In Defence of Multi-Core

[Suhit Gupta]

http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2006/11/05/In_defence_of_multi_core/1.html

"This week has been all about multi-core. We were hit by one big announcement that we knew was coming - Intel's Core 2 Quad chip, codenamed Kentsfield. This has been on the books for a while, and we've been playing with the chip since the beginning of October - and having a lot of fun. This announcement was preceded by the news, which we reported on in the early hour of Thursday morning, of Valve's move to multi-core for the Source engine. We weren't quite sure what to expect when we rocked up in Bellevue to see the legendary software developer, but when we'd finished the meeting, it was clear that Valve's team is wholly committed to a multi-core future and is beginning to work towards that vision now."

I was surprised, much like the author, that people were skeptical about the usefulness of quad core. Honestly, if I could, I would be right there with the folks from Iceland and Finland that liquid cool and overclock their processor. Anyways, on a more serious note, I have been running Windows Vista and Office 2007 for a few months now and I can totally tell the difference in performance when running it on a single core with hyperthreading vs. a dual core box (most other stats being equal), where the dual core machine runs much better. Most media based calculations are already being offloaded onto the GPU in any case just to free up the CPU from overload but with applications getting to be beefier (compression, antivirus, firewalls, just to name a few) I can absolutely see the need for quad-core.

[Suhit Gupta]

http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2006/11/05/In_defence_of_multi_core/1.html

"This week has been all about multi-core. We were hit by one big announcement that we knew was coming - Intel's Core 2 Quad chip, codenamed Kentsfield. This has been on the books for a while, and we've been playing with the chip since the beginning of October - and having a lot of fun. This announcement was preceded by the news, which we reported on in the early hour of Thursday morning, of Valve's move to multi-core for the Source engine. We weren't quite sure what to expect when we rocked up in Bellevue to see the legendary software developer, but when we'd finished the meeting, it was clear that Valve's team is wholly committed to a multi-core future and is beginning to work towards that vision now."

I was surprised, much like the author, that people were skeptical about the usefulness of quad core. Honestly, if I could, I would be right there with the folks from Iceland and Finland that liquid cool and overclock their processor. Anyways, on a more serious note, I have been running Windows Vista and Office 2007 for a few months now and I can totally tell the difference in performance when running it on a single core with hyperthreading vs. a dual core box (most other stats being equal), where the dual core machine runs much better. Most media based calculations are already being offloaded onto the GPU in any case just to free up the CPU from overload but with applications getting to be beefier (compression, antivirus, firewalls, just to name a few) I can absolutely see the need for quad-core.

[Felix Torres]

Word out of the XBOX camp is that HD-DVD playback taxes the 360 like no game is likely to and it takes all 6 six execution units plus the GPU to keep it online *and* playback HD-DVDs at the full 1080p resolution.

http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/archi...gence-day.aspx

Even allowing for the advantages from the out-of-order execution and special-purpose OPS in the Core architecture, it seem likely that a full QuadCore will be needed to do productive work in an HD MCE/DirectX10 environment.

Give it time for the prices to come down and the QuadCore Celerons are going to rock. ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

I was running an Abit BP-6, with dual CPUs, back in the late '90s. I think they were only 600mhz Celerons, but having two CPUs made a world of difference - lags and strange "everything stops working" pauses on the PC vanished.

I only wish that more applications were multi-thread aware and able to take advantage of all the CPU power possible. CloneDVD Mobile for instance, only uses one core on my AMD X2 CPU, which is a sad waste.

[ctmagnus]

Originally Posted by Suhit Gupta

Honestly, if I could, I would be right there with the folks from Iceland and Finland that liquid cool and overclock their processor.

I would think that in those regions, mounting the CPU on the outside of the building would have the same cooling effect with no modding.