Are quad cores worth it?

In time I'm sure their full potential will be able to be grasped.....so should I get one?

My options of CPUs on different PCS are...

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33GHz

or

AMD Phenom X4 9850 Quad Core 2.5GHz

or I can get one of these dual cores..

Athlon X2 7750 2.70GHz

or

Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 2.8GHz

So really the question is what is better? More cores, or faster CPU speed?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by reaper on June 20, 2009 at 6:23pm: if your programs don't fully utilize all 4 cores then its pretty useless

however if the processor prices are the same, i'd go for a quad anyways lol

if you like messing with pins go with amd, they still overclock better......i just prefer intel cpu installs

for a cost savings i'd wait until the upcoming core i5 and i3's come out as it will force a markdown on the current core 2 duo and core 2 quad lines; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Alucard on June 20, 2009 at 9:32pm: i have no clue what you are talking about, mine came with zero bent pins.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by IMPMAC on June 22, 2009 at 1:52am: bent pins = worst nightmare; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by reaper on June 22, 2009 at 1:12pm: i'm just not very gentle with cpus and i've had amd pins fall off.....not saying they come out of the box with bent pins lol; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by medinamatt on June 20, 2009 at 6:34pm: to be future proof, yes.

otherwise. do what reaper said.

core 2duos will get really cheap then, as well as core 2quads.

wow. this makes my decision to get a macbook or custom build an awesome ubuntu machine(or windows 7) that much harder.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Cookenstein on June 20, 2009 at 6:41pm: I would usually say bigger better faster always, but in this case, the question is really, what do you expect to get? I would think that currently with Vista, or Windows 7, the speed differences you actually see will be slight at best. Maybe when multitasking will Intel do better here, but then the next question is Ram and Graphics, and how much.
If money is the driving factor here, Dual Core will serve your needs fine for the very short term future.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Izzy on June 20, 2009 at 6:44pm: Well the thing is they're all in the same range ($500-$700 for the comps with the CPUs)......so yeah I guess I'll run with the quads. But what are these i3s, i5s, and i7s I've heard of?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by reaper on June 20, 2009 at 7:03pm: the core 2 and core 2 quad lines are being replaced by the nehalem series....otherwise currently known as the i7

i7 will be the high end, i5 mainstream, and i3 value based

as far as i know the i7 and i5 are quad core, with the i3's being the mixed low end quad/dual core

check this out for more details http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=18944; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by reaper on June 20, 2009 at 7:15pm: i'll agree amd can be a fine alternative, it all comes down to preference :)

i hate pins so i stick with intel heh; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Justin on June 20, 2009 at 8:54pm: I was less excited about the i7's performance at first than the system overall performance. You have to account for the fact that the i7 or LGA1366 platform is a great leap in the entire Core architecture. I was excited to get a onboard memory controller (something AMD had first), I was excited to get triple channel ram in the cutting edge DDR3 variety, and I was ecstatic that my board plays nice with both SLI and Crossfire. When the system was finished however I was unprepared for the more than impressive performance of the chip itself performing tasks that were previously painful to watch. MediaCoder for example is a up and coming transcoding platform that is one of the few that truly supports multithreading (no it doesn't use multiple cores to process several videos, it parallels) this is pertinent to all of us PMP fanatics (iPod, Zen, Archos, etc.) it can takes hours for us to get our precious shows in these restrictive formats on a single or dual core CPU and that just won't work when we are in a hurry. I have seen iPod touch transcodes at the top of the hardware limits encode at over 150FPS, that is a complete format change and it is utterly sick. So you decide, is it worth it to have quad core performance?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Izzy on June 20, 2009 at 10:01pm: Well the i3,i5,i7,etc cores kind of just confused me. When are they due out anyway? And what is the presumed time till quads are outdated?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by medinamatt on June 21, 2009 at 10:42am: a while until quads are done.

companies are just now making their software better for dualcore processors.

as for when the i3 and i coming out, i have no clue

i7 is already out; ▶ Reply to This