Buying amd x6 now is like buying insurance for the future. Eventually new softwares released will be able to utilize 6 cores and that also include games!

This is where most people have a slight misunderstanding. If you have a game that runs on 4 core and you only have 4 cores, therefore your game cannot run at 100% because you have left no core for your OS, your antivirus, I/O systems, firewall, bittorrent, etc etc. They will have to share the 4 cores with your game.

This is where the additional cores come in handy, for now and the future. We are not asking people to change from 4 cores to 6. If you are looking to build a new system, like I did, then no point going for 4 when 6 is about the same price.

This is the same issue when dual core CPUs first came out. People were screaming NO POINT having 2 cores when games can't use it. Well, if the game use one, the other one can service the OS. Later the same people are the ones asking for MORE than 2 cores.

yup i start thinking we need quad right now.. though few years back 2cores is more than enough..
so for upcoming years >6 cores should be common..

unless ppl only typing² typing..

Till now the Quaddies seem happy to compete with most of the applications..Still got plenty of times until it'll be fully utilized on these upcomin optimization

Unless those benchmark programmes are not fully optimised for 6 multi-core applications, then these P2 X6 might perform better with later version of benchmark programmes. Then 6 cores can be fully utilised, though I highly doubt the current benchmark programmes cannot utilise a processor with 6 threads when they can on a processor with 8 threads.

Programmes run on threads, not cores. Thus, above statements like not utilising all 6 cores are literally false as P2 X6 only have 6 threads.

This post has been edited by Silverfire: Apr 29 2010, 03:49 PM

+1
most benchmarking program still cant fully optimize or support 6 cores proc like 1055T...some even show unknown proc...

Did you fully understood what I wrote?

i still don''t get it

most bench are cpu test not really real world test???

see this

Cpu test

Real world gaming.

so which is better or which should i reflect on

That is a CPU test, let the processor render as fast as possible rather than full usage the GPU.

When you put everything to the maximum, then GPU limitation takes over. However depending on setup and graphics card used, you will also start to see either CPU limitations or platform limitations as well, example here AMD Phenom II X6 1090T And 890FX Platform Review: Hello, Leo - Benchmark Results: Crysis (the most telling indication is when using HD5970 and GTX480). Other similar results can be found here: Phenom II X6 1090T CPU Review: Call of Duty 4 (note that those are set to maximum quality) and here: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BE & 1055T - Gaming Performance (using HD5870 CrossFireX setups)

Why not read the source review here: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Hands-On Preview? Its already mentioned about the GPU limitations.

This post has been edited by lex: Apr 29 2010, 10:23 PM

thnx for ur explanation..finally understood...

i dun think so
OS is the one that give resources to app , it doesnt give priority to background program
plus , antivirus , bt , msn etc is not a heavy program tat will occupied a core fully load
even games doesnt

You do not need to fully load a core to slow it down. Anybody who used a single core CPU for servers 10 years ago can tell you that. Background process still have to run otherwise you can't run your game. I/O still gets top priority no matter what, OS still gets top priority in order to load your game or any application that runs in the foreground. BT will utilise I/O as it reads and writes to hdd and that puts a drain on a single core. If you have extra idle cores for the OS to assign a thread to it, then it would not interfere with your other applications.

Here is the deal, if it is a background process that can be slowed down, the OS would do it. If it cannot be slowed down, then it will drain the foreground process if you do not have sufficient CPU power to process.

That's not entirely true at all... Most background process runs on interrupts (and events triggered), meaning they do not run all the time. There's also operating system's pre-emptive scheduling to handle background task prioirty (e.g. allocating the amount of time slice to each process). I/O stuff also runs on interrupts (for example, the timer) while stuff like HDD read/write uses the PCI bus mastering (similar to Ultra DMA) which is transparent to the system. Even simple I/O such as audio playback uses that, also (Directsound) audio mixing involves some CPU usage (ie. nowadays CPUs are so fast that sound mixing can be done by software rather than hardware, and takes up very little resource).

BT does not use a lot of resources, even on a single core. As for the HDD read/writes.. it is pretty much transparent (as mentioned above) and does not write to the HDD all the time (due to the operating system's write behind caching).



