The Race is on - How Many Processors are in Your Box?

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My, my. While some are sticking with their single core processors, not wanting to make the move to dual core, it appears that two may not be enough anyway. It seems the next move will be Quad core:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1899666,00.asp

 

Just recently bought AMD64 -a single-core. Fully intend to survive with it for the next 6 years too. IMO, the development speed has decreased somewhat when comparing all three CPU purchases I have made:

(Pentium, ~200 MHz. Not mine, though.)
1) Celeron, ~500 MHz.
2) Athlon XP, ~1800 MHz.
3) AMD64, ~3500 MHz.

Yet, of these three, only the latest has been a "barely made it" (to run all games at max settings). Aren't the only one either...

Anyway, I do not believe that dual-cores will benefit us that greatly until the coders learn to use them properly -and there are about 4 or 8 cores dividing the work. For it to get to this point, I'm willing to bet that it takes at least 10 years and before that; other components will be more important. Like new type of HDD, which is the slowest component in today's PC. Or maybe that Havoc physics-card; it could be nifty.

So maybe there are already more cores than one: GPU-core, physics-core, CPU-core, audio-core, etc... Just wish they would integrate them all into a single board.

 

I wouldn't even know how to find out how many processors were in my computer . . . . . .

 

One!

 

I have recently upgraded to Dual Athlon 1.8, each one overclocked to 2.2 Ghz. Kick ass.

 

AFAIK, there's just one. There could be more, since mine's a rebuilt from spare parts.

 

Hmmm...I thought this thread was going to be about how many processors I have collected over the years...which would be 17, and of those, only 2 of them still work.

As for my "box" I only have one.

 

As of now, there's no real performance gain by switching to either 64-bit or dual core. Take the Athlon XP 3200+, and the Athlon 64 3200+, and you'll find their performance is almost identical (in fact the XP has a very very slight edge in some benchmarks. Go figure). Many people I know went for 64-bit saying that it will save them an upgrade in the years to come, but the truth is that by the time 64-bit applications come out (and become common enough that you'd need to start thinking about getting a 64-bit CPU), chances are your system will be so outdated that you'll need to buy a new one anyway. The same applies to dual core. Really, unless you're into real-time video editing, or molecular modeling, or some other such specialised activity, chances are you're never using your dual core or 64 bit capability. Naturally the X2 and even Athlon64 are faster than older CPUs, but that's simply because of their increased speed, nothing else.

As Wirhe pointed out, the real bottleneck in PC performance nowadays is the hard drive. SATA was virtually identical to ATA133 (which was virtually identical to ATA100 anyway), and while SATA II does seem to be an improvement, it's nowhere near as fast as its theoretical bandwidth says (300Mb/sec? riiiiiiiight ). And while HD techonology is going for smaller and smaller drives (in MP3 players anyway), there doesn't seem to be much going into speed. And spinning the hard drive faster won't matter much unless they find a way to keep it cool. Otherwise we'll end up buying hard drives every couple of months!

Back on topic, I've only got one core in my system, but you probably guessed that already

 

A bit misleading this thread - Everyone will have 1 processor, unless they have a rig based around a server motherboard. - although some may have multiple cores in their processor.

Dual/Multiple core processors are still only count as one processor, sorry to trainspot.

IMO Its a bit premature to start buying multi-core procssesors. Firstly the software has not been optimised for them yet. Secondly there will be the usual teething period where bugs show up, which I prefer to avoid.

@Disciple of the watch - what motherboard are you using to run 2 athlon XP 1800+s? Is it from Dreamtech?

 

True, but the performance boost is nowhere near the level it's been hyped. Having a dual core still does not mean that you can run 2 applications at once and not suffer dramatic performance loss (not to mention that Hyperthreading cores run slower than their non-HT equivalent when dealing with single tasks - go figure).

What I meant (and should have said) is that you're not taking full advantage of dual core/HT/64-bit.

 

That reminds me of the story about a lady of the evening and three clients...Oh, never mind.

Anyway, I just bought a new 'puter last year - one processor only. It'll be a few years before I replace it.

 

You can always count on Splunge to reduce a conversation down to the lowest level. Classic.

Plus he's so cool, he even has a abbreviation for computer.

 

To dual core or not to dual core that is the question?

I didn’t go dual core with my new computer because most applications/games don’t even take advantage of HT and 64 bit technology that most of the CPUs on the market have implemented today. What the CPU chip makers are doing is forcing new technology out at us before applications and other computer components have the chance to develop the technology to match the recent changes in the CPUs.

My guess is the CPU manufactures probably believe that most of the public does not understand how computers operate and that is probably why they release updated CPUs every couple months. I have a gut feeling that the CPU manufactures will be releasing quad core processors with dual core Hyper Threading technology around the same time that applications and other components are actually up to the standard CPU sold in today’s computer.

But you also have to figure it this way. The CPU and motherboards are the main point of operations on a computer. If the application technology was more advanced than the CPU technology many of us would be complaining at AMD and Intel to get their crap together to get up to speed. Given that I would rather have a CPU that can handle new technology that is not yet released to provide me the chances to upgrade to new applications or components if needed. If I didn’t have that new CPU/motherboard on my computer I would have to go out and upgrade my CPU/motherboard or possibly the whole computer.

The main reason I didn’t buy a dual core CPUs is that they don’t provide enough performance increase over a single core CPU to justify the extra cost. Maybe if the applications took advantage of the second core, the cost maybe justifiable. Since dual core CPU is new technology chances are it will be about a year or two before applications truly take advantage of the second core. My guess is that in two years applications will finally use HT and 64 bit technology.

 

Doubt it. If it happens, it will take at least 5 years, knowing how lazy people are in taking new stuff into use. After all, 32-bit and single-core are the safest, traditional choise. But maybe it will happen when the quad-cores come out...

 

I almost bought Windows 64 but truth be told many application that are 32 bit dont' run or need some modification to run properly in Windows 64. I do have to say that I have heard that dual core processors work extremely well in the 64 bit enviroment. I also heard a few new games work awesome and take advantage of the second CPU core. When I actually did research on the game and the actual speed increase compared to a single core CPU the speed increase was between 5-10%. Now the only difference in the systems was the CPU. Now if you are a heavy gamer or like to have 5+ applications open at once mabye a dual core CPU would be the right choice. My guess is that isn't the case for most people and that is why dual core CPU in my opinoin are not needed right now. Instead the CPU manufactures should be concentrating on providing end users with a faster clock speed with the current techology they have. I wouldn't mind a 5+GHZ CPU with HT and 64 bit technology in it.

I do know IBM and AMD now is working on their new CPU that is suppose to be 65N compared to the 90N of the current 939 socket. I wonder what that CPU will hold for us. Maybe the quad core processor with dual Hyper Threading technology I mentioned earlier. Or will they finally release a CPU that has 64 & HT technology with 5+ GHZ speed?

 

Moores law seems to have gone out the window the last few years, increasing CPU clock is not the most viable way of getting more performance out of processors.
Its interesting that something as fundamental as memory controller design is the main reason AMD outperform Intel at the moment in the desktop market, even at much lower clock speeds.
Its suprising that Intel have'nt tried to copy it in some way.
Add in the fact that 64 bit will hand them a bigger advantage when the next gen of windows finally arrives and Intel don't seem very attractive at the moment.

64bit processors main advantage is that they can handle 64bit integers in one pass whereas a 32 bit processor needs to break it down into 2 portions handling each one seperately.
I can't really say how often this occurs on a modern PC - but with the complex algorithyms used in software and games today you can guarentee its a fair amount.