Help Overclocking & Rounding Errors

[xguntherc]

WHAT, another key-chain. your saying if you were givin a Quad you would not use it over that old e8400.. common now. Seriously.

Fine. I'll play with it til it blows up. Crank her to 4.0 and see how bad it hates me.

 

[Fumz]

WHAT, another key-chain. your saying if you were givin a Quad you would not use it over that old e8400.. common now. Seriously.

Fine. I'll play with it til it blows up. Crank her to 4.0 and see how bad it hates me.

Exactly. Wolfdale, aka Penryn E8400 > Conroe Q6600... all day long, seriously.

Imho, quads just aren't there yet, so there's no point to them. No games I run actually take advantage of quads; games have a hard enough time using two cores to the fullest at the moment. While some games say they're coded for multi-core support, they don't actually efficiently use 4 cores. For the most part, the extra cores just sit idle and useless. The only thing they really do is limit your ability to overclock.

Secondly, quads still share one memory controller, so while some guys "think" their able to multi-task, one way or another, one of those tasks is going to run worse than the other because they have to share the same memory controller; that's the current bottleneck of quad cores. Until quads have more than one memory controller, there's nothing they can do that a dual core can't, just as efficiently. Yes, there are some specialized apps that use all 4 cores, but I don't run any of them, nor do I know anyone who does.

Third, games, which is the most demanding thing I ask of my system, are not cpu limited, so more cores or faster cores isn't going to improve my performance one bit; only a better gpu will do that, so that's where my money is going this Christmas. Once the 260's drop in price a little more (after the 55nm's come out), I'll be sweet... not to say that I'm not already sweet, but, well... buying crap at Christmas for myself is just a habit I've gotten into whether I actually "need" it or not. :D

 

[xguntherc]

I see ur point.. oh and it's Kentsfield.

ya but they might not be completely there yet, but it's still an improvement and a little more future proof. but also like you say, by the time programs, and games actually use all 4 cores. there will probably be Much much better Quads out..or things like i7

but whatever, fine. keep ur "Little" Duo, and one day when I upgrade. I'll just enjoy tweaking the hell out of this quad.

 

[Fumz]

Wolfdale > Conroe, Penryn > Kentsfield... tomato tomaahhto.

Over the years I've found that there's really no such thing as "future proofing". Sure, it sounds like a good idea at the time of purchase, but it never turns out the way you want it to; it can't because hardware changes so fast. Before you turn around there's always another socket, a newer video card that's twice as fast as the last gens or RAM that double the speed with half the latency than the stuff you're running now.

I always get what works the best now, never buying into the latest and greatest trap. People on the bleeding edge usually suffer a lot of blood loss in the pocket book and in terms of the amount of hair they pull out trying to get their brand new untested immature parts working properly... like they read about on the review sites, lol.

Don't get me wrong, I love those guys for what they do; without them, I would not be able to get rev.2 hardware with all the updates that make my rigs so much more stable and strong. :D ... more cheaply I might add.

When true quad core games come out that max out current dual core cpu's, we'll be well into Nehalem; Nehalems which will render current quads obsolete. Also, by that time, Nehalem will be a lot cheaper to buy. I would not count on there being too many more Qxxxx quads coming from Intel now that Nehalem is being released.

Lastly, no game developer who wishes to feed his family is going to push a game that only 0.05% of computers can play; they're smart guys who will always make their games available to as wide a market as possible, so that means dual cores will be viable for some time to come.

Also, I doubt you're going to find you'll get much more out of that Q6600? Sure, you could buy another board, but imho, $130.00 for a "possible" 100 or 200MHz at most really isn't worth the cost. You've done very well as it is despite the constraints of having an nVidia chipset. You should be proud of a job well done and save your coin for the new monitor you'll need ... because make no mistake, I'm liberating the one you have. :D