How Many Cores do You Want?

[slaveofconvention]

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

Ditto - to be honest, 95% of what I do on the computer since I got the Xbox is just as quickly done on the Q-Core 8GB RAM desktop as it would be on the 1.5 atom 1.5GB netbook... My next upgrade for the desktop will almost certainly be down to hardware failure, not a need for any more power...

[blueonblack]

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.

Nothing wrong with future-proofing if you're building anyway. If it's been a decade you probably did the same thing then.

[billygoat333]

I want lots of cores. this said... I have... well only two. and its an older two... but the pair does ok.

[Technochicken]

I'd love to get one of the new AMD six cores- a little more than twice the cpu power for twice the price of my current one- but I'd probably be better off upgrading my GPU first, especially now that more and more softwares are getting GPU acceleration.

[Trace]

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

How about a 6-core i7 at 5Ghz? We did it today! (well, not 100% stable but hey!)

[silverdemon]

I rather have higher clock-speeds than lots of cores at this moment. Since most of the software I use is either not that CPU-heavy or not optimized for multiple cores.

The second software writers create programs that are extremely effective with more cores I'll probably say: the more the merrier...

[Konrad]

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

I couldn't agree more.

Better to go back to idea of having your numbers eaten by one large grizzly bear instead of a pack of wolves. Maybe not as efficient in crunching-vs-energy terms, but it's just somehow more manly. Probably because it's simpler to figure out.

Of course, if multi-core is the way of the future, I'm thinking more is always better. I bumped into this. Too bad it'll be obsolete ten years from now, when I can afford it.

[Konrad]

Here's a recent find. Tilera 100-core processor, 750 GFLOPS. It's for real (though not selling as well as their 64-core version).

[Edit]
They're already working on a 200 core version.

[chaksq]

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

Agreed!

[BruteClaw]

For now my 4 core AMD Phenom II does great. Average day to day stuff only sees a max of 70% on one core while the rest sit idle at 5%. Playing some games designed for multi core will see 100% usage, but no real effect on performance by them being maxed out. So for now I am happy with my 4 cores, but when they start writing more multi core capable applications it will be the more the merrier.