Inte CoreExtreme Processor... any point in 4 core?

Kougar · Joined: 10 Feb 2007 Articles: 2 Comments: 1

Guess I'll make my first post causing a bit of trouble...

For now, I'd freely admit this processor is only needed for audio/visual encoders or the more extreme end of multitaskers out there. But this will shortly change, and by the end of this year the arguement QuadCores are not worthwhile will be moot! Things will quickly pick up after Intel's launch of 45nm Penryn based QuadCores and AMD's launch of 65nm Barcelona based QuadCores starting this summer.

First, lets attack the games arguement. Known games to support 4 or even more cores:

THQ Supreme Commander
Remedy's Alan Wake
Valve's Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (& all Future Valve Games)
Epic Unreal Engine 3 Games (Including Unreal Tournament 3)
Ubisoft Splinter Cell: Double Agent

To take the most extreme example from the above list, Alan Wake will even require 4 cores for solid performance. This game will spawn 5 complete threads, one for rendering, audio, streaming, physics, and terrain tessellation. According to Anandtech the physics thread will use up 80% of a single core all on it's own. In the IDF demo Remedy spawned a ingame torando which had a whole core dedicated to it's destructive effects. What might shock some gamers is Remedy themselves stated this game will not run on a single core processor, which now includes P4's with HT from what I've more recently heard.

Here's a brief list I borrowed from Legit Reviews of 4+ core support in mostly multimedia related programs, just as a further example to throw in here:

Autodesk 3DSMAX 8 and 3DSMAX 9
Adobe After Effects 7/8
Adobe Premiere Pro 2/3.0
Adobe Encore DVD 2.+
Adobe Photoshop CS2
Maxon Cinema 4D v10 (TBD)
Pinnacle Studio dv 10
Quicktime Pro 7.1
XMPEG with DIVX 6.2
DVD Shrink 3.2
Pov Ray 3.7 Beta
Sony Vegas 7.0
Steinberg- Yamaha Cubase v4.5
TMPGEnc 2.524
WinRar 3.61

Now, about that Mac Pro... I simply can't accept that a Apple Mac Pro is a better buy. Even getting all of the hardware upgrades from much cheaper sites as Newegg and saving a few grand in the process doesn't balance it. I'd have still said this before I heard about the ~$530 Q6600 and ~$400-450 Q6400 QuadCore processors that are going to launch/get price dropped starting in Q2'07.

I don't want to make my obscene post any longer, but I'll go as far as to breakdown componenets to show just how much one really pays for the "Apple" name if wanted. Their motto of near 50% gross margins on products, or simply eyeing the specs of the $2,500 "base" config of a Mac Pro should be enough!

To round this off, since you seem to like Macs: I'm not sure if you saw, but just before Clovertown was officially released, Anand from Anandtech got his hands on two of them and plugged them into his new Mac Pro. Interestingly enough it booted up and he quickly changed his 2P (4core) Woodcrest system into a 4P (8core) Clovertown system... although he later installed Windows XP on it to play around a bit more.

Edited: Had to remove the LIST script, I fiddled with it but still couldn't get it working?

nerdfoo · Joined: 02 Aug 2006 Articles: 2 Comments: 2

One word that makes quad-core all the more important: Virtualization.

As a developer, it's extremely helpful to run a test server and test host computers in virtualization suites such as VMWare or Parallels. At my company, I can load a copy of our production environment into a test VMWare image, then test changes to our website in various versions of IE on different OS's. It's part of our development regimen to make sure it all works OK.

And to be able to do that without a performance decrease on my development box would be really nice. Right now I have a P4 HT with 2GB of RAM. It runs pretty good, but obviously I could do more by dedicating the VMWare images to their own processor.

Not to mention the gains in our data center; Right now our main VMWare Server is a 2 proc box. But throw some Quad processors in there (via an different server), and we can do more with each server. The cost savings alone would be incredible!

vaio · Joined: 30 Dec 2005 Articles: 2 Comments: 1

I'd love a quad............would be great to run 4 dc projects all at once from a single rig.
Would be cheaper to run than 4 rigs or two duallies too.

If I wasn't about to buy a house I would buy 2 Kentsfields

oo7don · Joined: 26 May 2007 Articles: 2 Comments: 1

Well this me thining without thinking it might be useful for Laptops with integrated graphic cards . The processor could help the GPU reduce its load and hence increase performance.