 Cache


Arctic Cooling® Freezer 7 Pro Heatsink, Ultra Quiet Fan, Copper Heat Pipes,
plus Arctic Silver™ 5 Thermal Compound

4096MB Corsair™ DDR2 PC6400 DDR2-800 (4x1024)

256MB eVGA™ NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8600 GT Velocity Micro Performance Edition, 2 x
DVI

Creative Labs SoundBlaster® X-Fi™ XtremeGamer


400GB Hitachi 7200rpm 16MB Cache SATA 300 w/NCQ

400GB Hitachi 7200rpm 16MB Cache SATA 300 w/NCQ

20x Lite On® DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Burner with LightScribe Labeling
Technology, Black

20x Lite On® DVD+/-RW/CD-RW Dual Layer, Black Bezel


52-in-1 Internal USB 2.0 Media Card Reader None

Integrated 10/100/1 OOOMBps Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter

 

[Robert Moir]

The following is what I've selected for a new system:

[snip list]
Well that certainly qualifies as a very well "balanced system". I'm sure you
know already, but unless you install 64-bit windows then you won't see all
the 4Gb of memory as available to Windows due to the nature of 32-bit
operating systems but to be honest I'm running 4Gb of memory with 32-bit
windows here just fine.

I personally would be putting the Q6600 in a rig like that with an eye to
how I think things will go in the future, but the E6850 will probably give
you a little more *today*. But lets be honest, you can't really lose
whichever one you pick. If you have to have a problem, this is a nice one
to have.

 

[RJK]

You might like to be aware that MS, do NOT automatically distribute, via
Windows update, the KB896256 patch that can improve performance on XP
platforms, that are driven by dual-core processors !

.... i.e. you have to go and get it yourself !!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...48-8240-4934-BBD8-34FB8A0FCE3B&displaylang=en

regards, Richard

 

[Ace]

Read the following.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/08/parallel_processing/index.html

 

[Ace]

There is an excellent article on Tom's Hardware:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/08/parallel_processing/index.html