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From: kony on 7 Jan 2008 23:51
On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:04:46 +0000, Matt
<m.p.boulton(a)durham.ac.uk> wrote:

>> Short-term the E6850 is probably the faster choice, so if you expect or
>> are planning to swap out your CPU in about half a year, then perhaps
>> that's the better choice.
>
>I would say I'm open to swapping the CPU I get for a new one in the
>future, but not that soon.
>
>Basically, if I can overclock the Q6600 to 3.0GHz using a 1333MHz FSB,
>using only the stock cooler, without reducing the life of the chip; then
>I will get the Q6600.
>
>Is this possible?
>
>Kind Regards,
>
>Matt


First, help us understand why the 3.0GHz figure. Did you
see one of my other posts where I mentioned the heat factor,
that you can overclock a dual core further than a quad (more
than 3.0GHz) before any particular cooling system becomes
the limitation.

It might seem as thought I am trying to steer you to a dual
core instead of quad. Perhaps, because it does seem it will
offer you more performance for the described uses, but in
the end I don't have to use the system and only present what
seems an overlooked aspect.
From: Fred on 8 Jan 2008 07:41
Fred wrote:
> Frank McCoy wrote:
>> In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt "Fred" <bluser(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> John Weiss wrote:
>>>> "Fred" <bluser(a)gmail.com> wrote...
>>>>> What about the new Intel Penryn range due out soon. Have you
>>>>> considered one of them?
>>>>
>>>> If you always wait to consider a computer part "due out soon,"
>>>> you'll never buy ANYTHING!
>>>
>>> IMHO sometimes it is a bad time to buy.
>>> February should bring a next generation of Intel cpu's and quite
>>> possibly lower prices.
>>>
>> There's the new AMD quad-cores out right now ....
>
> True and from what I have read the reason Intel have delayed their
> launch of the new range is because of the hardware bug in the AMD
> quad-cores. It must make the AMD offering less of a threat to their market
> share.
>
> Erratum degrades Phenom 9500, 9600 performance
> http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13724

Anyhow the local pc shop here in Australia has just got stock of the
E8500 3.16GHz 6 MB cache for $349 Australian
and the E8400 3.0GHz 6 MB cache for $249
compared to existing
E6750 2.66GHz 4 MB cache $220
E6850 3.0GHz 4MB cache $328
So here at least the new 3.0GHz c2d is cheaper than the old 3.0GHz cpu
Picture of retail packaging here.
http://www.itsky.com.au/assets/catalog/parts/e8400.jpg


From: kony on 16 Jan 2008 17:23
On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:37:45 GMT, Matthew
<matthew(a)spamkiller.com> wrote:

>>> waiting for my pc, but most of the time my pc is idle. To be honest
>>> most applications can't even take advantage of dual core.
>>
>> Maybe so but I do like the fact that I can have my dual-core PC doing
>> something heavy-duty like encoding and still have it responsive and snappy
>> if I want to check email etc. Encoding on my old single-core was an
>> overnight job as the PC was useless for anything else once I hit "start".
>
>I find myself in exactly the same position as the original poster.
>
>I've found the same problem with single-core video encoding, but how to
>decide between dual and quad core?

You don't need either, just go into Task Manager,
right-click on the list item using the processor time, and
set it's priority to "low". It's largely a myth that
anything that isn't realtime needs more than one processor
(core). In some cases the application doing the encoding
even lets you set it's process priority ahead of time so
it's always what you want... and IMO most people will want
"low", even if they had a dual core or quad system.


>With quad would I be able to do some
>dvd compression, burn a dvd, encode some wavs to mp3, and still have a
>responsive pc to do some text editing, web browsing, etc.? In other words
>would each of the processor intensive tasks get assigned a core and stick
>with it?

The answer is that you will have more processes running than
cores even with a quad core. Seldom do people want to
consider this truth. Adding more cores does give the system
more processing power in general when more than one process
is linearlly bound instead of just idling away most of the
time. Yes once a process is assigned to a core it will
continue using it. What remains is as mentioned above, that
with more than 4 processes whether your system remains
responsive for what you are doing in the foreground depends
on that task running at higher priority than what is running
in the background. Merely putting the app in focus by using
it does elevate the priority but not necessarily enough in
some cases.

I'm not trying to talk you out of a faster new dual or quad
core system, I'm just saying for years I had no problem
using a single core to do video encoding or the other things
you list in the background while the system was fully
responsive for text editing or web, email, etc in the
foreground. With a good dual or quad core what you get is
the background linear processor consumer jobs get done a lot
faster.



>
>What about the OS, do I need 64bit xp or vista with dual/quad processing?
>I've heard that if you get 4GB RAM, a 64bit OS is recommended - is that true.

Your applications and drivers are the other factor to
consider, 64bit OS is not needed for dual or quad core
processors.
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