Upgrading soon: dual core or quad core?

On July 22nd, Intel is dropping prices like mad, so it got me thinking about upgrading my PC. I'm looking at the E6850..3GHz x2 sounds nice! But when I saw the price of quad core, that becomes tempting too!

These are both the same price:

Model, Frequency, FSB, L2 Cache, Price, UK Pricing
Core 2 Duo E6850, 3.00GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB, $266, £160
Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2.40GHz, 1066MHz, 2x4MB $266, £160

I'm leaning towards the E6850.. faster core speed, faster FSB.. but I hear more games will be supporting quad-core soon (ie, Crysis). The benchmarks for quad core are amazing, *IF* the game or app supports it (few do right now, and SL is still single core, correct?).

What would you guys get, for SL and for games in the future?

I am pairing this with an 8800GTS and at least 2GB RAM.

I'd stick with dual for the next year or two. Even two cores are a waste right now. I have a dual core P4 and I still don't see much out there that uses my second core. And yes Second Life only supports a single core.

However, one good thing with a dual core..........I can have SL and GIMP open and running with no noticable slow down (in either program). I can even launch Internet Explorer or my mail and only see a slight slowing.

Right now it appears that multicores are mostly useful for people who like several programs running at the same time. Very little in the way of software makes use of the 2, 4 or more cores.

Or even wait for CSI to ship next year..

Csi?

Larrabee cpu? 2010 and doubt that one will be availible for public for awhile

http://xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20070627133943.html

Quad core will prob be got to have at end of 2008, right now go with dualcore, im looking on the price drop on 22th to, hopefully they will drop it here, been saving up to a new upgrade myself so watching it.

Most PCs today use a Front Side Bus (FSB) to connect processors to memory - sortofa single, shared channel that all CPUs use to get at the PCs memory.

Common System Interface (CSI) is an upcoming architecture from Intel that gives each processor a dedicated channel to its own memory - instead of the processors fighting for access to the FSB, they each have an open road.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_System_Interface
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_side_bus

CSI is kinda sorta similar to NUMA.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Uniform_Memory_Access

/me wonders how big-memory applications like SL will behave on CSI/NUMA machines. Could be that they'll take a performance hit with SL wanting to use all the memory on the machine...

well in my opinion you should stick with Dual core, untill manufactures or OS incoperate aplication processor selection most of the multi core PCs usualy only take advantage of one core at a time. this does leave you the other for other applications however it usualy has to be manualy set in the Task Manager to pevent overloading of a processor core.

for we of the dual (or quad) i recomend getting an affinity application to manualy set up the processor loads. I use something called ROPE (Run On procesor Exclusively) which can be used threw the shortcut so you dont have to change the running programs affinity manualy every time you start it.

Yah, still single core, at least on the Mac. Altho SL spreads itself across all 8 cores of my Mac Pro 8-core 3 GHz cuz thats Mac OS X doing the work, SL itself only uses 100% CPU instead of 800% CPU. So when I'm running SL each core floats between 10%ish and 15%ish.

So SL runs fast but not blazing fast. I still gotta turn down my quality sliders to get a good FPS if I'm in a busy sim. But I can run Photoshop, Lightroom, *and* SL at the same time with no slowdown! LOL

I just made the mistake of reading the latest column at Dan's Data, in which he talks about how the Q6600 can easily be o/c'ed to 3.2GHz.. now I'm leaning towards the quad again lol

Ask Dan

Hahahahhahah.................you just want the hottest, badest damned machine out there!!!

Go for it LOL

Leaning towards the c2d6850 myself, <.< but...what on earth am i playing that can justify a upgrade >.< tempting tho

SL makes no use of the second core, but it's still worth having -- it means that you can run something else in the background (email, web browser, graphic editor) and your SL client barely notices. Four cores won't be much improvement for most users, though the serious graphics geeks might get something from it -- Photoshop will use multiple cores now, so you could let if have the three that SL doesn't want.

Remember to buy RAM. Lots and lots of RAM. Good thing it's cheap now.

client / rendering / run multiple threads

^
That sposedly spread load on multiple cores, not that i seen it do much -.-

If you wait until the 4thQ Of the yeara Intel and AMD will be releasing their new and faster Core(s). Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 is now release for aroun 999.00 US. 3.0GHz price is not bad. But I waiting until end of year to build my new system.

aye the months are almost up, yay more power

even if you cant afford the latest and greatest this is good news becuase the older stuff will drop in price like madness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

Scuttlebutt on the Internet says stick with Dual Cores, or wait till 6 months from now for the new Quad Cores from both AMD & Intel.

Even the reviews of Intels C2E QX6850 (quad core) were saying it'll be surpassed in a few months by the new ones coming out.

Sortta makes you wonder why resellers of systems used to use the phrase 'FutureProofing' when describing a system... in reality, what it meant was the time it took to ship that system from their warehouse to your door. There is 'always' new systems on the horizon.... maybe place a bid for Big Blue.... now IBM have the Watson Farm system now?
There are still no garentuees that SL will perform any better, as it's very much subject to the internet links and LL servers.

probally wont run any better, just like with dual cores, sl is a single threaded application, the other one is just sitting around

the only advantage would be the new manufacturing process, which might gain you some %'s on a benchmark

After doing some research and thinking about what I use my PC for, I went with ..*drum roll*..the Q6600! The price is too good for all that processing power. SL won't benefit much (unless LL upgrades to Havok 4.. not holding my breath) but there are enough apps coming out in the next year that will. Gaming-wise, there's Bioshock, Alan Wake, Crysis, and whatever Valve is working on. It's a given that the majority of next-gen 3D engines will all be designed for multi-core. Not that any of this matters if all you play is SL, where single or dual core is fine.

Now I need to pick out a motherboard, some DDR2 RAM, and possibly a beefier PSU! (I've been upgrading my PC gradually over the year, much easier on the wallet this way.)

btw, newegg bumped the price of the q6600 to $375, likely because of demand ? I bought mine from mwave for $280 yesterday and the price went up today. just an fyi if you're going to buy one, prices are all over the map so shop around.