How Many Cores do You Want?

[TheGreatSatan]

Processors are on the path to Multi-Core whether our applications and games can handle it or not. I remember when I built my dual core AMD 6000+ and thinking this was my "Dream system", then a couple of years later updating my R2M5 to Quad. I don't yet have the desire to go to an i7 or a hexa-core, but I'm sure I will eventually.

At what point do you think you'll have enough cores?

[x88x]

You can never have too many!

Though, tbh, for daily use 2 is more than enough. The only time I even get close to maxing out my quad-core is when I'm playing really CPU-intensive games or working with large CAD files.

[Oneslowz28]

Right now I have, Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, iTunes, Word, Excel, and GTA IV all open at once. My Quad core is only using 38%. If I graph the usage out over an hour or so of heavy gaming I see a 100% spike every few minutes and it only last for a few seconds. I can load up 200 photos into photoshop and I have most of my basic editing set as actions and they are hotkeyed so I can run several CPU intense processes back to back as fast as I can press keys and I still only see a 40-60% usage across all cores. As we sit right now Quad core is all anyone really needs unless you are rendering video, 3d graphics and such. For the average user 2 cores will be plenty, for power users like us 4 and 6 cores should tide us over for a few years. Octa, Deca and Dodeca core processors are on their way to the enthusiast level though, and one day in the next few years we will see Icosa cored processors.

[x88x]

I will say, one place where squeezing massive numbers of cores onto a single chip will be great is driving down the cost of enterprise virtualization. I can run ~20 VMs on a 2x 4-core Opteron ESXi box, each with plenty of power to do normal desktop work. Imagine what could be done with thin-clients with a central server even just with current tech of, say, a top end of 8x 12-core Opterons, with a matching amount of RAM. Yes, the system would cost an ungodly amount to build, but it would be a tiny percentage of the cost of getting every single user a system that would watch the power available to each of them. Obviously a monolithic design like that would not be very fault-tolerant, but it's just a quick example.

EDIT:
Actually, looking at the current chip lineup, you could only do 6x 12-core Opterons.

[msmrx57]

At least for the next 10-12 years a quad would be plenty. I've got a AMD 6400 dual core now and rarely use all of it or even most of it. I'm not a huge gamer so the only thing I do that really uses a lot of processor is photos, and not all that often.

[Zephik]

I think I'd rather have a 5GHz i7 rather than 6 Cores.

[Drum Thumper]

I've got a Tri Core that I abuse on a somewhat regular basis--not nearly as abusive as CJ mind you, but I can run several aps no sweat.

[blueonblack]

Honestly, for me my quad is massive overkill, but that's why I have it.

I read an article on processing a while back that was talking about usage and the author said something to the effect of "With modern processors, just about all of the time the system has transistors just sitting around waiting for you to use them for something." My system has cores sitting around waiting.

I like that, but I'm done at quad for the foreseeable future.

[d_stilgar]

There was good article somewhere recently that showed gaming performance increases significantly from 1 to 2, and from 2 to 3, but that improvement drops out after that for almost all games. That said, there are some games that require dual core to run at all. I think there are more cores in our future.

1986 (when I was born) - Nintendo NES is a big deal
2010 - Six cores are a big deal
2033 -???

As unbelievable as the progress from the last 24 years has been, I think the progress in 24 more years will be just as unimaginable.

[Luthien]

I have the AMD 6 core. Do I really need that much processor? Probably not, but I needed a new one anyway (the build I'm working on is my first in about a decade), so I figured it'd be best to get a good one while I had the chance to.