Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Retsof on July 09, 2011, 02:10:22 pm
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I have been browsing for a new comp recently, as my three year old laptop is beginning to get cranky. But I have to wonder, with six and even eight core processors around, what's the point? Especially when many of the games I play don't support multi-threading. Why not just have one big processor instead of so many little ones?
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Well, I presume the point is for most part that it's a lot cheaper and easier to make, say, 4 cores than it would be to make a single core that's four times as fast. I doubt the technology exists to make a 24Ghz CPU at a non-ludicrous price, but something like an 8-core 3Ghz CPU is clearly doable.
Besides that, I don't really know whether there's tangible benefits to be had from a multi-core architecture or not. Probably some, but notable ones as far as most people are concerned? I have no idea. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will drop by and explain.
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Because they hit a wall, they got to the point where they couldnt increase the clockspeed any more because of heat and power issues
intel claimed they would have a pentium 4 running at 10ghz before long they couldnt get it past 3.8ghz and the whole netburst architecture was scrapped
and while you may not be running many multithreaded games this will change over time
try running gta 4 on a single core (its horrible) its not even great on a dual core
ps: as you appear to be someone who doesnt replace their pc too often you should be looking at at least a quadcore preferably even more for the sake of longevity
and if buying a laptop for gods sake steer clear of intel graphics
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Because, as Intel found out with the P4, single-core designs do not scale well. You can increase the core clock as much as you want, but only at a cost of increased energy usage and heat wastage.
In the end, multicore processors are the way of the future, because they allow computers to run more tasks concurrently without slowing down.
Also, consider that recent designs are just as good in terms of single-thread power as the latest and greatest of the single-core generation, there's just no good reason to return to single-threaded designs (Except of usage scenarios where power is scarce, and processing power not that necessary, like mobile phones. Or toasters.)
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As I understand it, the latest generations of processors don't need software that is written with specific multi-threading in mind anyway, they can, to a limited extent, share jobs between cores automatically. Obviously, writing things to specifically make use of multi-core would be more efficient, but not doing so doesn't limit them to the speed of a single core.
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One thing that modern Intel chips do, for example, is to selectively increase a core's clock if it is used by a single process.
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I doubt its beneficial to buy more than quad core - certainly not at the cost of frequency. I would advise you to rather buy faster quad core than slower six core or even more slower eight core for the same amount of money.
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Also keep in mind that performance per hertz varies depending on how new/good the architecture of the chip is. A single core on a 2.2 GHz on the newest generation of i3/5/7 chips is faster than the equivalent number on a Core 2 or a Pentium. This is due to newer instruction sets and stuff. Therefore, you want a newer chip over an older chip even if its apparent clocks seem slightly lower.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth
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Even if a game or app doesn't support multithreading, your operating system does. Meaning it can assign one core for system processes, another for some app you're running, etc. And if you ever get into 3d and try to render something, you'll soon learn to appreciate multithreading..
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A processor core can only do one computation at a time. If you're multi-tasking on a single core processor it's just running for a tiny bit on one process and then moving onto the next, and so on and so forth. With a multi-core or hyper-threaded processor, you can do much better than just having one processor even if individually your cores are much less powerful.
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if you really want to know why to go with a multi-core processor, open the task manager's process tab (or equivalent) on a modern os and look how much crap the system runs in the background, even when youre not actually running any software other than the os. granted most of these sit idle most of the time but sometimes they need to eat up cycles up to do something. also i think multicore processors are better at handling interrupts, so the whole chip doesnt have to go off task to handle a service routine, just a core.
another thing is that most of a modern gpu die space is taken up by cache (sram, which is big and fast), with the actual cpu only taking up a small fraction of the space. considering how little die space the cpu takes up, its just as easy to put 4 of them in there and next to the cache it still looks tiny.
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I think in 2011 it's a misconception to believe that few games support multiple cores. Some games now demand it. Mind you it's the top of the line stuff but IL-2 Cliffs of Dover isn't really playable (mind you it has other problems) until you get into a quad core. The latest Crysis suggests it. Battlefield 3 will probably require at least dual but probably quad is recommended.
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In a way it's sort of going back to the late 80's when it was believed major problems with processor design and fabrication techniques of the era couldn't be solved any other way. Although this time around it these problems really aren't surmountable.
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I think in 2011 it's a misconception to believe that few games support multiple cores. Some games now demand it.
Yeah, there are a few games that I've had half an idea of playing that I can't run on my system, because they require at least a Core 2 Duo and I'm still on a P4 box. It doesn't bug me all that much, since I'm kind of amazed at the mileage I've managed to get out of a 7-year-old Dell, but it's fun to think that it's the processor that represents the final hard limit for it.
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I doubt its beneficial to buy more than quad core - certainly not at the cost of frequency. I would advise you to rather buy faster quad core than slower six core or even more slower eight core for the same amount of money.
I had that same dilemma (and at the time most games were single core only)
go for a quad or a higher clocked core 2 duo and going for the quad was the right decision
I think going 6/8 core is the way to go especially if your going to be stuck with the system for a number of years
@mongoose isnt your p4 hyperthreaded ?
