Dual core, Quad core ?

ChrisH

ChrisH

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At the moment I'm running a machine with an AMD Dual core 4800 but having spent the day trying to find out what driver is missing in Windows 7 64bit on my Asrock mainboard I've given up and I'm going to get myself a Gigiabyte board.

The crunch is that I have 4gb of Giel Matched memory in 4 x 1gb configuration. I'm not going to spend money to change whats good and works.

I could stay with the dual core with the mainboard I've spec'd but the board will take a Phenom quad core that I could just stretch too.

However the quad core is 4 x 2mhz cores whereas my present 4800 is 2 x 2.4mhz cores.

Would the quad act slower in normal circumstances or faster due to more cores.

I only run one or two programs, probably Wintv and CS5 or maybe watching tv and surfing.

I've been in IT for 33 years but the last few years haven't been bothered to keep up :(
 
Even though you've been in IT for 33 years, you don't have to use a CPU from when you started out. Seriously, a 2.4 Mhz CPU ;)

But in general, with Win7, a quad core CPU will on the long term perform better, when everything is taken into consideration, but if you're going to compare action by action, they'd be almost identical. No matter what, if you buy a fairly new CPU, be it Quad 8400+, i7 or i5 (sorry, don't know the AMD equivalents), you'll get a lot of CPU for your money.
 
How about something like a 555 Black edition? Relatively cheap, stock speed is 3.2GHz and it has an unlocked multiplier.
 
Is that some kind of Peugeot m8 I have no idea what a black edition 555 is ?

LOL I just fix IT I have no idea these days what all the numbers mean, I'm getting old now and usually can't be arsed keeping up.

I'm beggining now to wish I hadn't bothered with Windows 7 64bit I have a defunct copy of Vista 64bit in my drawer, maybe I should have learnt by now :(
 
Niel I spent a year working with Vista Ultimate 64bit, I got fed up trying to find drivers for all sorts of kit. Sadly I gave up in the end and it now resides at the back of a drawer, £150 wasted.

I have been using XP since it came out and to be honest your statement

Windows 7 is a million times better than xp
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Is not really true. If XP does everything you need it to do then nothing is better. Same goes goes for Vista, some love it but personally I loathe it. It was dreadfull from day one just like Millenium.

I'm now having to reload my PC for the first time in about 2 years, never had a problem with it or XP but there comes time when a spring clean is needed. My Kaspersky has just about expired, I've replaced my Epson 2000p, scanners, loads of software etc. It was running like a bag of shizzel.

So I'm going to stick Windows 7 on because loads of people say it's okay. Except for one driver I've had no problems but thats probably due to a crappy old board.

Tommorow I'll go and get myself a new board and a 555 Phenom Dual core as I researched Tringa's idea and it looks good. A bit of overclocking should see me get a step up in performance.

I will happily bung XP back on my machine if 7 doesn't work out as I think it's the best O/S microsnot has ever produced. Hopefully 7 will prove that wrong.
 
I've also been using xp since it came out and its showing its age now seriously.

Vistas downfall initially unlike ME was drivers. ME was just 98with the reliability removed. These days Vista only issue is driver support for old hardware.

Going back to 7 we're now rolling it out over xp with the introduction of 15 new laptops. We'be been using 7 in the IT dept now since beta and it hasn't skipped a beat. Loads of hand new bits that even make your job of support tonnes easier.

At the end of the day nt4 and 3.11 were good for the time but you wouldn't use them now ..
 
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Neil I hope it lives up to the good things I've heard.

As for helping me then sadly it won't. I work in an NT and XP world. In retail things change slowly and Windows 7 will probably be 10 years coming.

Most of the work I do now is box swapping monkey see monkey do, maybe the reason I want to get out.

The type of numbers we work in is thousands not even hundreds. I do work for the like of Newlook, H.Samuals, Martin Mcoll, Onestop, Lidl, and many more. Lidl still have mainly DOS based machines that run well and fast even on Pentium machines.

