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CPU clock speed, sure. But more cores? What is the advantage to having 6, 8, 12+ cores when the average consumer barely uses two? For a bit of clarification, by consumer I mean the Average Joe. I understand that those in the audio/video/design/scientific/etc. communities, who more-often-than-not benefit from multi-core processors, are consumers, too. Not talking about them.
The thing with cores is that most of the time they cannot be fully utilized. However, there are times that they are very effective. I posted one example in a previous post. Let's say I want thousands of photos for my ones with my dog. Parallel processing will speed this up significantly.
I'm certain that as software catches up, we'll figure out how to utilize it. Possibly with richer interfaces... who knows.
At the time being, I believe we have a max of 6 cores at the consumer level. The intel ones which are very limited and only purchased by those with special purposes... and the AMD one which performs no better than Intel quad cores.
One core dedicated to run the virus scanner.
One core dedicated to install Windows updates
One core dedicated to running the Aero interface
One core to do actual useful work.
That was a joke too, but again, there is an element of truth.
Indeed, more than an element of truth. I work for someone who only does web surfing and documents, but a LOT of them open at the same time (think 30 browser windows and 40 word documents). Turns out the core i5 / 4GB machine I got for him was actually underpowered.
If you know how to use a computer effectively, a five year old Pentium 4 will suffice, but the workhorse who doesn't really know how to use one safely and effectively might well find use in a super fast processor, obscene amounts of RAM, top of the line SSD and kick ass graphics adapter.
If you know how to use a computer effectively, a five year old Pentium 4 will suffice, but the workhorse who doesn't really know how to use one safely and effectively might well find use in a super fast processor, obscene amounts of RAM, top of the line SSD and kick ass graphics adapter.
So you're saying that running multiple programs and tabs isn't effective or safe use of the machine ??
So you're saying that running multiple programs and tabs isn't effective or safe use of the machine ??
Maybe so, maybe no. It depends on if it could be deemed necessary for your style of working or not.
I'd reckon that anyone who has worked an "IT-support type" job knows exactly what I mean. A computer savvy person knows how improper it is to keep 20 tabs with flash advertising open, or to paste an 8-megabyte JPEG into a Word document as a small descriptive illustration. The non-savvy user might not even understand the mechanics behind why any of these things is a bad idea.
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