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I'm kind of amazed at the mileage I've managed to get out of a 7-year-old Dell, but it's fun to think that it's the processor that represents the final hard limit for it.
The p4 was a great processor and still is. There's plenty of modern day things you can do on a p4 based computer. My favorite was the hyperthreaded p4. That turned hd television from the air waves from choppy to smooth (that was one hell of a performance increase for what otherwise tricks the computer into thinking a single core is two, not to mention that a p4 can handle hd tv (i turned a computer into a dvr)). It's my opinion that intel went wild and crazy with this processor. There are so many different variants of the p4 it's ridiculous. Still a great processor. Not bad to be stuck with. Beats being with a p3 or lower.
Might be worth seeing what the best p4 you can get for your system is and get it. It wouldn't exactly be expensive.
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In a way it's sort of going back to the late 80's when it was believed major problems with processor design and fabrication techniques of the era couldn't be solved any other way. Although this time around it these problems really aren't surmountable.
the problem is primarily power and cooling. ive heard of overclockers going to 5ghz with water cooling, and some much more expensive overclocks to as high as 25ghz in laboratory test rigs at the intel plant. problem is these things need to be kept very cold and require expensive refrigeration systems to prevent the cpu from auto-detonating. you can overclock a ghz or two over the factory spec with air cooling, provided you dont mind that your computer sounds like a jet engine. its like buying a ferrari instead of a mustang, how much do you want to spend? its not unforeseeable that someone comes up with a breakthrough in cooling technology that is both effective and cheap, then we might see machines in the 4-10 ghz range. until that happens, get a quad core.
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I think if anyone ever comes up with inter-circuit cooling, that is actually threaded onto the chip itself, using ceramics or something to quickly pull heat away from the IC etching, then you might see much higher possibilities for ramping up the GHertz ratings, but as far as I'm aware, we are a long way from that kind of technology.
Edit : The other possibility is optic-based computers, which are becoming more feasible and produce only a fraction of the heat.
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Graphene transistors based chips will be capable of more than 100 Ghz speeds. This is what I am looking forward to.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/computer-hardware/ibm-shows-smallest-fastest-graphene-processor-228?page=0,0
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The p4 was a great processor and still is. There's plenty of modern day things you can do on a p4 based computer. My favorite was the hyperthreaded p4. That turned hd television from the air waves from choppy to smooth (that was one hell of a performance increase for what otherwise tricks the computer into thinking a single core is two, not to mention that a p4 can handle hd tv (i turned a computer into a dvr)). It's my opinion that intel went wild and crazy with this processor. There are so many different variants of the p4 it's ridiculous. Still a great processor. Not bad to be stuck with. Beats being with a p3 or lower.
Might be worth seeing what the best p4 you can get for your system is and get it. It wouldn't exactly be expensive.
I don't know where you were or what you were smoking during the P4 era, but the P4 was far from a "great" processor. Early models were slower per clock than P3s(!) and Athlon 64s were consistently faster, cheaper and cooler than the later ones. Some models of P4 stood out more than others though, the Northwoods, in particular the ones with the 800FSB and HT, but overall you were generally better off with an AMD system. How times have changed...
Getting back to multicore, you see far more in the way of immediately perceptible benefits moving from one core to two than from two to four or more. The ability of your OS to move programs/threads around only goes so far, eventually you need multithreaded software to make effective use of your additional cores. As mentioned previously, you used to have to chose the number of cores based on your workload as the more cores you had, the slower they were clocked, but technologies like turbo boost make this moot as a single CPU can adjust it's clock speed/core count based on the workload. One minute it can be a quad core with a slight bit of boost on tap and the next it can be a single core clocked 50% higher than the base clock all in the same thermal envelope. Another reason to not get too fixated on core count is AMDs 6, 8 and 12 core processors tend to actually be slower at various tasks (mostly single- or lightly threaded workloads, but Sandy Bridge raises the bar on multithreaded performance too) than even dual cores from Intel while using more power and costing more money.
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i've been running amd 64 athlons back in the day. yes they were better than the p4's. mainly it was northwood on up that was great. i still find the p4 to be a great processor. the p4 didn't become good until it's northwood incarnation though.
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i've been running amd 64 athlons back in the day. yes they were better than the p4's. mainly it was northwood on up that was great. i still find the p4 to be a great processor. the p4 didn't become good until it's northwood incarnation though.
Northwood was good and then Presler was OK. Conroe was great and then Yorkfield is pretty good too. Intel has curbed adoption though since they priced the C2Q's pretty high.
Just go with at least a quad-core. Anything less is, to me, a waste.
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considering how many processes a clean instal of windows 7 likes to run concurrently, id think getting anything less than a quad would rape your performance pretty bad.
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I am not speaking out of the fact that i'm a linux user (many of you will have not read this sentence....dumb people). I just find this quad core for desktop computer thing to be stupid.
Needing a quad core just for background programs?
I'd really think about needing a quad core let alone windows 7 then.