I'm past caring about gadgets and twiddly bit. I just want a rock solid system that does what it says on the tin.

:D
 
If they're truly running nt4 and dos then I wish them well in the next year or so they'll need it.

In fact as nt4 support ended years ago I'd like to know how secure their systems are.

Anyway wandering off topic .. getting back in it I stand by my original point, for just browsing and basic tasks you won't notice in quad vs dual
 
Looking at a Phenom dual core with a tad of overclocking.

Closed networks means no security problems. Tills don't go anywhere near the net :D
 
neil_g said:
Windows 7 is a million times better than xp, Vista was fine after service packing and 7 is better than that.
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Wrong Wrong Wrong

From what I understand Window7 and Vista doesn't allow DOS programs and XP does, and my client data base is DOS. This allows all the information I need on one page instead of the useless Vista or windows 7
which requires umpteen pages to find what I need. Sometimes this information is for a medical animal emergency

All the windows based boarding animal establishment programs either written abroad or here in the UK are full of fancy non essential rubbish with pretty coloured pages. Believe me I have looked at most, either as a trial or view. I have even contacted some programmers everyone of which is a total moron, they have never ever ,like most programmers in this field, gone to the end user to see what is required.

Programmers design programmes to look pretty pretty and are absolutely blind to what the main criteria is, at least within this area of animal boarding establishments.


Nope I am stays with good old windows XP and a fantastic DOS program. The person who wrote it many years ago spent more hours and time with myself and another boarding kennel owner getting the program correct, even down to fine tuning with updates to our specifications
 
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realspeed said:
Wrong Wrong Wrong

From what I understand Window7 and Vista doesn't allow DOS programs and XP does, and my client data base is DOS.
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Erm, wrong wrong wrong, to coin a phrase. Your understanding is flawed.

The 32 bit version of 7, Vista and XP include the NTVDM which allows DOS programs to run (and 16-bit Windows applications as well).

The NTVDM is removed in all 64 bit versions of Windows (including XP 64 bit), so these won't run DOS programs.


Of course, being a programmer I might be a "total moron", so you may wish to ignore what I have just written. It is correct, however.
 
Please don't turn this into a tennis match about operating systems. My origional reason for this thread was about processors. I've decided what to do about that, a Phenom 555 dual core.

As for operating systems thats for another day, and is much a case of each to their own.

Some of the kit I work on succesfully runs 98, 2000, NT, XP, Nt server, Linux, none as yet runs on Vista or 7.

I'm trying 7 as it seems to be the way forward and I had to run it sometime in my life.

I've had nightmares with Vista 64bit and all down to poor driver support. Sadly some of that still exists in 7 64Bit.

Hopefully I can find some kind of RAW plugin like I had in XP.

Hopefully my Spyder system will work.

Hopefully Opand Exif will work or some similar software.

I know Microsoft money 2001 works in 7 unlike Vista so thats one big step forward.

I hope CS5 works okay and I can stop those aggravating problems with it keep asking for the key, I figured that in Vista but have no idea how.

Hopefully open office works.

I hope I can find a decent email POP3 client that will import Outlook 2000 files.

You see where I'm coming from. Most operating systems have problems, it's the solutions that matter.

So please no bickering :D
 
realspeed said:
Wrong Wrong Wrong

From what I understand Window7 and Vista doesn't allow DOS programs and XP does, and my client data base is DOS. This allows all the information I need on one page instead of the useless Vista or windows 7
which requires umpteen pages to find what I need. Sometimes this information is for a medical animal emergency

All the windows based boarding animal establishment programs either written abroad or here in the UK are full of fancy non essential rubbish with pretty coloured pages. Believe me I have looked at most, either as a trial or view. I have even contacted some programmers everyone of which is a total moron, they have never ever ,like most programmers in this field, gone to the end user to see what is required.

