Benefits of a CPU upgrade?

DeaconFrost · 17 Jun 2010

RST101 said:

It only stands to reason really as the cpu is the brain of our systems, forever receiving and giving feedback so if you have got four/six brains the more efficient the multitasking will be.

Assuming you are using software that's able to use four cores over one or two. For example, many games in the past few years won't perform any better on a Quad2Core than a similar clock speed Core2Duo. Those extra two cores sit idle. With something like Handbrake, you can see a nearly 50% drop in encoding times because those two extra cores will be fully utilized. I saw this first hand when I switch from an E8400 to a Q9550. My Handbrake times dropped dramatically, but yet most gaming scores remained roughly the same.

stormy13 · 17 Jun 2010

bilzmale said:

I have the same MB but am upgrading to a 785/710 chipset MB that will tale my AM2 cpu and allow future upgrade to AM3. I'm doing it a bit at a time like you, new case this time round and an extra internal HDD.

Which board, as most of the 785/710 boards are AM3 and DDR3 only?

RST101 · 18 Jun 2010

DeaconFrost said:

RST101 said:

It only stands to reason really as the cpu is the brain of our systems, forever receiving and giving feedback so if you have got four/six brains the more efficient the multitasking will be.

Assuming you are using software that's able to use four cores over one or two. For example, many games in the past few years won't perform any better on a Quad2Core than a similar clock speed Core2Duo. Those extra two cores sit idle. With something like Handbrake, you can see a nearly 50% drop in encoding times because those two extra cores will be fully utilized. I saw this first hand when I switch from an E8400 to a Q9550. My Handbrake times dropped dramatically, but yet most gaming scores remained roughly the same.

Sorry for the confusion here squire but I was referring to the fact quads are able to perform several duties at once and not just a single application.

Lordbob75 · 18 Jun 2010

RST101 said:

DeaconFrost said:

RST101 said:

It only stands to reason really as the cpu is the brain of our systems, forever receiving and giving feedback so if you have got four/six brains the more efficient the multitasking will be.

Assuming you are using software that's able to use four cores over one or two. For example, many games in the past few years won't perform any better on a Quad2Core than a similar clock speed Core2Duo. Those extra two cores sit idle. With something like Handbrake, you can see a nearly 50% drop in encoding times because those two extra cores will be fully utilized. I saw this first hand when I switch from an E8400 to a Q9550. My Handbrake times dropped dramatically, but yet most gaming scores remained roughly the same.

Sorry for the confusion here squire but I was referring to the fact quads are able to perform several duties at once and not just a single application.

That is the theory, but to be honest, I have never seen it used like that.

Then again, my use with 4 or 5 FF windows and iTunes running doesn't even stress core 0.
Though I have noticed that minimizing certain games will kick CPU core 3 through to about 80%. And other games see a rise in all cores.
Then again, I think this is because the mobo, CPU, and OS know to swap tasks amongst cores.

Either way, there is an advantage to them. Most average users would not notice a huge jump though.

~Lordbob

alphanumeric · 18 Jun 2010

stormy13 said:

bilzmale said:

I have the same MB but am upgrading to a 785/710 chipset MB that will tale my AM2 cpu and allow future upgrade to AM3. I'm doing it a bit at a time like you, new case this time round and an extra internal HDD.

Which board, as most of the 785/710 boards are AM3 and DDR3 only?

Thats a good point, I had to read up on that. I thought it was all back wards compatible, but it is and it isn't. AM3 CPU's like mine can handle DDR2 and DDR3 and work in a AM2+ or AM3 socket motherboard. AM2 CPU's like the OPs can only handle DDR2 and therefore won't work in an AM3 socket motherboard. It's good for me, my motherboard is AM2+ and my CPU is AM3, not so good for bilzmale. He has the same motherboard but an AM2 CPU.

DeaconFrost · 18 Jun 2010

Lordbob75 said:

That is the theory, but to be honest, I have never seen it used like that.

Exactly.

RST101 said:

Sorry for the confusion here squire but I was referring to the fact quads are able to perform several duties at once and not just a single application.

Sorry to say, squire, it doesn't always work as it should in theory. In theory, two multi-threaded apps could use two cores each, and be just as fast as a dual core, but be able to finish two tasks rather than one. In theory. However, it rarely, if ever works this way. If you have a Quad Core, fire up two intensive apps, and you'll likely see they aren't splitting the cores in half for each job. What you'll likely see in your usage graphs is that all four cores are in use in vastly different percentages.