Xp vs Vista, and processor questions...

[UKbob]

How much faster is a "Viiv quad core processor Q6600 (2.2ghz, 1066fsb, 8mb cache)" 2 gigs ram - than a 3.4ghz P4 running xp with 2 gigs of ram.
In real terms?

Also, what are the advantages of home premuim vs ultimate on vista?

And just how stable is vista?

And er, how is vista different/better than xp?

[JustinP1]

People can get very attached to the MHz and multi-core systems without asking this question, which is a very good one.

The fact is that if the softward you are running is not optimised for a multi-core system, you will see no performance benefit. Indeed, I have actually seen some Mac tests comparing newer multicore machines and in real life they are a few percent slower running software not specifically designed for multicore-running.

Indeed, I have only ever seen a couple of applications where overall speed makes a lot of difference. That is in live music recording, and video editing.

In the former it ultimately allows you record more tracks, in the latter it cuts down big processing times by minutes or hours.

Is what you are doing going to notice a 5 or 10% difference?

[TheLearner]

Justin makes very valid points and the OP's question is a good one. Assuming the app is both non-threaded and SMP unaware; it could well suffer a performance hit. However apps that odd are quite few and far between. Taking each core as a single processor, I'd suggest that you'd be neck and neck with your current machine; whilst slower in terms of clock speed you have a newer (and hypothetically better) CPU layout and great gobs of cache for it to play with. Design and cache are generally speaking more important than sheer clock cycles.

If your running a reasonably modern suite of programs (say video editor stuff) it should have the ability to make use of multi-core'd systems then you'll notice quite an improvement in transcoding, rendering effects and such.

The main difference between Home and Ultimate is that Home has various limitations which ultimate doesn't. Limited number of machines on the network, can't join a domain and so on. Being brutally honest it's something I object to on principal but in real terms won't affect 99% of home users.

XP and Vista... well, XP will reach end of life sooner than Vista; MS have a habit of saying "X won't be back ported to XP" so it'll end up as a feature poor cousin. Stability wise? Realistically both about the same. Either will trip over and go splat at some point but that's just true of any OS (yes, even Linux and OS X go bang sometimes).

[m12_nathan]

TheLearner said:

Taking each core as a single processor, I'd suggest that you'd be neck and neck with your current machine;

Would you? I'd suggest the new one will be miles quicker.

[TheLearner]

m12_nathan said:

TheLearner said:

Taking each core as a single processor, I'd suggest that you'd be neck and neck with your current machine;

Would you? I'd suggest the new one will be miles quicker.

Yes, I would It's running at 2.2Ghz and a single core will only be able to use 2MB of cache rather than the whole 8MB for itself. So in the 'worst case scenario' described above (non-threaded. non-SMPable app) it's only edge comes from the improved design. Which makes up for the clock cycle difference but wouldn't have it pulling ahead by much if anything. You'll get some improvement from the OS shunting everything else to the other cores but...

Of course realistically it's going to ps all over the P4 and Bob's unlikely to have a weird app that throws a wobbler.

[GregE240]

m12_nathan said:

TheLearner said:

Taking each core as a single processor, I'd suggest that you'd be neck and neck with your current machine;

Would you? I'd suggest the new one will be miles quicker.

The bus / memory speed will be way quicker on the new machine - old one likely to be 266MHz or 400MHz, new one 667MHz.

So yes, quicker!

(O/T what happened to ThePassenger, S? Swapped seats?)

[Plotloss]

Slightly related

Q6600 or E6750?

Bear in mind before you answer, that this will replace an Athlon 1200...

[TheLearner]

GregE240 said:

(O/T what happened to ThePassenger, S? Swapped seats?)

When it took 3 hours to go 5 miles on the local busses... twas time to swap seats. Besides, I already own a car... affectionately known as rusty

[Mr Whippy]

Plotloss said:

Slightly related

Q6600 or E6750?

Bear in mind before you answer, that this will replace an Athlon 1200...

I've got an E6750 and it's very quick in everything... I upgraded from an XP3200 Barton thing, so that in itself wasn't a stormer, but the new processor is easily over twice as fast at rendering frames out in 3ds Max...

Clocked to 3.2Ghz now (400mhz bus up from 333mhz, with ram up the same amount)...

Runs very cool with a big 120mm fan that is idling (1000rpm).