I mean think about it. "hi sir, you need a quad core becuase windows 7 does too much background stuff" That just makes me think what a piece of crap windows 7 must be and how lazy microsoft is to not cut down memory usage. Microsoft's vista campaign was successful enough back in the day for having vista ready computers...especially in the area of system memory since vista was also a memory hog. Windows 7 is just vista rerelease, so they have basically the same memory consumption and other same ****. More system memory point in a nutshell; why make your product better when you can have everyone compensate to make your **** run (thank you microsoft for upping pc hardware requirements to run bloat).
(http://www.mjtnet.com/images/wVista-Works_a.gif)
Main point...
Microsoft is bloating **** up with laze so you need tons of ram and a quad core for the background task that controls the computer clock. Yes, what a great reason to buy a quad core! And, for all things considered, the main purpose of a windows 7 computer will be to surf the net at home or work (totally need four times the processing power to render that gif, whooo nelly, that was intense on my hardware, what a rush!).
Get a quad core if you actually need the extra processing power please.
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considering the cost of a quad core processor is less than the cost of windows 7 itself, i dont see that being likely. especially when youre a gamer and want a powerful cpu that costs way more than your os. sure windows is a bloat whore. when i buy an operating system i dont necessarily need a paint program and i dont need a video editing program and i dont need a media player. windows on the other hand is hardly just an operating system any more, its a software suite. all operating systems do this, including linux. its a trend id like to see die. then you got all those background services that do who knows what. if you watch the cores they are hardly ever used, so i guess they dont do much. on any multitasking os (thats what, all of them), more cores means dedicated processing power to simultaneously running applications, too bad the os only gives the cpu power to the application that has focus. still i wish it didnt take 4 seconds to open a submenu after hitting start.
memory usage by the os, while higher than id like is still only a fraction of the memory in the system. and while most people these days can afford to run specs that would have been a server 5 years ago, its because those systems are affordable. i wouldnt doubt a conspiracy between microsoft and amd or intel, bloating the os to make people buy better cpus. but if you consider how cheap quad cores are now such a conspiracy seems to have backfired. i do run windows 7 on the single core amd computer i built in 2004 and it runs ok. this is probably a side effect of the netbook craze, where ms really had to trim the bloat in 7 to get it to run on netbooks after failing so hard with vista. linux users seem to get by on lesser hardware, but its no reason to not get a quad core. im sure linux can make use of them as well as or better than windows does. or perhaps you are happy with dual core or less.
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Needing a quad core just for background programs?
I'd really think about needing a quad core let alone windows 7 then.
I mean think about it. "hi sir, you need a quad core becuase windows 7 does too much background stuff" That just makes me think what a piece of crap windows 7 must be
No you dont....
(http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/4607/taskman.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/33/taskman.jpg/)
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As I understand it, Windows 7 doesn't run more processes, it just spreads them out over several small ones instead of a few big ones, which is a big advantage in Multi-Core systems.
To be honest, Windows 7 is probably the best version of Windows I've ever owned, seems very stable, allowed me to change Motherboard and Processor and started off on reboot as though nothing had happened, requiring only a re-registration to continue working as normal with all installed programs and drivers dealing with the change without user intervention. All in all, I've been very satisfied with it.
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Needing a quad core just for background programs?
I'd really think about needing a quad core let alone windows 7 then.
I mean think about it. "hi sir, you need a quad core becuase windows 7 does too much background stuff" That just makes me think what a piece of crap windows 7 must be
No you dont....
(http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/4607/taskman.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/33/taskman.jpg/)
awesome trim job, did you do that manually or did you use some kinda 3rd party software. i have about 3x that much stuff and i probibly dont use any of it. of course maybe youre just running basic (i run ultimate cause i wanted terminal services).
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if he turned on the "show processes from all users", i'd be more inclined to believe him.
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This is more realistic:
(http://blueplanet.fsmods.net/E/pics/procexp.png)
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Needing a quad core just for background programs?
I'd really think about needing a quad core let alone windows 7 then.
I mean think about it. "hi sir, you need a quad core becuase windows 7 does too much background stuff" That just makes me think what a piece of crap windows 7 must be
No you dont....
(http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/4607/taskman.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/33/taskman.jpg/)
awesome trim job, did you do that manually or did you use some kinda 3rd party software. i have about 3x that much stuff and i probibly dont use any of it. of course maybe youre just running basic (i run ultimate cause i wanted terminal services).
Yeah, he should have checked that box, but you can still see that he's running 58 processes. That's about right; my setup uses 63 as I'm typing this.
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didnt see that, i never uncheck mine. :D
i dont ever remember seeing a checkbox.
and how do i get that verbose view that the e posted?
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didnt see that, i never uncheck mine. :D
i dont ever remember seeing a checkbox.
and how do i get that verbose view that the e posted?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653
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cool beans
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Working on the 'how many background processes' idea, this is from one of my machines. It's a dedicated proxy machine, bare minimal Debian install to start with the following extra packages:
- gpm
- ntpd
- sshd
- mysql-proxy
- nullmailer
- dhcrelay
- monit
- snmpd
- vmtools
Install size is 1.5 gig per df -h.
