Need hardware upgrade advice - should I go dual core or quad core?

[Sengin]

If you can wait, I would highly highly recommend waiting a little while longer.  Intel is releasing its next generation processor Q4 '08/Q1 '09, the Nehalem.  Not ONLY will it have at least 4 cores (2,4, or 8, depending which version you want), but it has a nice little feature called Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMP) that executes two threads on the same core.  So essentially, you can process 8 threads at a time, equivalent to an 8-core processor.  BUT even better, is that an early version that was tested on a motherboard that wasn't ready yet scored much better than the 2.66GHz Penryn core (the Q9450) at the same clock speed (2.66 GHz).  The reason it outperformed the Q9450 is because of many advances and changes in the archetecture (moved loop detection to the decode stage of the pipeline, increase most if not all of the buffers on the chip, got rid of the FSB and instead goes with a memory controller on the chip which can access memory much faster than the FSB, and many other changes).  Nehalem is going to be a BEAST.  And Intel SUPPORTS overclocking with it (and it'll be easy to overclock on just air because it's a 45 nm chip like the Q9450).

Check out the preview here:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3326&p=1

[Oshyan]

SMT is just an improved version of Hyperthreading. It is *not* the equivalent of 8 cores. From the article you reference "Note that as in previous implementations of Hyper Threading (or other SMT processors) this isn't a doubling of execution resources, it's simply allowing two instruction threads to make their way down the pipeline at the same time to make better use of idle execution units. Having 8 physical cores will obviously be faster, but 8 logical (4 physical) is a highly power efficient way of increasing performance."

That being said in some cases the exhibited performance *is* pretty impressive as compared to an 8 core non-SMT CPU.

- Oshyan

[Blonderator]

Well the price difference between an 8 core (physical) and 4 core (physical) processor is probably high enough that most would settle for a quad core with SMT.


And to the OP, you should definitely wait. Even if when they are released, you can't afford the new Nehalem series of cards, keep in mind all the older cards will probably all have price drops. It's always disappointing to take the jump and then a week after you buy your gear you are surprised to find a new series of cards was released. Although this is a very frequent problem right now - graphics cards and processors are both advancing at an extremely fast rate.

[Sengin]

SMT is just an improved version of Hyperthreading. It is *not* the equivalent of 8 cores.
- Oshyan

I know, I tried to imply that by saying "essentially the same"   I figured that if someone would be asking "which is better, dual or quad?" I wouldn't need to go deep down into the difference of Hyper-Threading and another core

It's still pretty awesome though.

[BlueRose]

Ive been reading a bit on quad cores, and tho the Intel Nehalem sounds pretty jazzy, the AMD quad core seems to be the quiet performer esp in the range of power saving and efficiency.

Electricity is getting expensive, and if we dont get some rain soon, its going to be rare as well, so power efficiency is a fairly important point for me.

But I dont know much about these new Nehalems?

[Will]

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=4205.0

[Sengin]

Ive been reading a bit on quad cores, and tho the Intel Nehalem sounds pretty jazzy, the AMD quad core seems to be the quiet performer esp in the range of power saving and efficiency.

Actually, Intel's 45nm chips are excellent in terms of power effeciency and power-saving techniques when they are idle or lightly used (the 45nm includes any of the Penryn cores such as the Q9450 and the upcoming Nehalems).  The 65nm chips not so much.  And if you want performance, don't go with AMD right now (if it was a few years ago, I would have told you the opposite).  AMD is behind Intel and seems to be falling farther and farther behind.  The only thing witht he Nehalems is that you'd have to buy a new motherboard (which I'm pretty sure you'd have to do now if you wanted to upgrade to a dual-core or quad-core you probably don't have a motherboard that can use those CPUs) and you'd have to get DDR3 RAM instead of DDR2.  DDR3 is superior to DDR2, but it's new and the price is still a bit high (but there will likely be a price drop by the time the Nehalem comes out).

[buchvecny]

meh dont bring the nehalems yet... they will go on somewhen (new word?) in late winter, and nehalem means new mboard DDR3

[Sengin]

Yeah, that's what I said.  But if he wants to upgrade from a single-core, he's likely going to need a new motherboard anyway.  And DDR3 is more expensive now, but it's better than DDR2 and the price should come down before the Nehalems come out.