Programmers design programmes to look pretty pretty and are absolutely blind to what the main criteria is, at least within this area of animal boarding establishments.


Nope I am stays with good old windows XP and a fantastic DOS program. The person who wrote it many years ago spent more hours and time with myself and another boarding kennel owner getting the program correct, even down to fine tuning with updates to our specifications
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wrong? that 7 is better than XP? or that DOS is an ancient platform that anyone that is still running needs to seriously review their systems?

please dont patronise me about "pretty" systems, i work with AS400 daily.

chris - poor driver support in 7 still exists but only for old hardware which to be honest is to be expected. spyder3 (and 2 i believe) works find under 7 with the latest software off their website.

re XP licencing and support is going to come to a halt very soon, what do those that still run it propose to do then out of interest?
 
I did ask that this thread didn't defend into a bickering thread.

Software is much a case of horses for courses. Some old software does better than new software.

The fact that operating systems come and go is immaterial if the job gets done.

Please don't go on about it.

I run in an NT, XP world where the system is closed to outside interaction. In that case it doesn't matter what version of windows it is, just that it works.

As to what they do next, I don't really give a damn as long as it keeps me in a job for now.
 
ChrisH said:
Please don't turn this into a tennis match about operating systems. My origional reason for this thread was about processors. I've decided what to do about that, a Phenom 555 dual core.
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Good Choice. Dual core is your friend, really. Quad core is nice and shiny and everything but very few programs are capable/written to make use of it. Proper use of multiple cores requires writing some serious threading into programs and quite the number of programmers see this as a headache. Sure, some programs support it and quite well (eg: MS Excel) but even today the majority of programs are written for single core processors and then either 'optimised' for dual-or-more core or just left and the operating system has to balance load itself (on that subject, XP<Vista<7, but we'll not go into that here ;)).

In essence Quad-core may well be slightly faster in that you have more cores and hence more physical power available, but software is behind the curve on this one and the overheads in balancing load across four cores vs two mean that for another year at least you'll get significantly more bang-per-buck with dual core over quad.
 
ChrisH said:
Would the quad act slower in normal circumstances or faster due to more cores.

I only run one or two programs, probably Wintv and CS5 or maybe watching tv and surfing.

I've been in IT for 33 years but the last few years haven't been bothered to keep up :(
Click to expand...

For what you do, I don't think changing to a quad core would be worthwhile.

For the rest of the discussion on this thread, I use XP and Win 7 and they both have their advantages.
 
Well they only had a quad core, so I took a deep breath and coughed up.

The NT, XP debate will rage for years to come. Vista knocked peoples confidence in Microsoft and rightly so, it was rushed out and as far as I'm concerned we all became beta testers for what is now Windows 7.

In the big world many companies won't upgrade simply because they have no need. They run the same processes on the same machines doing the same job to meet the same result.
Why change that, as the saying goes " if it ain't broke don't fix it "
Many of their systems are closed loop with no outside interaction. That in itself means that updates for security and other things are unnecessary, if nobody can get through the door they can't rob your secrets.

Many of the companies I do hardware servicing for are still using DOS, Lidl for instance use DOS on their tills and XP on their back offices. They Use ISDN not ADSL. Why do they use DOS on the tills, well it does what it says on the tin, it's stable and runs quickly. Why change to something that may cause problems, it ain't broke.

Whilst NT and now XP are old hat nobody can deny they have been very stable, Vista 64bit looked promising but was a nightmare finding programs that would run at all never mind stably.

My change to Windows 7 comes after a year of upgrading camera gear, printers and scanners. I now have pretty much all up to date kit. That means that 7 found all but 1 device, and that was something to do with my mainboard hence the upgrade. The machine was running like a dog and full of junk that needed wiping so it was a good time to upgrade.

I haven't forgot that I have a copy of Vista Ultimate 64bit that cost me £150 sat in a drawer, my biggest waste of money yet. It took time for me to decide on an upgrade to 7 and this was the right time.