At work I have a Quad 2.66Ghz machine for Aftereffects and 3D work, modelling and then rendering etc. To be honest, unless you are rendering out something in AE that is going to take 6 hrs, and that is then 4hrs and you have 2hrs spare at the end of the day, then great. If you have 2 weeks of frame rendering that will be cut to 8 days and you can deliver early or get to work on something else, then fine.

Thing is, at home, my PC doesn't make me money, and for what it's worth the E6750 is stupendously quick for what it is anyway... The cost issues are also worth considering, to double the power of the E6750 might require over twice as much outlay, and then the time you use it might be half as much again anyway, so the real benefit is hard to justify unless you are in a time critical business situation.


I'd spend the £300 saved on buying a nice keyboard, mouse and monitor, things you'll appreciate ALL the time!

If money isn't an issue, then I'd still be considering the increased heat generated, and demand for more cooling = more noise etc, and even now, as I've started noticing, the gfx/cpu/psu combo can churn out plenty of heat these days... not always a good thing if it's summer and red hot already...

Dave

Edited by Mr Whippy on Wednesday 12th September 17:31

[malman]

Not sure if I picked the correct P4 but you know better which version you have.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/cpu-charts/3d...

Just pick the different benchmarks and take notice of any that relate to what you do with your PC not just pure maths etc.

You can add extra cpus at the bottom


http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/extreme-fsb-2,review...

Edited by malman on Wednesday 12th September 17:59

[Plotloss]

Mr Whippy said:

Plotloss said:

Slightly related

Q6600 or E6750?

Bear in mind before you answer, that this will replace an Athlon 1200...

I've got an E6750 and it's very quick in everything... I upgraded from an XP3200 Barton thing, so that in itself wasn't a stormer, but the new processor is easily over twice as fast at rendering frames out in 3ds Max...

Clocked to 3.2Ghz now (400mhz bus up from 333mhz, with ram up the same amount)...

Runs very cool with a big 120mm fan that is idling (1000rpm).

At work I have a Quad 2.66Ghz machine for Aftereffects and 3D work, modelling and then rendering etc. To be honest, unless you are rendering out something in AE that is going to take 6 hrs, and that is then 4hrs and you have 2hrs spare at the end of the day, then great. If you have 2 weeks of frame rendering that will be cut to 8 days and you can deliver early or get to work on something else, then fine.

Thing is, at home, my PC doesn't make me money, and for what it's worth the E6750 is stupendously quick for what it is anyway... The cost issues are also worth considering, to double the power of the E6750 might require over twice as much outlay, and then the time you use it might be half as much again anyway, so the real benefit is hard to justify unless you are in a time critical business situation.


I'd spend the £300 saved on buying a nice keyboard, mouse and monitor, things you'll appreciate ALL the time!

If money isn't an issue, then I'd still be considering the increased heat generated, and demand for more cooling = more noise etc, and even now, as I've started noticing, the gfx/cpu/psu combo can churn out plenty of heat these days... not always a good thing if it's summer and red hot already...

Dave

Edited by Mr Whippy on Wednesday 12th September 17:31

Useful, ta.

Price difference is £50 between the two and I'm considering a dalliance with water cooling...

[wolves_wanderer]

Plotloss said:

Price difference is £50 between the two and I'm considering a dalliance with water cooling...

In that case go for the Q6600. I am running one of the older B3 rev chips at 3.2 under good air cooling. If you get one of the new G0 revision chips (that run cooler and overclock better) you should see 3.4-3.6 under water.

You may get up around 3.8 - 4.0 with the 6750 but I would suspect that you will benefit from the extra cores more than 400MHz, especially if you intend keeping the machine for a while.

[Plotloss]

Yeah, length of service is key, I've never been into the PC arms race thing.

Current machine built in Jan 2001, still in 16+ hours service per day.

[wolves_wanderer]

Plotloss said:

Yeah, length of service is key, I've never been into the PC arms race thing.

Current machine built in Jan 2001, still in 16+ hours service per day.

Well, as that annoying insurance parrot doesn't quite say: "Multicore, multicore."

[UKbob]

Cheers chaps. Very helpful and informative. I didnt realise software had to be written for quadcore in order for speed benefits to be reaped.

