Question from a Newbie

[Newbie]

Hi, Guys !
I've been using a desktop Acer Aspire with dual core AMD 5200+ for over a
year now, and everything seems to be running very smoothly, but somehow
curiosity is hanging heavily over my head, so I would like to ask you
experts on what I would get (if anything), if I were to switch over to
another one with AMD Phenom 9600 Quad Core. Would I feel *any* difference at
all in performance? Thanks in advance.
Curious Newbie.

 

[Newbie]

No you won't notice a thing. You already have a dual core which is
overkill for desktop applications, two more cores won't help you at all.
If you are running some heavy duty multithreaded applications or if you
have a server style workload then you'll get a benefit from the extra
cores but it you are running a typical desktop you won't get any benefit.

Thanks a million, Guys. I really appreciate your input - it means I
don't have to spend any money on a new computer for a couple of more years
yet.
Relieved Newbie.

 

[Newbie]

The biggest bang for the buck is always memory. 4G of DDR2 only costs $75
so if you have less than 8G I'd add RAM (assuming you are running Linux
or Vista). If you are running XP you can't use more than 3.5G so there is
no point in having more than 4G, however if you have less than 4G you
should upgrade to 4G.

I'm slightly ahead of you on that one. When I saw the price of Corsair
RAM modules dip right down to almost rock-bottom, I bought four 2Gb modules,
and am now running with 8Gb of physical RAM. Had my motherboard have more
than four RAM slots, I would have filled them all up. I am running x64
Vista. Thanks again !

So, what lies ahead in the horizon ? What revolutionary improvements are
round the corner as far as hardware is concerned ?

Grateful Newbie.

 

[Newbie]

None. Intel is adding integrated memory controllers and a hypertransport
competitor called CSI this year so they should see a small improvement in
their performance which is already significantly better than AMD's even
though AMD already has integrated memory controllers and hypertransport.
Most of the hardware sites are reporting that they have been able to
easily overclock the 45nm Core2s to over 4GHz so I would expect that at
some point Intel stop leaving all of that performance on the table and
start offering higher speed grades.
At the high end the push is going to be towards more and more cores. The
problem is that software isn't keeping up. Servers get an immediate
benefit from more cores and there are a few pieces of computationally
intense applications that are multithreaded today that can use them but
most apps are still single threaded. I suspect that software is always
going to be way behind the hardware.The area where there will be
significant consumer benefit is at the low end. The push there is very
low power and cheap machines. Via pioneered this area but Intel is right
behind with their Atom processors. AMD will be there also, it's the
reason they bought ATI because it gave them graphics and chipset
technology which is what's needed to provide a highly integrated solution.

Thank you for your generous input on the matter. So, I think mere
mortals the likes of me can keep what we have for the rest of our lives
without having to buy any new hardware, since the software we use barely
puts the computer into "2nd gear". I read with great interest how Microsoft
is preparing their Windows 7 (formally dubbed "Blackcomb" and "Vienna");
surely they can make use of the now readily-available quad core processors
to boost their performance.
Eager Newbie.