I have 4 copies of XP all legit, that was a hell of an expense so updating wasn't a decision taken lightly.

I go back to the days of DOS2.0 and Smartwriter, probably before some of you where born never mind became programmers. This debate has gone on since DOS6.0 came out and we could run it on a 10 megabyte hard drive, those where the days :D
 
ChrisH said:
I go back to the days of DOS2.0 and Smartwriter, probably before some of you where born never mind became programmers. This debate has gone on since DOS6.0 came out and we could run it on a 10 megabyte hard drive, those where the days :D
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I started this job with DOS 3.31 on a PS/2 with a 10MB hard drive. I still have and use the keyboard (IBM Model M, best thing since sliced bread IMO). Only gave up using Wordstar 6.0 for DOS a couple of years ago.

Nothing wrong with using DOS for a dedicated system like EPOS, it's not like the till operators are going to be using the tills for updating their facebook page while scanning people's shopping ...
 
onomatopoeia said:
Nothing wrong with using DOS for a dedicated system like EPOS, it's not like the till operators are going to be using the tills for updating their facebook page while scanning people's shopping ...
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depends how you want your EPOS to work for you though.. we're in the middle of integrating a mastercard based gift card into our EPOS (xp based) which simply wouldnt work on DOS. but then i suspect the touchscreens wouldnt work either :D
 
Lidl use chip and pin on DOS based machine :D

Love to see Lidl useing gift cards LOL, Aldi might add them to their Ubuntu Linux tills.

Who do you work for Neil ?
 
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ChrisH said:
Lidl use chip and pin on DOS based machine :D

Love to see Lidl useing gift cards LOL, Aldi might add them to their Ubuntu Linux tills.

Who do you work for Neil ?
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indeed, chip and pin devices are serial enabled (at least most ive seen are) so should work with the right COM settings :)

a very well known "surf/freesports" clothing brand retailer... ;)
 
ChrisH said:
In the big world many companies won't upgrade simply because they have no need. They run the same processes on the same machines doing the same job to meet the same result.
Why change that, as the saying goes " if it ain't broke don't fix it "
Click to expand...
Whilst NT and now XP are old hat nobody can deny they have been very stable, Vista 64bit looked promising but was a nightmare finding programs that would run at all never mind stably.

My change to Windows 7 comes after a year of upgrading camera gear, printers and scanners. I now have pretty much all up to date kit. That means that 7 found all but 1 device, and that was something to do with my mainboard hence the upgrade. The machine was running like a dog and full of junk that needed wiping so it was a good time to upgrade.

I haven't forgot that I have a copy of Vista Ultimate 64bit that cost me £150 sat in a drawer, my biggest waste of money yet. It took time for me to decide on an upgrade to 7 and this was the right time.
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Glad you're all sorted Chris. Completely agree on the "If it ant broke don't fix it", however, for a large number of companies, regulatory requirements are that they are still supported and patched by Microsoft, hence most financial institutions being in the early (or maybe advanced) stages of looking at 7.

Vista for business was a complete waste of time, hence the fact that XP is still supported, albeit with sp3 only. I don't know of a single Finanical institution (my business sector) that did do the move, although I'm sure there are some.
 
ChrisH said:
LOL

Mark is that the keyboard that clacks when you hit a key and has little flappers under them ?
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That's the one. Been using it 19 years now and it's still going strong. Managed to buy a few more from second hand shops so I have them at home as well :D
 
LOL I used to strip and clean those years ago at British Aerospace.

We once had a cleaner that decided all the keboards in the office where dirty, she cleaned them with Spray solvent. I pee'd myself the next day when we got 24 calls for faulty keyboards in the same office.

I love my Logitech Dinovo keyboard suite, cost me £200 new and I still love it over 15 years since I purchased it.

Just trying to decide on a decent mail client that will import my outlook pst files and works with 7. I love outlook 2003 but can't find my office disk so going over to openoffice :D
 
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