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#1
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Should I go Dual Core or Quad Core? Intel C2 DUO E6850 vs. Quad-CoreQ6600
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! Kind Regards, Matt |
#2
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Should I go Dual Core or Quad Core? Intel C2 DUO E6850 vs. Quad-Core Q6600
In article ,
Matt 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. |
#3
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Should I go Dual Core or Quad Core? Intel C2 DUO E6850 vs. Quad-Core Q6600
"Matt" 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@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. |
#4
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Should I go Dual Core or Quad Core? Intel C2 DUO E6850 vs. Quad-Core Q6600
"Matt" wrote in message ... 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 |
#5
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Should I go Dual Core or Quad Core? Intel C2 DUO E6850 vs. Quad-CoreQ6600
Matt 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! Kind Regards, Matt Is the decision easier to make, if you overclock the Q6600 to 3GHz ? The G0 stepping seems to overclock pretty well. Paul |
#6
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Should I go Dual Core or Quad Core? Intel C2 DUO E6850 vs.Quad-Core Q6600
All depends on what you're doing, I suspect. I'd take the dual core
because most of what I do isn't cpu intensive. Thanks for the replies guys. Most of what I do is work or play games on my PC, so there are times when it is idle. The thing is I'm upgrading because I want my PC to perform well at the times when it isn't idle. I'm also thinking about the future. Four or five years ago when I bought my XP2000+ CPU it could cope with anything I threw at it, but now it even struggles when I'm multi-tasking with lots of web browser tabs, e-mail client etc. running. So getting a CPU that will perform well now just now, but in the future is paramount. 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? Kind Regards, Matt |
#7
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Should I go Dual Core or Quad Core? Intel C2 DUO E6850 vs. Quad-Core Q6600
"Matt" 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 $$ to upgrade all the software to the multithreaded versions? Will you still be using the same machine in 2 years? Will there be a Q6800 at 3 or 3.4 GHz available? Since the price is the same, decide on what will be more useful to you NOW and in the near future. |
#8
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Should I go Dual Core or Quad Core? Intel C2 DUO E6850 vs. Quad-Core Q6600
Patrick Vervoorn wrote:
-SNIP- I had the same decision to make, and I went with the Q6600. At the very least Crysis detects and uses the 4 cores. SetiBOINC also runs very nicely using 4 cores. Regards, Patrick. I have a Q6600 G0 stepping and it easily overclocks to 3,0 GHZ. Mine is set at 3.25GHZ now and is limited by my memory\FSB frequency I believe. At 3.25 Ghz it is stable and temperatures never get anywhere near the upper limits. Paul |
#9
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Should I go Dual Core or Quad Core? Intel C2 DUO E6850 vs.Quad-Core Q6600
Are you going to spend the $$ to upgrade all the software to the multithreaded
versions? Given I can get software on student licences, in all likelihood yes whe my budget allows. Will you still be using the same machine in 2 years? Definitely. Will there be a Q6800 at 3 or 3.4 GHz available? Good point, but that will require further expense. Since the price is the same, decide on what will be more useful to you NOW and in the near future. Now is clearly the E6850, as I'm not keen on overclocking due to the noise consequences of having loads of massive fans around my case; even though the Q6600 has the potential to reach 3GHz itself. It just depends how quickly multi-threaded applications (and will all multi- threaded support quad as well as dual core, or will that come later?) are introduced. Kind Regards, Matt |
#10
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Should I go Dual Core or Quad Core? Intel C2 DUO E6850 vs. Quad-Core Q6600
On Thu, 3 Jan 2008 08:21:57 -0800, "John Weiss"
wrote: "Matt" 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@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. Even a single core clocked at 3GHz would beat the quad at 2.4GHz, as antivirus, firewall and most "etc" things only use a percent or two of processing time, even less when running at lower priority in parallel with the forground app. 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. Only now are a few taking good advantage of 2 cores. On average a single core at 3GHz is faster than a quad at 2.4GHz... we can certainly find examples of games that _do_ take advantage of 2 cores, seldom more, but these are noteworthy in being exceptions rather than the rule. Looking forward it depends on how long one were to game with the same system, keeping in mind that after a certain point the system is relatively slow compared to (then) modern systems and might need upgraded again for best benefit. 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. It was a better choice... keeping in mind the mitigating factor if one is an overclocker, that they might be able to o'c the quad more significantly (I mean higher % since it starts at lower speed), except that significant overclocking of quad cores, IF one is making use of them for demanding processing, creates quite a power and thermal load the system PSU and cooling have to deal with, as well as the heatsink noise. I remember a few years ago it seemed (kids?) were willing to have systems that sounded like hair-dryers just to get high overclock but today reducing noise seems the status quo even among overclockers. |
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