Going to upgrade anyway as (nearly every aspect of!) my P4 is throwing a wobbler, from the hard drive disk errors, to the slightly dodgy old graphics card, card readers, not enough USB ports, very noisy cooling fan (which I cant stand) ... the potential time needed to strip it down and fix it just isnt worth the downtime (workwise) of buying a new one. (In other words, a good excuse just to upgrade, I'll get the old one sorted and use that as a spare/storage dump)

With regards to what it is, and also stability, what is Vista? What ME was to 98 (worse, iirc!) or what xp was to 2k (worse again, at first) or is it an actual improvement and extention over what XP already is? Or is it a whole new entity as such?

And does anyone else remember Windows 97, or ever see it in use?

[Plotloss]

UKbob said:

And does anyone else remember Windows 97, or ever see it in use?

3.1, 3.11, NT3.51, 95, NT4, 98, 98se, Me, 2000, XP, XPSP2, Vista

But not Windows 97...

[UKbob]

Plotloss said:

UKbob said:

And does anyone else remember Windows 97, or ever see it in use?

3.1, 3.11, NT3.51, 95, NT4, 98, 98se, Me, 2000, XP, XPSP2, Vista

But not Windows 97...

I saw it once, genuine windows boot up screen badged as 97, and being told it wasnt complete. I dont remember the story (at all!) but I saw it running at a mates mates house, very geeky fatboy who had to have everything before everyone else, but never heard nor saw it in use again. The main feature I remember was the first instance of the auto power off feature which was later introduced, we all remember the orange "It is now safe to turn off your machine" post shutdown screen. I can only guess that praps it was a beta release which for some reason was a) strangely beta released and b) never seen again. I dont know.

[Plotloss]

UKbob said:

Plotloss said:

UKbob said:

And does anyone else remember Windows 97, or ever see it in use?

3.1, 3.11, NT3.51, 95, NT4, 98, 98se, Me, 2000, XP, XPSP2, Vista

But not Windows 97...

I saw it once, genuine windows boot up screen badged as 97, and being told it wasnt complete. I dont remember the story (at all!) but I saw it running at a mates mates house, very geeky fatboy who had to have everything before everyone else, but never heard nor saw it in use again. The main feature I remember was the first instance of the auto power off feature which was later introduced, we all remember the orange "It is now safe to turn off your machine" post shutdown screen. I can only guess that praps it was a beta release which for some reason was a) strangely beta released and b) never seen again. I dont know.

Ahh, thats what 98 was going to be. The first beta releases were badged Windows 97.

Its all coming back now.

[UKbob]

Plotloss said:

UKbob said:

Plotloss said:

UKbob said:

And does anyone else remember Windows 97, or ever see it in use?

3.1, 3.11, NT3.51, 95, NT4, 98, 98se, Me, 2000, XP, XPSP2, Vista

But not Windows 97...

I saw it once, genuine windows boot up screen badged as 97, and being told it wasnt complete. I dont remember the story (at all!) but I saw it running at a mates mates house, very geeky fatboy who had to have everything before everyone else, but never heard nor saw it in use again. The main feature I remember was the first instance of the auto power off feature which was later introduced, we all remember the orange "It is now safe to turn off your machine" post shutdown screen. I can only guess that praps it was a beta release which for some reason was a) strangely beta released and b) never seen again. I dont know.

Ahh, thats what 98 was going to be. The first beta releases were badged Windows 97.

Its all coming back now.

Interesting. Hard to believe that was 10 years ago.

[TheLearner]

Plotloss said:

UKbob said:

And does anyone else remember Windows 97, or ever see it in use?

3.1, 3.11, NT3.51, 95, NT4, 98, 98se, Me, 2000, XP, XPSP2, Vista

But not Windows 97...

You're missing two, possibly three releases of 95, one of Me, 6 of NT4, 4 of 2k... one of 3.11 (3.11 and 3.11 Windows for Workgroups, seen both). Hey, don't look at me like that, he brought service packs in to it.

But, as Bob asked if Vista is a Me... not in the way you're thinking. It's as stable as XP, but is an Me as really the up take of it doesn't seem to be all that rapid (keeping in mind XP seemed to appear every bloody where quite quickly) and with Windows NT 7 scheduled for release in 3 years time... I can see a lot of people keeping XP-SP3/SP4 around until then.