Dual Core vs Quad core?

[MudkipzLikesYou]

I'm looking at building a new computer very soon and i'm not sure if i should go with dual or quad. In 1 or 2 years with all these new mmorpg like Aion and Soul & Blade is it beneficial to go with quad or no?

[cinderboy]

I'm looking at building a new computer very soon and i'm not sure if i should go with dual or quad. In 1 or 2 years with all these new mmorpg like Aion and Soul & Blade is it beneficial to go with quad or no?

Aion is out end of this year... But I dont think it will maximize or actually utilize quad core's full power.

[invadertim]

lulz i got a quad core :P

[DreamyReturns]

When I got my new computer about 6 months ago, I read online it's better (for example) to have a 3.01ghz x dual core (my computer ), than a 2.4ghz x quad, or anything lower than 3.01.

Quad won't be able to be utilized for a long time, and even then, dual core is more efficient.

[cinderboy]

i haz quad core too, but i think i made the wrong choice. lulz.

[TheKingOfMMO]

First of all: It's DUO core not DUAL. Dual is old technology.


Anyway, get duo. Not quad. Quad is usually low processing speed per core unless you want to spend a TON of money. I'd suggest a duo with 3.0+ ghz processing per core. Mine is the 3.16ghz version of intels duo core. For around the same price I could have got the Quad 2.4ghz. That would have been dumb of me, though, because there are few programs today that utalize 2 cores, much less 4. And there won't be 4 for a long time. I'm still waiting for programs to catch up to me to use my 2 cores. If I could, I'd gladly trade my 3.16ghz duo for a 5ghz single core right now.

By the time 4 core technology is common in programs..they will have 8, 12, 16 something like that core processors and your 4 core you buy today will be worth jack squat.

So, anyone who has bought a quad core processor was a moron.

[theabyss26]

i have quad core 2.4 with 4 gb ram, running VIsta 64 bits perfectly, takes me 15 seconds to restart computer xD and 0.5 second to open firefox :P
and there are many programs and games that are using all of themm,, you just dont hear it on the news... its not like you will see "quad core compatible" on the back of a game box.
To me quad was worth every penny xD

Btw dont get Quad core if its not the G0 revision, the ones that are not this revision are having heating problems

[TheKingOfMMO]

i have quad core 2.4 with 4 gb ram, running VIsta 64 bits perfectly, takes me 15 seconds to restart computer xD and 0.5 second to open firefox :P

Both those cases have more to do with whats on your computer and how fast/good other things are (software, internet connectivity, etc) than how fast your processor is.

And you can't be running vista 64 bit perfectly, because vista 64 bit doesn't run perfectly. :3

[TheKingOfMMO]

It does when you have hardware that is having Vista 64 drivers.
In fact it runs better than Vista 32 bits.
And when you say that those cases have more to do with whats on my computer and internet connectivity etc,,, thats pure bs,, opening firefox have nothing to do with internet connectivity.... its just a program that you open.

Hm. shut down and Boot up a computer with 20 GB of data on it.
Then do the same with the same computer with 2 TB of data on it.

Get back to me on which loaded up faster.

[████████]

okay, next question.

amd or intel?

Intel always come top and way ahead of amd always..

[Sakumo]

so yes get a quad. I don't see ANY REASON in not actually, Phenom II's and Q6600's are at a good price now.

Well that's the first thing we agree on! Also, I'd get a Phenom II now since Q6600s now have horrible VIDs now, they're 1.325vore stock, which really screws your overclocking potential, but I got it to 3.2ghz on stock.

Okay what about all this L1, L2, L3 cache? when i look at these different CPU, they all have L2 cache but some have L1 and some have L3, which is more important?

Cache is sorta like the CPU for the CPU or the RAM. The higher L2 the better, but a high L3 cache is good too. They're REALLY important, they're more important than ghz.

[theabyss26]

Quad isnt better for games than dual core,,where it really shines is with Multi taking ( things like opening 5 WoW.exe) and still having same smooth framerate.

Its good too for unzipping files,, and encoding videos,,, definitly faster.

[mlauzon]

i have quad core 2.4 with 4 gb ram, running VIsta 64 bits perfectly, takes me 15 seconds to restart computer xD and 0.5 second to open firefox :P
and there are many programs and games that are using all of themm,, you just dont hear it on the news... its not like you will see "quad core compatible" on the back of a game box.
To me quad was worth every penny xD

Btw dont get Quad core if its not the G0 revision, the ones that are not this revision are having heating problems

And, the Core i7 -- quad core processor -- are making mincemeat out of the Core 2 Duo & Core 2 Quad....

[theabyss26]

Hm. shut down and Boot up a computer with 20 GB of data on it.
Then do the same with the same computer with 2 TB of data on it.

Get back to me on which loaded up faster.

yeah and try to boot up a dual core with formatted hd, and do the same with a quad with formatted hd.
Get back to me on wich loaded faster.

i was talking about processor speed, and now you are talking about hard drive ,,, wtf

[MudkipzLikesYou]

so i should be looking for a cpu with L2 and L3 more than L2 and L1?

[theabyss26]

And, the Core i7 -- quad core processor -- are making mincemeat out of the Core 2 Duo & Core 2 Quad....

Yah thats my next Purchase xD

[skizzot]

ahi have a quad phenom OCed to 3 gigs. 4 gigs of ram..its fine..id get a phenom..there nifty..

First of all: It's DUO core not DUAL. Dual is old technology.


