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Quad core processor


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I'm still trying to figure out who told you that a dual-core processor would allow you to run two operating systems simultaneously.

 

Not simultaneously, for Macs (which I dispise (no offense)) you have to download bootcamp then install Windows. Then when it's installed you hold a certain button combo and you boot into windows. They were also talking about it in the TES official forums. I don't remember where though. Could you just answer the questions though. Maybe I misheard someone and am being retarded (I can flame myself right?).

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1. How does a quad, dual, and regular processor help with gaming?

2. Should I get a quad core, dual, or regular processor for my next gaming computer?

3. What happend to triple core? :P

 

 

In short form, it doesn't, unless game developers have started taking advantage of multiple processors since the last time I checked. The software has to be specifically designed to run parallel tasks on the different cores, or you won't see any improvement. My CPU-demanding raytraced renderings will benefit from as many cores/processors as I can physically fit in the case, but you won't see any fps improvement in Oblivion. Unless you do graphics/video editing/etc, save your money and don't buy the top-end "more cores than anyone else!!!" setup.

 

So save your money for the video card. The choke point in your system is probably there, not in CPU power.

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Is this what you're talking about Marxist? The thread has been canned (along with the Computing Articles forum, may it rest in peace) but I shall quote it:

 

It's a new processor technology...

 

The CMP used in multicore chips is a rehash of previous SMP technologies which implemented the seperate cores in completely different sockets. It goes back much farther than this, but immediately, I see that SMP is implemented in the Thunder K7 board that I'm using right now (ATX GES all the way, baby). This fine specimen of computing has to be five or six years old, and as such would just love to correct you on your statement on this being a new technology.

 

It's... the next generation up from 64-bit...

 

A dual-core K8 is still the same as a regular K8, generation-wise. Code compiled for one should run just fine on the other.

 

If Intel's figured out the great secret of putting two cores on a chip instead of one, also, then the same thing would go for them -- a dual core 686, like the hypothetical Intel Pentium 4 10GHz 233Hz FSB dual core Xtreme Edition with HyperThreading technology and included central air would be, generation-wise, the same as a regular Pentium 2 (yes, they've been using the exact same design for the last decade, just marketing it differently).

 

...It allows 2 processors to work together in unison for more power. I don't know if it literally doubles the power or not...

 

It doesn't. SMP and CMP cannot make any single task faster. For an architecture that did precisely what the user told it to do, and nothing else, that would mean that performace would not increase at all. However, we're talking about X86 processors, which pretty much single-handedly withstood a decade of Windows and all the (ahem) creative programmers that Windows brought to the table -- X86 prides itself on doing something completely different from what the programmer instructs it to do.

 

For instance, let's say that a program specifies that instruction XLRGE be performed on some set of resources. XLRGE takes 256 clock cycles to complete, and will only modify the set of resources that it's being performed on. The programmer also wants a second set of resources to be multiplied by each other, squared, and divided by five. These processes don't rely on any resources changed by XLRGE, and won't mess with anything that XLRGE depends on. Thus, the processor sees it as safe to do XLRGE on one core, and compute the product of all system registers squared and divided by five on the other. It won't make XLRGE any faster, but will get some oddball computations done in the background while it's finishing up.

 

However, that's only instruction-level parallelism, on only one program. Once a multitasking operating system like UNIX comes into play, seperate applications, and seperate parts of applications that have been defined by the programmer as acting independently from one another (as Oblivion has been designed) can, and often must, be executed at the same time. Previously, these processes had to share a single processor. With SMP and CMP, they can be spread out amongst different processors, coming closer to your concept of multiprocessing, while regrettably not living up to it entirely -- that hypothetical XLRGE instruction will still take 256 clock cycles, but, on the plus side, if two applications need it done at the same time on two different data sets, it can be done on two processors simultaneously.

 

This, as you would imagine, produces a much more significant speed boost. However, it also takes consideration on the part of the programmers to specify that entire blocks of their code are independent from one another, thus meaning that a poorly-programmed application with no regard for future-proofing -- for which, indeed, it is in the programmers' best interest to not future-proof it in any way, assuring that users will be caught up in a senseless upgrade cycle -- like, say, Microsoft Office, would not benefit from multiprocessing at all, at least until a new "super enterprise 2008" edition comes out.

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Right, so a dual core will be helpful for some games and quad core less then that. I might invest in a dual core but certainly not a quad core. That leaves one question left:

 

What happend to triple core? :P

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Oh, bother. Well, as I said, the quoted material still applies. However, the difference --- that is, the only difference --- is that instead of two cores, you now have four. If an application has four threads (or independent instruction sets) that it needs to run simultaneously, a quad-core processor would be theoretically able to allocate all of the threads to separate cores instead of having them share cores. However, to reap large performance benefits, each thread would have to mostly saturate the core that it's running on.

 

In general, applications designed to take advantage of any type of multiprocessing will have enough threads as possible --- that means that programs optimized for dual-core processors will generally scale well to quad-core processors. However, it may be the case that an application just isn't able to saturate four cores simultaneously, regardless of how many threads it has. As Peregrine said, this is the case more often than you'd think because the engine is waiting for other parts of the system to complete the tasks they've been given before sending more work to the processor. Certainly if an application if having a hard time saturating two cores, your money would be better spend on memory, video, &c.

 

As for triple-core processors, the X-Box 360 has one.

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Thanks for all the help guys! :D As Perigrine said I'd be better off spending that money on a better video card. Only thing left to do, is somehow get the money. :excl:
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