quadcore

Joao Sapiro · Jul 2007

saw this on cgsociety :
http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/itnews.php?tid=789466

and here is my question, right now i have a pentium D 3.4GHZ , is it worth it to change to quadcore ? And would i need to change the motherboard ? is there any way to know your motherboard exact specs ?

thanks all once again

Toomas · Jul 2007

Does the software you use support multi threading? Do you run a lot of programs at once? It most likely wont make mudbox or zbrush run any faster, neither should the viewport performance improve on other 3d apps. Rendering performance will increase a lot, assuming you have enough ram. Newer games might run faster if they do a lot of physics, but most still wont take advantage of multicore cpu's.

You can get the motherboard specs from manufacturers webpage usually. Or maybe Intel has a list of supported chipsets on its page.

Mongrelman · Jul 2007

Zbrush 3 might benefit as it's built to work with up to 256 cores, not sure how much it would help though.

For games, many can't make use of a quad core, from benchmarks I've seen a quad core over a dual core the FPS increase was from about 125(ish) to 140 (ish).

You would need a different mobo if you were to upgrade to a core duo or quadro. And DDR2 ram (you've probably got DDR1 in your current machine). And the mobo probably won't have an AGP slot, so you'd probably need a PCI express video card.

Summary:

We're talking building much of a new system to upgrade from what you have to a quadro.

Fordy · Jul 2007

Hi

As was already mentioned if your software doesn't support it, you woun't really gain any benefit.

However games such as Crysis will run much faster on a Quad core, presumably for the same reasons Unreal Tournament 3 will run faster, each core take control of different parts of the game.

So for instance, core 1 might run the actual game code, core 2, the A.I, core 3 the Physics, core 4 the Graphics. I think that's more or less how Tim sweeney said the UT 3 would benefit from a Quad core.

As for the existing motherboard, you might get a BIOS update that enables Quad core, or you might not. You might be better taking the plunge and getting a board designed to work with Quad core out-of-the-box.

Also Intel and AMD Quad cores differ. Intel's are basically 2 Core 2 Duos side by side where as the AMD chips are truly independant of each other and don't share system buses (or something like that!) which means they will probably perform better than the equivalent Intel offerings.

hawken · Jul 2007

do you also need a system capable of running @ 64bit?

I know the quad / 8core mac pro is 64bit, is that the same deal for pc machines?

Toomas · Jul 2007

hawken i dont think there has been a new 32 bit pc cpu released in over a year, atleast nothing highish end.

Mongrelman · Jul 2007

Yarp, core duo and quadro are 64 bit.

Jesse Moody · Jul 2007

well i'm just waiting for the mentioned price drop for this july and i'm snagging up a quad core to build a monster desktop. I would drop it in my laptop but they don't have the mobile versions yet. Some further research may find a fix but for now it's gonna go in a desktop.

You are better off building a new system if you are getting the quad core, since you will likely need a new mobo anyways and then new ram and possibly a video card, hard drive if you don't already have sata and a new power supply. So hmmm not much left to buy for a new rig. You can use your old cd/dvd drive or just grab a new one from newegg 20x sata dvd burner with lightscribe for like 40-50 bucks.

quadcore

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