# ps ax
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
1 ? Ss 0:14 init [2]
2 ? S 0:00 [kthreadd]
3 ? S 0:00 [migration/0]
4 ? S 0:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
5 ? S 0:00 [watchdog/0]
6 ? S 0:09 [events/0]
7 ? S 0:00 [cpuset]
8 ? S 0:00 [khelper]
9 ? S 0:00 [netns]
10 ? S 0:00 [async/mgr]
11 ? S 0:00 [pm]
12 ? S 0:01 [sync_supers]
13 ? S 0:01 [bdi-default]
14 ? S 0:00 [kintegrityd/0]
15 ? S 0:02 [kblockd/0]
16 ? S 0:00 [kacpid]
17 ? S 0:00 [kacpi_notify]
18 ? S 0:00 [kacpi_hotplug]
19 ? S 0:00 [kseriod]
21 ? S 0:00 [kondemand/0]
23 ? S 0:00 [khungtaskd]
24 ? S 0:00 [kswapd0]
25 ? SN 0:00 [ksmd]
26 ? S 0:00 [aio/0]
27 ? S 0:00 [crypto/0]
210 ? S 0:00 [ata/0]
216 ? S 0:00 [ata_aux]
264 ? S 0:00 [scsi_eh_0]
278 ? S 0:00 [scsi_eh_1]
315 ? S 0:52 [kjournald]
447 ? S<s 0:00 udevd --daemon
614 ? S 0:00 [kpsmoused]
693 ? S 0:10 [flush-8:0]
869 ? S< 0:00 udevd --daemon
870 ? S< 0:00 udevd --daemon
1125 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/dhcrelay -q 209.251.178.99 209.251.178.100
1135 ? Sl 4:50 /usr/sbin/monit -c /etc/monit/monitrc -s /var/lib/monit/monit.state
1142 ? Sl 0:02 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -c4
1162 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/acpid
1174 ? Ss 1:06 /usr/sbin/ntpd -p /var/run/ntpd.pid -g -u 101:104
1194 ? Ss 0:01 /usr/sbin/cron
1204 ? Ss 0:44 /usr/sbin/gpm -m /dev/input/mice -t exps2
1216 ? S 1:32 /usr/bin/mysql-proxy --proxy-backend-addresses=209.251.178.99:3306 --proxy-address=:3306
1243 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/nullmailer-send -d
1259 ? S 2:49 /usr/sbin/snmpd -Lsd -Lf /dev/null -u snmp -g snmp -I -smux -p /var/run/snmpd.pid
1433 ? S 0:21 [vmmemctl]
1582 ? Sl 19:43 /usr/sbin/vmtoolsd
1604 tty1 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty1
1605 tty2 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty2
1606 tty3 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty3
1607 tty4 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty4
1608 tty5 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty5
1609 tty6 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty6
7762 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
10037 ? Ss 0:00 sshd: root@pts/0
10039 pts/0 Ss 0:00 -bash
10061 pts/0 R+ 0:00 ps ax
Pipe that into wc -l and get 59. Win 7 is going to have more due to it having to deal with a GUI, printing subsystem, and such.
So I don't think it's a fair to use the number of processes (processi? :)) as a reason to get a dual (or higher) core/CPU machine, it all depends on what the expected workload is going to be.
I also believe that Linux is much more efficient than MS Windows (remember, when Vista/7 came out, the recommended machine was considered a mid-range gaming machine), and that most people would rarely need more than a single core machine, or perhaps a dual core Celeron (or equivalent), regardless of the environment used.
<OT>
But the market droids have all but convinced the general public that they need 'da GeeBees', regardless if they actually do or not, so the demand is there and it makes financial sense for the CPU manufacturers to produce what is being asked for, regardless if it's actually needed or not.
</OT>
Now, if you are building a dedicated gaming box (or plan on doing the virtual machine bit), then a multi-core CPU makes sense. Not many games make use of the abilities yet, but that's changing as time goes on, and getting one can be viewed as a form of future proofing a system.
IMO, YMMV, IANAL: Why do you see so many people driving SUV's on this side of the pond, when the vehicle rarely sees gravel, much less mud? For the most part, they have been convinced that this is what they want/need by marketing, so they get one. The demand is high/bad enough that Porsche and Mercedes both make SUV models.
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Now, if you are building a dedicated gaming box (or plan on doing the virtual machine bit), then a multi-core CPU makes sense. Not many games make use of the abilities yet, but that's changing as time goes on, and getting one can be viewed as a form of future proofing a system.
I would assume that all games coming out of the major studios will have some form of multicore support, if they don't outright demand one to begin with.
Even so, given the fact that aside from a few low-end Atoms you won't be able to get a single-core machine, going multicore certainly has no real drawbacks.
That being said, there is no need for the average user to invest in anything above a dual or quad core, given that the added performance of hexa- or octo-core processors will definitely be wasted in non-high-performance scenarios.
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My AMD 7750 X2 still has to find something it really struggles with running.
