Last when I had the Intel Q6600 in 2008/9 were the times when games and operating systems hardly used more than 2 cores. Has that changed now? Does windows 8.1 uses more than 2 cores? Was thinking of upgrading to an entry level real quad core for my HTPC. Tia.
As far as I know Windows uses always more than two cores since the last two/three versions. It depends also on the game/program. Look into the task manager if you've the possibility to check Windows 7/8+ and you'll see that there are two or more cores with activity on all of them.
I am on a dual core right now so started this thread to get inputs from members. So I guess a quad core upgrade is worthy now? Is there something from Intel that confirms this? A friend's PC with a quad core is suddenly zipping off like anything since he upgraded to windows 8.1 and was kinda okay on 7. PS: Where exactly in the task manager do I check that?
The OS will use as many cores as it deems necessary at any particular time. Basically, the threads are assigned to cores on an "as-needed" basis. It won't just automatically load all 2, 4, 8 or 12 cores just because they're there. MS tried to design Windows in such a way that it will assign threads to cores based on need and thread dependency to minimize power usage while maximizing performance.
Make sure your Mother Board can take it and that your bios is the right one. Just so you don't buy it and go WTF, why isn't it working and pulling hair out.
With core parking enabled Windows tends to stomp everything (every single core app) on 1 core until it's saturated and then picks the next core and unparks it, unless the application itself has multicore support. (At least that's what it did in Windows 7)
OK I don't have a screen shot of task manager of of windows 7 playing avatar in 3d mode in power dvd but afair cpu usage used to hover at 60/70%. Since I am on winodws 8.1 now on the same hardware cpu usage is down to 25% playing the same content in the same player! As of now I have a print screen of windows 8.1 only. If I am not wrong this is truly something good in windows 8.1. Better utilization of hardware? See:
I don't understand this thread. Are you asking why Windows didn't use more than 2 cores when you had a dual core processor? Or are you just asking in general whether Windows 8 is a better operating system than Windows 7? In either case, I don't understand this thread.
Windows 8.x is a bit more efficient with CPU use. It's not going to load all cores for no reason. It will, however, load cores as needed to provide the best performance/efficiency. It doesn't just try to run every thread off a single core.
Basically to know if the newer versions use more than 2 cores of a cpu. In other words is it worthy to upgrade to a quad now? That I guess is better than no use of multi cores at all.
Windows 8.1 is more multi core aware than any previous version. It utilizes however many cores you have in a more efficient manner. Dual core is old hat now, quad is much better and 6 or 8 better still. It especially improves performance on AMD FX processors more than on Intel's chips since multithreading is where AMD competes better. Intel's are still more powerful but the gap is smaller between them.
I could have upgraded the processor to FX series on the old board but it lacked SATA 3 so I upgraded to Intel quad with SATA 3 and a much newer chipset.
I got the ssd first then it bottlenecked on SATA which resulted in full upgrade. Nothing but "geeky itch"
Asking if Windows 8/8.1 utilizes quads in a better way now than what windows XP/vista/7 used to do back in 2007/8/9.
