On Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:34:07 -0400, Bill Ghrist
wrote:

Daddy wrote:
So far the only applications I have come across that 'recommend' quad
core is video editing software, and then only for editing hi-definition
video. There is probably other software that can take advantage of four
cores but my sense is that there's not a lot of it. Not now, at least.

So for now, it seems to me, unless someone knows they would benefit from
quad core, the main reason for buying a quad from Dell is if it's part
of a package deal at an attractive price (what Stew was referring to,
and me with my bang-for-the-buck-o-meter.)

Daddy

RnR wrote:
On Sat, 11 Oct 2008 11:44:55 -0400, Ben Myers
wrote:

Bottom line is that today, October 11, 2008, an application that
makes true use
of mulitple cores and threads is probably very rare.

Yep, I read the same thing months ago so I don't recommend quad cores
to most. The performance boost isn't worth it from what I read but
some people just want to believe and it's their money so who am I
to tell them how to spend their money unless they ask me.


I got a Precision T3400 recently with the Q6600. I was originally
looking at a dual core, but the Dell "deal" on the configuration with
the quad core was so much better that I couldn't pass it up. One of the
things that surprised me: I brought up Task Manager while I was running
an AVG virus scan and saw that all four cores were nearly maxed out
(with no applications other than AVG and Task Manager running). After
the fact I found that Grisoft does document that AVG will use multi-core
processing as available, but I was impressed--especially since this is
free software.

Did it make a noticeable difference?