(rendering not included) :p
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if he turned on the "show processes from all users", i'd be more inclined to believe him.
The cpu usage would be identical
Actually its less (probably because in my first screenshot I must have pressed the printscreen key as my performance monitoring sidebar gadget was polling the cpu)
(http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/5629/dddtv.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/850/dddtv.jpg/)
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if he turned on the "show processes from all users", i'd be more inclined to believe him.
The cpu usage would be identical
nobody mentioned cpu usage. it was more the processes online anyhow :p
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nobody mentioned cpu usage.
S-99 did he said "windows 7 needs a quadcore just to run background tasks it must really be programmed badly"
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nobody mentioned cpu usage.
S-99 did he said "windows 7 needs a quadcore just to run background tasks it must really be programmed badly"
oh, oops. sorry, i completely ignored that particular post :p
I've been using 7 for a while now, and i've had it run smoother than either vista or xp out of the box.
In short, S-99 is talking out of his ass if he believes 7 needs a quad.
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the only thing i dont like about 7 is it does not run on decade old hardware. my old amd machine which i built in 2004 ish can run it, but your average dumpster computer does not. i think this is why linux users hate 7 so much. :D
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I predict Windows 7 will take on the role of XP, the OS that just sticks around for way longer than Microsoft would like, because people refuse to upgrade. I see Vista as newer Windows Millenium (or buggy unoptimized crap, this was the working title before they came up with "Vista" I believe). Overall, I've been happy with win 7, though I'd still be running xp if it's 64 bit variant was any good...
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I've been using 7 for a while now, and i've had it run smoother than either vista or xp out of the box.
In short, S-99 is talking out of his ass if he believes 7 needs a quad.
I read it as S-99 saying that it's silly to "need" a quad-core for a desktop machine, that it shouldn't be a selling point for quads, and that if Win 7 "needs one" to be "useable", it's an example of MS bloating up operating systems.
That being said, I ran Win 7 on a single core Celeron (Core2 based), and it was perfectly useable for most web-surfing tasks. It even ran Sims 2 fairly well with the built-on Intel graphics chip and 2 gigs of RAM.
the only thing i dont like about 7 is it does not run on decade old hardware. my old amd machine which i built in 2004 ish can run it, but your average dumpster computer does not. i think this is why linux users hate 7 so much. :D
(Disclaimer: I see the big grin, so I know the quoted post is tongue in cheek :))
While I don't "hate" Win 7, I do harbor a strong dislike for it, primarily because it is such a resource hog.
When I can take my old laptop (Pentium M, 2 gigs RAM, GeForceGo 6000 series video) and run an install with Compiz Fusion (read: all the eye candy I want) for the desktop, it's snappy and very useable. Put Win 7 on the same system, and I can watch the thing choke. With this fact alone, I can see where a lot of people get their extreme dislike of Windows. :)
However, I do have to hand it to Microsoft, Win 7 is what XP really should have been. It's pretty darned stable and does run well... on new enough hardware, which in itself is a good/bad thing.
Vista, OTOH, is the WinME of it's time... Pushed out way too soon in response to a competing operating environment. (ME was in direct response to BE OS, IMO. Vista was the answer to Mac OS 10, which was starting to get some rather big buzz at the time, assuming I recall correctly)
Then again, perhaps I'm just an old fogey and too much of an 'old school' geek. I still remember assembling an PC/XT-class machine out of spare parts...
ISA cards for the real time clock and RLL/MFM Seagate hard drives that used stepper motors and needed to be parked before powering down, DIP memory chips, and 640K maximum memory. CGA graphics was a luxury, and an Adlib sound card, what an amazing (and expensive at the time) thing!
:p
You kids don't know how lucky you have it, now get off my lawn :lol:
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the only thing i dont like about 7 is it does not run on decade old hardware. my old amd machine which i built in 2004 ish can run it, but your average dumpster computer does not. i think this is why linux users hate 7 so much. :D
A year or so ago, just for laughs, i put Win7 on an old 2.8ghz P4 (northwood) with 2gb of ram and an old IDE-133 harddrive and it ran great... no room for big games or anything, but the OS itself ran fine and for just browsing the web it was more the enough. Now boot times on the other hand...
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Plug in an USB drive and use the ready boost function Win7 has. It turns your USB disk into a swap drive.
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ReadyBoost is basically worthless if you have more than a gig of main RAM.
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I've been using 7 for a while now, and i've had it run smoother than either vista or xp out of the box.
In short, S-99 is talking out of his ass if he believes 7 needs a quad.
I read it as S-99 saying that it's silly to "need" a quad-core for a desktop machine, that it shouldn't be a selling point for quads, and that if Win 7 "needs one" to be "useable", it's an example of MS bloating up operating systems.
That being said, I ran Win 7 on a single core Celeron (Core2 based), and it was perfectly useable for most web-surfing tasks. It even ran Sims 2 fairly well with the built-on Intel graphics chip and 2 gigs of RAM.
the only thing i dont like about 7 is it does not run on decade old hardware. my old amd machine which i built in 2004 ish can run it, but your average dumpster computer does not. i think this is why linux users hate 7 so much. :D
(Disclaimer: I see the big grin, so I know the quoted post is tongue in cheek :))
While I don't "hate" Win 7, I do harbor a strong dislike for it, primarily because it is such a resource hog.