This post has been edited by lex: Apr 30 2010, 09:59 AM

normal consumer won't even bother about how many cores the proc has, as long as it can run their basic applications.

If you are on the more technical side like me, doing things like running multiple virtual machines and running very heavy CPU and memory intensive applications and heavy programming projects are the reasons why i chose this proc at the first place. x2 can't even do half of what i need, x4 proc is just barely struggling, then the x6 is just ok. But for me i don't have the kaching to get the intel xeon or amd opteron, so i opt for this Thuban. I really wish there is a board for two thuban proc, but none

This post has been edited by Avex: Apr 30 2010, 09:46 AM

Using the one on Linux? Not sure about that one, but Windows version of VMWare runs fine on my quad core as well as on my friend's Core i7 (running multiple VMs). Should be fine on the X4 as well..

For dual processors, there's the (ultra expensive) Mac Pro workstation. You can also look for dual socket servers (example here) I don't think Thuban supports dual processor configuration.. as that would be Istanbul territory (those Opteron series).

This post has been edited by lex: Apr 30 2010, 11:33 AM

Let me rephrase background task. Anything that is not running below Normal priority is not considered as background task. Just because it's not running in the foreground window, it does not make it a background task. Antivirus are not background, they are actually foreground task running hidden from view but that does not make them background task either. Since they all have the same priority, when they require a the CPU to allocate a time-slice to their process, they are going to get it.

That is why most people would report that any installation of an antivirus with active file scanning will always slow down the machine, unless you have sufficient CPUs to run it. I run Jackie Chan Internet Security 2010 and it slowed to a crawl on my dual core last time, exactly the same issue that most people complained about. Funny thing is that I don't have that problem anymore on my X6.

Again, not true at all... Anti-virus uses operating system hooks, thus whenever some programs starts running (e.g. starting an application), generates a (child) process, read/write to HDD (e.g. modify files) and/or does something unexpected (such as trying to invoke or modify a operating system function) then the anti-virus programs springs into action. Otherwise its relatively idle (not running most of the time).

Active file scanning? That's HDD bottleneck... very little to do with the processor actually. Everyone will experience the same thing whenever the anti-virus starts a scheduled file scan (an annoyance which I usually turn off ), unless using SSD of course. Anyway, I've used lots of anti-malware stuff before including Kapersky (your Jackie Chan thingy), AVG, Avast, Norton Security Suite, etc.. and all of them more or less slows down most systems, including 8-core (dual processor) servers. Currently settled on Avira due to its small memory footprint and less resource hogging.

This post has been edited by lex: Apr 30 2010, 01:30 PM

Correct but it is when you perform and operation that reads files and invokes scanning that slows down the system. When the antivirus is idle, so is the system and it also means I'm not using it. Any read write operations that involves most files are scanned by any active antivirus system and that usually happens when you use the machine. That is why game/apps loading time is always increased with anti-virus running

Yes, the antivirus slows down but the more the more core you can feed it, the faster it will run. Loading Vista on my dual core and X6 is about the same speed without the antivirus running. With the antivirus running, I hardly feel any difference on the X6 while the dual core takes a much longer time to load up. Furthermore, all 6 cores are being utilised with the OS distributing threads across it. Heck, even when I'm surfing the internet I have activity across all 6 cores.

I'm not talking about scheduled scans. I'm talking about the usual read/write file scanning and whatever heuristics thrown in to detect unknown virus. Those will always run, scanning the network and hdd, even when idle.

This post has been edited by sleepwalker: Apr 30 2010, 02:46 PM

Those are "triggered" as I've mentioned above.. The anti-virus only runs whenever there's some activity in in the system (e.g. file read/write), otherwise it sits there waiting for an event. Remember the screenshot of the torrent thingy I've posted earlier? That's running with anti-virus (Avira) and firewall (Zone Alarm) together, yet it hardly taxes the processor at all (even though its a single core).

This post has been edited by lex: Apr 30 2010, 06:15 PM

yes true , anti virus is not really resource hogging , most anti virus slow down cause by slow hdd read performance , current cpu is more than enuf to scan your pc
if not , im sure jackie chan having trouble running on atom netbook