New Intel Price Cuts

[Icarusintel]

Wow, Quad-core just got a helluva lot more affordable!

Man, this competition between Intel and AMD really is good for everyone. One more price cut and the Q6600 will be mine!

 

[giant384]

damn!!!! right when i dont have the money to spend. hopefully they stay down.

 

[Bulletbrain]

This article has the prices of the newly launched E6320 and E6420 as well.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=15200

Will the cache size increase to 4MB on these new chips lead to considerable increase in performance? Specifically in Gaming?

 

[VirusType2]

Hate to shit on the parade, because I'm excited about the multi-core possiblities, but let me just ask the question:

Does each program/application have to be specifically programmed to take advantage of the multi-core chips?

If so, could there possibly be an 'all in one' program to provide limited or even full multi-core support for programs/applications that don't natively support multi-core processors?

I'm worried that I'll have a quad-core processor, and 6 months down the line, there is still little support for dual core even.

I'm in the dark, can someone shed some light?

If anyone uncovers any informative articles, please post them.

Thanks.

 

[CyberPitz]

Too bad all my money is going to my car...oh well, I'm not as big on gaming as I used to be.

 

[Asus]

The application has to be programed to be able to split what it does into multiple threads so it can run the threads on multiple cores (usually referred to as SMP). But if you are running multiple single threaded programs windows will decide which core to run it on based on usage.

 

[Kyorisu]

Hate to shit on the parade, because I'm excited about the multi-core possiblities, but let me just ask the question:

Does each program/application have to be specifically programmed to take advantage of the multi-core chips?

If so, could there possibly be an 'all in one' program to provide limited or even full multi-core support for programs/applications that don't natively support multi-core processors?

I'm worried that I'll have a quad-core processor, and 6 months down the line, there is still little support for dual core even.

I'm in the dark, can someone shed some light?

If anyone uncovers any informative articles, please post them.

Thanks.

Okay atm there are not that many multiple core apps, but your OS still takes advantage of the multiple cores by allowing your single threaded apps to run on either one. - Noob explanation.

This article has the prices of the newly launched E6320 and E6420 as well.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=15200

Will the cache size increase to 4MB on these new chips lead to considerable increase in performance? Specifically in Gaming?

Price? we've been able to buy them in Aus for some days now. The 2mb extra cache gives a 0-15% increase. Yes 0 to 15 it's very picky so odds are you will not notice a difference. Spend the money on ram/gpu instead.

 

[achilles_d]

very cool, im plannin on getting a quad core in the summer holidays

 

[VirusType2]

Hmmm. The market seems to be flooded with Dual Core chips right now. This is good, the more saturation, the more support from programs (games) we should see, right?

It seems like it will be a WHILE before quad core will be widespread and supported. But that's pretty much just a guess.

I don't know how much work is involved from a developer to include support for multi-core. Hopefully it isn't as much of a chore as creating 64 bit compatible software.

well, at the prices the 4 core chips cost, I'll probably just go with dual anyway, at least that way, tons of money and processing power won't be wasted. I'm sticking with my single core until things become more clear. I might just buy a dumbass console and jump back on the PC gaming bandwagon once it starts picking up some real speed.

What about you guys? Do you guys know something I don't? Who is buying or owns multi-core CPU's? And when? A good guess is that the lower the prices of the 4 core chips, the more people will buy them, and the more support they should get... It also probably means lower prices for the dual core chips.

 

[Krynn72]

Ill probably make the jump from my athlon 64 3500+ to a quad core one come the holidays.

 

[The Brick]

The Q6600 is aimed to cost about $250-$300 fall 2007 (or so I heard from xtremesystems.org), so I'm not gonna bite just yet

 

[Icarusintel]

What about you guys? Do you guys know something I don't? Who is buying or owns multi-core CPU's? And when? A good guess is that the lower the prices of the 4 core chips, the more people will buy them, and the more support they should get... It also probably means lower prices for the dual core chips.

Well, Source is going to be supporting multi-core soon. Alan Wake takes full advantage of all four cores. Crysis supports quad core as well.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, I'll probably wait for the next price drop, unless I get one as a graduation present.

 

[3ssence]

Alan Wake takes full advantage of all four cores.

Does it actually take "full" advantage or does it just happen to make use of all 4 cores though ?

 

[WhiteZero]

And with their 45nm chips coming out this year, the prices will only fall more.
I'm pretty excited for Intel recently.

 

[The Brick]

Yeah their upcoming penrynn chips are gonna rule.