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From: Patrick Vervoorn on 3 Jan 2008 09:55
In article <f58f97ac-fc2f-48c3-8cf0-af8dce46a44e(a)x69g2000hsx.googlegroups.com>,
Matt <mattb95(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>Hey guys. I'm looking at upgrading my PC and I've come across an
>interesting problem:
>
>- Pay �165 for a Intel Dual Core E6850 (clocked @ 3.0GHz)
>
>- Pay �160 for a Quad Core Q6600 (clocked @ 2.4GHz)
>
>Now to my untrained eye, the quad-core seems like an easy choice. Am I
>correct, or is the performance benefit from the 2 additional cores
>completely lost by the low bandwidth connection between the 2 dies, as
>mentioned in a Wikipedia article below:
>
>"A quad-core CPU (as a two-die set in particular), however, can rarely
>double the processing ability of each of its constituent halves (e.g.
>the Kentsfield rarely doubles the ability of the Conroe), due to a
>loss
>of performance resulting from connecting them (i.e. sharing the narrow
>memory bandwidth, and operating system overhead of handling twice as
>many cores and threads)."
>
>Will all applications for Windows eventually become multi-threaded and
>fully utilise a quad core setup? Because if so then surely the 2.4GHz
>quad core would outperform the 3.0GHz dual core in the future?
>
>Basically this comes down to dual core vs. quad core, and I'm hoping
>there's a clear consensus about which to buy!

I had the same decision to make, and I went with the Q6600. At the very
least Crysis detects and uses the 4 cores. SetiBOINC also runs very nicely
using 4 cores.

Regards, Patrick.
From: John Weiss on 3 Jan 2008 11:21
"Matt" <mattb95(a)hotmail.com> wrote...
> Hey guys. I'm looking at upgrading my PC and I've come across an
interesting problem:

- Pay �165 for a Intel Dual Core E6850 (clocked @ 3.0GHz)

- Pay �160 for a Quad Core Q6600 (clocked @ 2.4GHz)


Right now it's a coin toss, and depends a lot on your personal usage.

As Patrick pointed out, if you join any of the distributed computing projects,
the quad wins, because they have SMP clients that will fully use all 4 cores.
Folding(a)Home (http://folding.stanford.edu) is my favorite DC project, but there
are a couple other worthy ones out there.

For single-threaded apps, though, the higher clock speed of the 6850 wins. Once
you offload background apps like antivirus, firewall, etc to another core, your
foreground app can take full advantage of the clock speed of the remaining core.

If you're a gamer, more of them are coming out that are multi-threaded, but I
don't know how many of them will take advantage of more than 2 cores.

I went for the 6850. If I decide a quad will work better in the future, when
the clock speed is up and the price down, I can upgrade with a simple CPU swap.


From: Brian Cryer on 3 Jan 2008 11:32

"Matt" <mattb95(a)hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:f58f97ac-fc2f-48c3-8cf0-af8dce46a44e(a)x69g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
>Hey guys. I'm looking at upgrading my PC and I've come across an
>interesting problem:
>
>- Pay �165 for a Intel Dual Core E6850 (clocked @ 3.0GHz)
>
>- Pay �160 for a Quad Core Q6600 (clocked @ 2.4GHz)
>
>Now to my untrained eye, the quad-core seems like an easy choice. Am I
>correct, or is the performance benefit from the 2 additional cores
>completely lost by the low bandwidth connection between the 2 dies, as
>mentioned in a Wikipedia article below:
>
>"A quad-core CPU (as a two-die set in particular), however, can rarely
>double the processing ability of each of its constituent halves (e.g.
>the Kentsfield rarely doubles the ability of the Conroe), due to a
>loss
>of performance resulting from connecting them (i.e. sharing the narrow
>memory bandwidth, and operating system overhead of handling twice as
>many cores and threads)."
>
>Will all applications for Windows eventually become multi-threaded and
>fully utilise a quad core setup? Because if so then surely the 2.4GHz
>quad core would outperform the 3.0GHz dual core in the future?
>
>Basically this comes down to dual core vs. quad core, and I'm hoping
>there's a clear consensus about which to buy!

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000942.html seems to provide an
interesting view on this - just one that stood out when I did a google just
now.

Most of the time my pc (single core) is idle, and waiting for me to do
something. I do run some cpu intensive applications where I'm left 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. Its only those
applications that are inherently multi-threaded (or which can be made so)
like databases, webservers, some games, that will be able to truly take
advantage of the move from two to four cores. Whilst the number of
applications that will be able to make use of multiple cores will inevitably
increase, is it something that you need?

Despite all this, my plans are for my next pc to be quad core, and given the
choice that's what I'd go for even if the clock speed is slower. Whatever
you do be sure to chock it full of as much RAM as you can, ie 4GB if you are
using a 32bit OS.

Hope this is useful.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian


From: John Weiss on 3 Jan 2008 15:54
"Matt" <mattb95(a)hotmail.com> wrote...
>
> Multithreaded applications may be scarce at the moment, but in say 2
> years time won't every single application I use be ulitising every
> available core my CPU has?

Are you going to spend the $$ to upgrade all the software to the multithreaded
versions?

Will you still be using the same machine in 2 years? Will there be a Q6800 at 3
or 3.4 GHz available?

Since the price is the same, decide on what will be more useful to you NOW and
in the near future.


From: Gypsy Baron on 3 Jan 2008 16:10
Patrick Vervoorn wrote:
-SNIP-
> I had the same decision to make, and I went with the Q6600. At the very
> least Crysis detects and uses the 4 cores. SetiBOINC also runs very nicely
> using 4 cores.
>
> Regards, Patrick.


I have a Q6600 G0 stepping and it easily overclocks to >3,0 GHZ.
Mine is set at 3.25GHZ now and is limited by my memory\FSB frequency
I believe. At 3.25 Ghz it is stable and temperatures never get
anywhere near the upper limits.

Paul
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