When I can take my old laptop (Pentium M, 2 gigs RAM, GeForceGo 6000 series video) and run an install with Compiz Fusion (read: all the eye candy I want) for the desktop, it's snappy and very useable. Put Win 7 on the same system, and I can watch the thing choke. With this fact alone, I can see where a lot of people get their extreme dislike of Windows. :)
However, I do have to hand it to Microsoft, Win 7 is what XP really should have been. It's pretty darned stable and does run well... on new enough hardware, which in itself is a good/bad thing.
Vista, OTOH, is the WinME of it's time... Pushed out way too soon in response to a competing operating environment. (ME was in direct response to BE OS, IMO. Vista was the answer to Mac OS 10, which was starting to get some rather big buzz at the time, assuming I recall correctly)
Then again, perhaps I'm just an old fogey and too much of an 'old school' geek. I still remember assembling an PC/XT-class machine out of spare parts...
ISA cards for the real time clock and RLL/MFM Seagate hard drives that used stepper motors and needed to be parked before powering down, DIP memory chips, and 640K maximum memory. CGA graphics was a luxury, and an Adlib sound card, what an amazing (and expensive at the time) thing!
:p
You kids don't know how lucky you have it, now get off my lawn :lol:
one of my early experiences with building computers was assembling apple 2s from piles no non working machines and boxes of spare parts of questionable functionality. some how i managed to get 6 of them working. i was 13 and didnt know what the **** i was doing, but it worked. i had already knew dos inside and out at the time. my first computer was a broke 386, a work in progress from my grandpa's bench right before he kicked the bucket. it was kinda like an old car, spend more time working on it than using it. a part here a part there. i finally got it to boot to floppy and used it to play elite all the time. those were the days.
dont get me wrong i love to put old computers to good use, but its hard to do when you got a quad core powerhouse in your living room and the suckey computers can run win 7. while i have inherited some crap machines from the brother in law, and wont hesitate to pull a rig out of the dumpster, i will probably allocate them to mundane tasks like programming microcontrollers, running mpxplay under freedos, or as reactos testbeds.
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my only issue with win7 is why does the windows folder need to be 30 times bigger than my xp windows folder
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Because WinSxS.
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My only issue with 7 is the outright horrible UI decisions in some places, like the confusing organization of the control panel and the annoying taskbar preview thumbnails which are useless and only get in the way and which aren't trivial to disable. I haven't run into any big technical problems with it (been using for about a week), except that it seems to occasionally mess up some LAN or connection sharing settings between reboots.
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Oddly enough, I like both of those things you call "horrible." Aren't opinions grand?
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Needing a quad core just for background programs?
I'd really think about needing a quad core let alone windows 7 then.
I mean think about it. "hi sir, you need a quad core becuase windows 7 does too much background stuff" That just makes me think what a piece of crap windows 7 must be
No you dont....
S-99 did he said "windows 7 needs a quadcore just to run background tasks it must really be programmed badly"
nobody mentioned cpu usage.
S-99 did he said "windows 7 needs a quadcore just to run background tasks it must really be programmed badly"
oh, oops. sorry, i completely ignored that particular post :p
I've been using 7 for a while now, and i've had it run smoother than either vista or xp out of the box.
In short, S-99 is talking out of his ass if he believes 7 needs a quad.
Congrats, not a single one of you understood me (did anyone even try?). Because reacting by unknowingly taking me out of context shows understanding in bizarro world. I refer you to this here. I guess i could have quoted nuke, but i didn't see much point since i posted right after he said this. I was in response to him.
considering how many processes a clean instal of windows 7 likes to run concurrently, id think getting anything less than a quad would rape your performance pretty bad.
It was nuke who said it, not me (he was speaking figuratively too, he was not being absolute). I was exploring a fake scenario in a world of imaginary land how crappy it would be if windows 7 would have horribly horribly raped performance if ran on anything less than a quad core. That's why i kept on saying it a bunch, because i used what nuke said as a subject that i wanted to elaborate more upon, and from a different perspective.
Exploring fake situation showed off a few things.
1. if you don't need super processing power, then don't buy super processing power (we as a gaming community need super processing power. those who do nothing more than surf web, solitaire, word process, and a slew of even more basic tasks would be silly to have super processing power since they'd have it for no good reason).
2. bloat (stupid graphics, 3d desktop effects, stupid background processes, etc).
3. vista hardware requirements laid a big foundation for computers being able to run new versions of windows after vista (the future eventually ended up as windows 7).
Now, i mentioned the whole vista ready microsoft campaign of long ago to stir people's memories. If that didn't stir people's memories for vista's recommended hardware requirements then i don't know what will. Vista recommended hardware requirements were quite beefy for no other purpose than the lowly desktop os role (i find desktop os's to be pretty humble compared to other os's that are specialized for other purposes such as servers, chess supercomputer, bla bla bla) which people were just doing spectacular with half a gig of memory and xp for a long time up until 2006 when vista came out. "Vista ready" i thought would be a great way to show off bloat that was light years ahead of xp's (and that the vista kind of bloat is still going strong in new incarnations of windows).
