AMD Finally Releases 'Bulldozer' CPUs

Previous experience told ya already

 

I think we're misunderstanding each other. I'm not forcing an application to use more cores, I'm deciding which core(s) it uses so I can leave the others open for other applications. An example would be, I only let chrome use cores 4 and 5 while at the same time allowing Runescape to use only 1 and 2, instead of them both piling up on the same cores. Sorry for my lack of technical terms.

And when Intel releases it's hex and oct cores in Q1 and Q2, I think utilization of more than 4 cores will become something that programmers will strive for. Of course it takes time to develop software so we won't see it right away, but in general it will happen.

Whenever I buy computer parts, I try and find parts that won't bottleneck in comparison to other parts. If that means buying a nice cpu for now and letting the performance be determined by what my other hardware can handle, that's fine with me. Future proofing in a way.

If it makes sense, I don't like buying hardware that will be the limit of my machine. For instance, if I have a i5 2500k and 2x GTX 580's and I want to upgrade my computer, I would buy a better processor such as the 2600k, then when I want to upgrade again, I'd upgrade the gpu setup to maybe 3 or 4x GTX 580's. (the parts were just as an example) I wouldn't want to buy a cpu that isn't up to par with my GPU, and vice versa. So I always like to go one or two steps above.

And I'm sort of a heavy user. I will be sitting here sometimes with literally 4 chrome windows open with like 30+ tabs each (because my mind wanders so quickly and I always want to come back to previous ideas), a couple Word docs and Visual Studio for class, music or other media player, some windows explorer pages, uTorrent, my bulky Norton AV, possibly file transferring between my external and internal drives, (just to name a few) and I still would like to minimize all that and jump into a game of BF3 or Crysis. Not always though.

 

Ah okay I think I understand you now.

I dunno man, we've had quadcores commonly now for 3-4 years and most programs are still struggling to catch up. I could be wrong but I still don't see highly threaded programs being common for quite a long time.

I know it was just an example, but a 2500k won't bottleneck more than a 2600k. 2600k is within 2-3% (+/-, minus in some cases due to HT) of the 2500k in gaming. If one processor was gonna bottleneck a 4x580 setup, they both would. You'd see a bigger performance gap going from like 2500k + 580 to 2500k + 2x580. Anything more than dual card is bragging rights anyway imo.

Sweet jesus. I don't really keep things open I'm not using at that moment. Most I ever have running at one time is AVG 2011, Steam, Origin, MSN, Chrome with 5-6 tabs, AIDA64 + MSI Afterburner (I'm a temp whore), and a game (Shogun 2 / BFBC2 usually). Then again I also have other PCs that I spread things across as well like all my torrenting is done on my laptop so I don't have to leave my PC on overnight, etc.

 

Yeah, i knew it was a bad example. And I keep things open I'm not using, not all night though unless I really want the file.. I'm not a fan of leaving my laptop on all night. I use my laptop because I take it to class with me and it's just easier to put it on a rolly chair and move it around the room to where I'm at when I'm at home. I also love the Open in new tab button.

 

Meh my laptop is fucked anyway. It was a cheap $400 laptop pretty much strictly for school. It can play RS in HD fine but I don't use it for much other than school/portability/torrents anymore. If I had your laptop I'd be more responsible with it for sure though.