Quote Originally Posted by Jowy Atreides View Post
it's a combination of future proofing and elitism
for the longest time companies have been trying to write some sort of code to rewrite any single threaded program into a multi-threaded one

if it ever happens then multi core cpu's just became serious for users other than server builders
Yes this is true, and its very very complex. If Intel had the answer they'd have it in the market, but right now they're mostly selling quadcores which have little use in everyday life (due to lack of quad-core aware/threadable applications/workloads) to people who don't know that they're not actually twice as fast as dual-cores, and may very well cost the same as a higher clocked dual core (which WILL directly benefit you today).

I believe most people who buy quadcores are a) enthusiasts trying to "future-proof" themselves or b) people who are uneducated about how processors and threading work, and assume 4 cores = 4x the speed of 1 core for everything. It's kind of a lie by omission for the average consumer, especially with sales guys at stores like best buy being comped to push the quads and lie to people who don't know the difference.

I was in a Microcenter recently, and I knew exactly what I wanted to buy. I wanted a fast dual core, as opposed to a slower quad core for the same price. This sales kid swore up and down he ran prey on a quad core and it threaded across all 4 cores and that I need to get a quad core! I said I'm pretty sure the game was single or dual threaded, but not quad threaded for 4 cores, so there's no way it could've done what he said. Every time I'd ask questions about something else like mobos for my prospective purchase, he'd bring it back to "hey btw I know you said you don't want a quad core but..." and "BTW the extreme processors have extra special chipset stuff that makes it faster".. these guys are unbelievable.

Quote Originally Posted by savantu View Post
??

Work isn't about opening time ; but how much it takes to get the job done.3 minutes instead of 4 is a huge improvement.For someone who is doing this on a daily basis it could means several days a month.

Nehalem has lots of untapped potential and this will become apparent with new generations of games.Games that are now in the market were designed in the 2004-2006 timeframe.Rest assured that those designed in 2006-2008 will be faster on Nehalem than on Core.
Of course work isn't about opening time, I was just making a point that I remember back in the day when you'd sit there waiting for a program to launch, and a faster CPU would load it up so much quicker and it was noticeable and you'd feel good about getting a fast processor and spending $400, because you immediately felt you got your money's worth. Now to me, my normal everyday experience feels the same with a 2.33 as with a 3.0 as with a 3.2 quad core.

Also, of course speeding up things that take a long time on the CPU is noticeable like video transcoding, but why do you care about that when a parallel processor via GPGPU is more suitable for that workload anyway, and already is much faster than even Nehalem at the task? The solution is already here TODAY for those heavy parallel loads. It's almost like you're saying "hey I made a faster hard disk drive!" after a new technology that is already faster like SSD has come out.

No one cares how fast the new version of something is if it's already slower than another technology at that same task because it's not as well suited to the task.

I guarantee you that despite the fact that Intel isn't saying this now because they want to continue selling processors, they'll start telling you how larrabee is better than any multi-core CPU once it's out.

Lastly, how could Nehalem be "untapped" except through some currently unused instruction set? Is there something like this added via nehalem?

Quote Originally Posted by Hornet331 View Post
you lost that bet.

im no on a E5200 and its nothing compared to a QX9650, most noticeable on daily bases on flash an animated gifs, but also on TF2, the cpu pukes itself when theres to much action even though i have a 4870 oced. On my QX9650 everything was smooth a a baby bottom, on the E5200 not... need to oc that lil bastard higher, 3,2ghz dont cut it.
Okay, maybe so, but the point is you can get a fast as hell dual core (3GHz) for $150 now and be running those games insanely fast. I remember I used to have to buy processors that were considered "fast but not extreme" for around $300-$400 (I bought an AMD Barton 3000+ with 400FSB ) but now I get something smoking fast in the $150 range.

I believe CPUs are amazingly more affordable now, largely because Intel is banking on quad-cores to make them money, even though they don't scale in most games or everyday tasks. People always argue that "the same thing happened with dual cores at first and now they're dual threaded, so that means we'll see games using 4 and 8 cores soon" but they're missing the point.. the more cores you have, it gets exponentially harder/more complex to thread efficiently (completely independent threads which don't stall each other).

So we can't safely assume that developers will be coding with ease on 128 cores a decade from now.. I believe the prevalence of dual-threaded applications is a phenomenon you can't just infinitely extrapolate on.