I read it as S-99 saying that it's silly to "need" a quad-core for a desktop machine, that it shouldn't be a selling point for quads, and that if Win 7 "needs one" to be "useable", it's an example of MS bloating up operating systems.
Bingo, you got the main thing i flew.
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been using w7 for almost a year, and I'd say it's pretty good. From the things I like best, I have the taskbar improvements as a favorite. Having icons instead of long buttons with sentences is something that should have been standard since Windows 95. Having same buttons work both as shortcuts and task switchers was a very good surprise, works like a charm.
Multiple other little things I like about it too. And given the rumours where Windows is supposed to go next, I think I'm gonna stick to W7 for a *very long time* until they get their heads on the ground again and do another good candidate to "common sense" as XP and W7 are. It's as if between these points of sanity, MS gets crazy with ridiculous development pathways (Longhorn anyone?)
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big problem with windows is that microsoft has to turn everything on by default in order to show off all the bells and whistles of the new os. installing windows always feels like ms is trying to sell you a product you already bought. add to that the oem, which likes to load additional software on top of that which also is set to run by default. while i use the os and feel that it has fairly decent performance, i very much doubt the performance would be as such, if i did not go through the system and disable features that i did not intend to use. like when i buy a laptop, the first thing i do is format the hard drive, then install windows, drivers, etc. this ensures that all the oem stuff is removed and only the os needs to be tuned. you have linux on the other hand which is designed to pretty much run on anything. so many of the features are off or not installed by default. meaning at least initially, you have a cleaner starting point than you do with windows.
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considering the cost of a quad core processor is less than the cost of windows 7 itself, i dont see that being likely. especially when youre a gamer and want a powerful cpu that costs way more than your os. sure windows is a bloat whore. when i buy an operating system i dont necessarily need a paint program and i dont need a video editing program and i dont need a media player. windows on the other hand is hardly just an operating system any more, its a software suite. all operating systems do this, including linux. its a trend id like to see die. then you got all those background services that do who knows what. if you watch the cores they are hardly ever used, so i guess they dont do much. on any multitasking os (thats what, all of them), more cores means dedicated processing power to simultaneously running applications, too bad the os only gives the cpu power to the application that has focus. still i wish it didnt take 4 seconds to open a submenu after hitting start.
memory usage by the os, while higher than id like is still only a fraction of the memory in the system. and while most people these days can afford to run specs that would have been a server 5 years ago, its because those systems are affordable. i wouldnt doubt a conspiracy between microsoft and amd or intel, bloating the os to make people buy better cpus. but if you consider how cheap quad cores are now such a conspiracy seems to have backfired. i do run windows 7 on the single core amd computer i built in 2004 and it runs ok. this is probably a side effect of the netbook craze, where ms really had to trim the bloat in 7 to get it to run on netbooks after failing so hard with vista. linux users seem to get by on lesser hardware, but its no reason to not get a quad core. im sure linux can make use of them as well as or better than windows does. or perhaps you are happy with dual core or less.
Considering the cost of a quad core processor for the processor itself may be cheap. But, going with a quad core is only a cheap route upgrade if you already have a motherboard that will take it in the first place. Preferably from an already built computer that you already own. Otherwise we're looking at the cost of building a new computer with a quad core, or buying a pre-built computer with a quad core from the likes of dell or whatever. At least with the cost of a prebuilt computer you at least have probably the cheapest route for windows 7 since it's included.
It also doesn't matter so much if it's a software suite. I like software suites. I like the kde software suite, the gnome software suite a lot less. But, at least kde and gnome give you control over the software suite where as vista and windows 7 removed a lot of that control that was present in xp. For example, if you don't like certain programs in the software suite...just remove them. Xp let you remove windows media player. With vista and windows 7, you don't get to do that, you're stuck with windows media player as a choice (whether you like it or not and just want only vlc). Vista and windows 7 out of the box force you to be stuck with it's software suite where as xp let you do something more about it. It's a shame microsoft wont let you have total control over it's software suite and let you make a custom remaster.
Memory usage is more or less taken for granted today. People have gigabytes of memory. My problem is that i'm a thrifty guy. I like as much memory as possible for the programs i run let alone just the os. If a clean install of an os with no programs running eats 512mb of ram then that sucks. The os gives you an environment to run your programs. If the os is eating most of that environment, it sort of defeats the purpose.
I can get by on a lot less with linux. But with windows, i much preferred the days when you could run the os with 512mb of ram (back when i use to run it). Modern day linux is getting prettier and bloated, but even still, my mepis 11 install eats only 120mb of ram out of my 2 gigs total. I'm not much of a gamer so 2 gigs of memory and a dual core go real far for the most graphically intensive games i run being nexuiz and freespace.