Anyway, get duo. Not quad. Quad is usually low processing speed per core unless you want to spend a TON of money. I'd suggest a duo with 3.0+ ghz processing per core. Mine is the 3.16ghz version of intels duo core. For around the same price I could have got the Quad 2.4ghz. That would have been dumb of me, though, because there are few programs today that utalize 2 cores, much less 4. And there won't be 4 for a long time. I'm still waiting for programs to catch up to me to use my 2 cores. If I could, I'd gladly trade my 3.16ghz duo for a 5ghz single core right now.

By the time 4 core technology is common in programs..they will have 8, 12, 16 something like that core processors and your 4 core you buy today will be worth jack squat.

So, anyone who has bought a quad core processor was a moron.

I just wanted to say, your an idiot. DUO is a brand name, by Intel. DUOs are dual-core. I dont know who told you DUO and dual core are different but theyre an idiot too. dual-core is just the generic name.

[chris183]

just to make this simple and clear..unless you make movies or got something to do with rendering/compressing big files, dont bother with a quad core for now

if you want to play games go dual.....

and if you get a dual core get an intel over 3 ghz dont get amd because even though they are the same ammount of ghz there not as good because the cache sizes are smaller..

and yeah the 3.0+ intels are highly overclockable even on air

and these days smooth performance in games is alot about your processor so dont slack...even an 8800 will handle graphics fine but if you got bad processor your performance will suffer greatly

[iMicro]

Again, you need to ask yourself:

1. Do I wait for my computer to do any task that I wish was faster? We all wait for computers, but is there something that you sit back and say "I really wish this was faster?"
2. Is the time saved worth the price?
3. Are my games CPU limited?
4. Will my existing hardware support it?
5. Have I overclocked things as much as I can or am willing to?
6. Have I removed bottlenecks and optimized things as much as possible?

But even if 5/6 are NO i'd still get one, lol.

[TheKingOfMMO]

I just wanted to say, your an idiot. DUO is a brand name, by Intel. DUOs are dual-core. I dont know who told you DUO and dual core are different but theyre an idiot too. dual-core is just the generic name.

You misunderstood. I was saying DUO core TECHNOLOGY vs DUAL core TECHNOLOGY. (As in that age) they are refered to now as Duo-technology not because of a shift in the number of cores (they both have 2 cores of course) but..in how they work. See, the dual core technology is more like 2 seperate cores working as one. However the duo core technology is more like 1 solid core working as 2..if that makes sense. Let me try to make an anology: Ok. Water pumps. The ammount of water pumped is the data. Ok. The water pump with dual core technology was two seperate pumps stuck together. It pumped out water at 40 psi per core or nozzle in this anology. Ok. So thats 80psi total. Now, the Water pump with Duo core technology is a pump that has one single nozzle; but the nozzle is much wider. It still shoots out at 80 psi (the force with 2 seperate nozzles in one pump)...BUT since the nozzle is so much wider: more water (data) is moved using the same ammount of pressure. You see, the pressure, in this analogy, is the clock speed. They may be close to the same in Dual vs Duo and it may be the same number of cores (2). So even though they are both 2 cores with a clock speed close to the same...they still need to be seperated..and we do this by saying "Duo core technology" vs "dual core" you see the duo core can be working at the same clock speed (80 psi in my analogy--- or lets say 3.0ghz). They are both 2 cores, both running at 3.0ghz (clock speed.) BUT the Duo core can move much more data per cycle. So at the same clock speed the dual core will pump through less data total than the Duo. Thats why the make the distinction with these two very distinctive pieces of technology. So, thats why I said it's DUO core not DUAL core because Dual core is old technology. Hope that makes sense to you. It's a common mistake that people have spread and is considered common knowledge that dual = duo. But they are NOT the same there is a reason for the distinction. Even if you google it now everyone is gonna say in 99% of things you read that DUAL=DUO but if you really dig deep and do your research you'll see that 99.95% of people are wrong. Just like if I asked how much time is in a day people would say 24 hours. But that's not the right answer. So..heh. Now you know.

[MudkipzLikesYou]

OS Vista 64bit(already own)
Full tower case
LCD monitor 22 inch
PSU 600w
2x2GB ram DDR2
Nvidia 9800GTX
Dual Core 3.0ghz L2 3MB


Should i make any changes in the hardware?

[Tankster]

When I got my new computer about 6 months ago, I read online it's better (for example) to have a 3.01ghz x dual core (my computer ), than a 2.4ghz x quad, or anything lower than 3.01.

Quad won't be able to be utilized for a long time, and even then, dual core is more efficient.

You fail. Yes, quad won't be FULLY utilized for a little while longer but it IS currently being utilized. But then you fail again, you see, once quads are fully utilized by programs they will easily be more efficient than dual cores. Heck, even now they are more efficient if you know how to set core affinity.

[cinderboy]

Duo = 2

Dual = 2

So dual must equal duo.

... man u r full of win...

[TheKingOfMMO]

There is no question quad is better than dual core.

Yes there is. And it's a very good question. And the fact is: Today a Core 2 Duo processor at x ghz is a better buy (at the same price of course) than a quad core at < x ghz.

[skizzot]

Yes there is. And it's a very good question. And the fact is: Today a Core 2 Duo processor at x ghz is a better buy (at the same price of course) than a quad core at < x ghz.

and you base this on what? nothing...i use Maya , photoshop , bryce , blender and several other programs that are intensive on my CPU..dual core doesnt cut it compared to my quad..