few questions

[ragz45]

Looking into upgrading my PC, so I have a few questions.

1. Is there a large performance increase between a core 2 and a quad core? Or do you only notice a large increase when running multiple programs at the same time? The two processors i'm looking at are.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037

[ragz45]

forgot to mention. I do a lot of 3d design work. So the quad core is specifically tempting to me. But if i'm going to actually loose a lot of performance going from a 3.0ghz 1333 fsb dual core to a 2.4ghz 1066fsb quad core while running games like AOC i may just stick with a core2duo.

Or would i actually not loose any processing speed while gaming with the quad core. I know a lot of people are saying that the quad core is overkill for AOC. But if i'm not going to loose any processing power even though the quad core has lower specs, then i might as well go with the quad core.

[snipurs]

When having quad processors you will see a increase in speed, but even more significant increase in using multi-programs and having no lag. So basically figure you can run a game with 2 processors, which free the other two to run all back ground programs thus increases game performance.

Hope that helps ^^

[Twitchmonkey]

If you work in 3d, I highly recommend quad-core, it significantly boosts render times. It's not important for games at the moment, but definitely for rendering.

[ragz45]

I've heard quite a bit of nice things about the quad cores and using softplan and directdraw (architectual software), but I've also heard that core2duo's run AoC better than a quad core (because AoC dosn't take advantage of quad core. I'm currious if this might change in the future though.

[snipurs]

It depends on how popular the quad is. Just like the 64 bit, People didn't catch onto it and Some games I
can't even play because of 64. Some games that just came out haven't even been tested on 64 bit. So again it depends on consumer and the game devs.

[Twitchmonkey]

Games run fine on my quad core. You might get a few less FPS with it compared to a comparable dual, but it'll cut your render times in half. Plus, games should eventually support quad-cores more thoroughly, you just have to give them time. The dual core is fairly new and they've made use of that, so they should come around soon. Then you'll have the octocore people complaining that their processors are being underutilized.