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It also doesn't matter so much if it's a software suite. I like software suites. I like the kde software suite, the gnome software suite a lot less. But, at least kde and gnome give you control over the software suite where as vista and windows 7 removed a lot of that control that was present in xp. For example, if you don't like certain programs in the software suite...just remove them. Xp let you remove windows media player. With vista and windows 7, you don't get to do that, you're stuck with windows media player as a choice (whether you like it or not and just want only vlc). Vista and windows 7 out of the box force you to be stuck with it's software suite where as xp let you do something more about it. It's a shame microsoft wont let you have total control over it's software suite and let you make a custom remaster.
Not entirely true. Go to Programs and features, click on "Turn Windows features on or off", scroll down to "Media features", and deselect WMP. Easy as that.
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Windows 7 ran fine on my old dual core AMD.
Of course, now I've got a high-end quad core and a SSD, so it basically crushes even the most bloated of crap.
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It also doesn't matter so much if it's a software suite. I like software suites. I like the kde software suite, the gnome software suite a lot less. But, at least kde and gnome give you control over the software suite where as vista and windows 7 removed a lot of that control that was present in xp. For example, if you don't like certain programs in the software suite...just remove them. Xp let you remove windows media player. With vista and windows 7, you don't get to do that, you're stuck with windows media player as a choice (whether you like it or not and just want only vlc). Vista and windows 7 out of the box force you to be stuck with it's software suite where as xp let you do something more about it. It's a shame microsoft wont let you have total control over it's software suite and let you make a custom remaster.
Not entirely true. Go to Programs and features, click on "Turn Windows features on or off", scroll down to "Media features", and deselect WMP. Easy as that.
that just removes the shortcut, as far as i know.
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No, it does remove media player, i just tried it using a shortcut i created myself
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windows 7 installs everything you would get in ultimate no matter what version you run, it just has all the features disabled. this is one of the things i dont like about 7. perhaps its because im old skool and dont like seeing the os eat more drive space than it needs. i cant say im 100% happy with ms windows, and my many attempts to use linux have left something to be desired. so thats why i wait for this (http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html) to go beta. so that i can get the best of both worlds, without having to really give up any actual hardware/software compatibility. i can continue using firefox, photoshop 7, max 8, winamp, notepadd++ and pidgin and all my windows only games, but still be using a free and open os.
of course all this talk of operating systems. more cores is about bringing more resources to the pool, it really has nothing to do with how those resources are spent. buy a quad core because the os and your software will run better and you can do more things simultaneously without bogging down the system. buy one if you want a modern bloated os to feel like its not eating your system whole. its as simple as that. do not buy one if you feel you dont need it, like if you can trim your system to run on 486 without much trouble, or if youre upgrading (cpu upgrades are bs anyway, i only ever upgrade ram and video cards, anything else is a waste of money) and your system dont support it.
im planning to spend $400-$600 on a new computer this fall, and so far its gonna be no trouble at all to get a quad. its just getting so damn cheap to buy hardware, i really dont see any reason not to get a quad.
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No, it does remove media player, i just tried it using a shortcut i created myself
hit win+r and type in wmplayer.exe
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And what part of my quote are you hoping to disprove by me doing that ?
(http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/8813/wmplay.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/405/wmplay.jpg/)
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MediaPlayer should be in all versions of Win7 unless they are labled "K" (korean version), "N" (no media stuff at all), or Starter Edition and even for N you can download the media stuff later though the website though it's a pain.
Since you do NOT need an internet connection or a cd to upgrade Windows (you can call it in, all you need is a key), Nuke is correct. Pece's way of getting around it on the other hand wont work since it is disabled not mearly hidden. you likely need to play registry games to get it working, or just download it from the web.
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im really starting to like reactos, the current alpha version is less than a hundred megs.
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you should give us a review of it nuke
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Maybe you should just try it. It's less than a hundred megs. :rolleyes:
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you should give us a review of it nuke
so far ive only been able to give it a run as a live cd. the outward appearance is almost exactly like windows server or xp without themes. there are issues with some of the menus and whatnot, they are somewhat glitchy. but considering the os is still in alpha its not bad. i managed to get an old celeron machine up and running. its pure intel everything on the mobo, except the sound it seems, so it would be a perfect candidate for testing. but the installer cd requires a ide cdrom drive to install the os, all i got is sata cd drives and go figure the mobo doesnt have any sata controllers. to further complicate things its usb stack is incomplete and i dont have a single ps2 keyboard or mouse in my inventory. the real test is to install it on a high performance machine and try to get all the drivers to work, then games. the os seems to perfer opengl, wraping all d3d calls to it. i think they used some code from wine to derive its d3d compatibility. needless to say its gonna be some time before i can give it a thorough runaround.
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To add to Nuke's list of problems, while it is fully possible to install ReactOS in VMware, it will not boot (probably the same compatability issues nuke has with his celeron box, who knows). They do offer a pre-made VMware version but it is for VMware 4 (latest is 7.1.4) and while it does work and will boot, clicking on anything caused a crash. For those who care, they even copied the bluescreen of death, font and all.