Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: AirFlyer on July 08, 2009, 06:21:59 PM
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Being an owner of the older Intel Quad-Core series, a Q6600, I've been wondering about making it into a Dual-Core by shutting off two of the cores.
The reason I've been thinking about this is because several places I've read that Dual-Cores are better for gaming while Quad-Cores seem to do better in the area of media encoding and such. From what I read the reason for this is something to do with the L2 memory but honestly I can't completely remember why. ATM I run a Q6600 anywhere from 3.2Ghz - 3.6Ghz and I was wondering if it would do better as a Dual-Core and the same if not higher clock. I don't do a lot of media encoding but I am a big gamer so I was curious if this would be beneficial or a waste of my time.
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Being an owner of the older Intel Quad-Core series, a Q6600, I've been wondering about making it into a Dual-Core by shutting off two of the cores.
The reason I've been thinking about this is because several places I've read that Dual-Cores are better for gaming while Quad-Cores seem to do better in the area of media encoding and such. From what I read the reason for this is something to do with the L2 memory but honestly I can't completely remember why. ATM I run a Q6600 anywhere from 3.2Ghz - 3.6Ghz and I was wondering if it would do better as a Dual-Core and the same if not higher clock. I don't do a lot of media encoding but I am a big gamer so I was curious if this would be beneficial or a waste of my time.
I'm no expert for sure. However, unfortunately, it doesn't stop me from giving some thoughts. I believe you are thinking that the games are using all 4 cores. That is not so. From what Skuzzy has said, AH is one of the few multi-threaded games around. Even then no matter how many cores you have it only uses two. So whether you have 4 cores or 2 cores it doesn't matter, it's only going to use 2. Video editing on the other hand, as I understand, can use the 4 cores. Therefore it's faster in that environment. What really matters is the clock speeds, according to experts. Most quads run slower than duo cores. If your quad runs the same as a duo core then you are having the same experience as that duo core. Providing all other factors are equal.
That's how I see it and that's the conclusion I draw from what I have heard and read. Hopefully someone will either agree or correct my thinking.
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This is true, but I'd be curious about the heat saved by literally shutting down half the CPU. That could go into bumping the clock up.
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Heat isn't really an issue for me, at 3.6Ghz right now idle I'm 38C on the CPU and 27C - 30C on the cores.
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Maybe so, but you'd probably still get less heat with the cores halved...then could over clock the two remaining even further. That comes from a very basic knowledge of how CPUs really work, though.
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Capped till I get higher speed RAM ATM. Even when OCing I try to get a 1:1 ratio and I hit cap at 3.6Ghz with DDR2-800. Mobo supports up to DDR2-1200 though which technically gives me options up to 5.4Ghz though I doubt I could get anywhere near that on air.
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Capped till I get higher speed RAM ATM. Even when OCing I try to get a 1:1 ratio and I hit cap at 3.6Ghz with DDR2-800. Mobo supports up to DDR2-1200 though which technically gives me options up to 5.4Ghz though I doubt I could get anywhere near that on air.
You can get to 5.4 ghz on air, you may have to move your computer to 90 deg S and 0 deg W.
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waste of time.
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whats the benefits if a quad core over dual core then? :uhoh
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sorry "of" not "if" :x
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whats the benefits if a quad core over dual core then? :uhoh
It depends on if you're into video-related work or not. Programs such as Sony Vegas or Adobe Premier can and will utilize all four cores of a quad-core CPU which means the work is completed in a much shorter time-frame. However, since most applications and games today can only utilize 2 cores of your CPU a dual-core CPU is all you need when you won't be doing any video-related work.
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:aok
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I don't think it would make any sense to try to shut down two cores even if you could. Even from a heat perspective if an aplication is only using two cores then the other two are unused and thus not producing heat.
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Even if you shut down the two cores, the heat increase will most likely affect the entire CPU.
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you can use cpu finity ( use the windows task manager )
set all appls to finity cpu 0 or cpu 1
you have now a 4core that runs on 2 cpu's
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You're in the position of a guy who owns a car with a normal V8 engine, asking about disabling half of the cylinders because some race cars use 4 cylinder engines.
Basically you can't get there from here, and frankly there is no need. You won't get more L2 cache per core by disabling half of your cpu any more than pulling out 4 spark plugs from a V8 engine will make the other 4 cylinders more efficient. Clock speed is essentially your only concern, and you can address that by smart overclocking or by buying a faster cpu and then overclocking that one.
The dual core cpus come from the factory clocked faster than the quad core cpus, and they will generally overclock to a higher clock speed as well. That said, you ought to be able to overclock a quad core cpu to at least as fast as the stock clock speed of a similar dual core cpu, with very little trouble. With a good heatsink/fan, a decent motherboard, and some smarts on how to work with memory ratios, you should be able to overclock your quad core cpu until it's faster than almost any retail dual core cpu's stock settings.
And you'll still have 4 cores instead of 2, which means some software and your operating system will probably run smoother/faster especially when you're running more than one program at once. Finally, if you're concerned with AH performance, AH uses all cpu cores so although you might get slightly faster AH performance with a really fast dual core cpu, you're going to be just fine with a quad core cpu. Overclocking your quad will just be icing on the cake.
I went with a dual core E8400 for price/performance, bang for the buck, nothing else. But if I really wanted more performance, I wouldn't consider for a second buying a faster dual core cpu. I'd buy a quad core cpu and overclock it.
In my opinion, the dual core cpus are better for "value" and price/performance ratio. Many of the people buying dual core cpus for raw performance are people who don't actually PLAY games, rather they just want to run benchmarks and brag about how fast their system is. If you want more cpu power and have the money to spend, you're best off getting a fast quad core cpu and overclocking the heck out of it. That's because more and more software and games are using all available cores. Don't get me wrong, you can build a very very fast system with a dual core cpu. But at some point you'll benefit from more cores or a more efficient architecture instead of just higher clock speeds.
If you really feel shortchanged in the cpu department, toss out what you have and get a top end i7 based setup. Then overclock THAT.
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The Q6600 is one of the best processors ever to come out. It will easily overclock to 4GHz (G0 series) on the right MB and Mem. hands down the Q6600 will out perform a Dual any day of the week. The price of this processor is at 200 on NewEgg and hard to find from vendors and distributors. NewEgg sold this processor in November or December for about 160.00 Just goes to show you how in demand they are will limited availability.
TD