Comments on: The quad-core payoff

By: Redface

Redface — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 03:09:00 +0000

Shoulda gone with an Nvidia. Much more industry-friendly. From my perspective, and that involves a bit of stereoscopic 3d gaming (aka – standard gaming format of the future) ATI has dropped the ball.

By: Toin Bach

Toin Bach — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 11:15:39 +0000

I don’t see an answer to Svenkpoijken’s question regarding onlyt two processors visible in XP. Which is a pity, ‘cos I have the same problem.
But I can only get XP to run if I disable the quad core (ie revert to dual core) and also if I disable the SATA RAID controller.
I’ve tried installing the RAID driver but that says it can’t be installed ‘cos the feature doesn’t exist and I can’t get XP to run if I enable RAID in the BIOS.
I’ve yet to find a driver to cover my quad core (6600) problem

Anyone any ideas?

I’m running XP Pro SP3 on a Dell XPS 420 with 4GB RAM and 2 500 GB (non-RAID) Seagate HDDs

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 15:47:59 +0000

Ed,

How quiet is the 512MB ATI Radeon HD2600XT?

As I said in one of my comments above, I’m using the ATI Radeon 1650 PRO in my HTPC. The fan on this thing is loud enough to be heard over the television.

Any thoughts on a higher-end video card with a fanless design?

Thank you.

Aaron

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:23:44 +0000

‘sodo,

VMWare allows you to specify one or two processors for a VM, so no, it won’t use all four.

By: Cacasodo

Cacasodo — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:16:17 +0000

Hey Ed,
Good post. I was thinking about getting a Dell 1430 dual quad core as a home workstation. But I’d use Fedora as my primary OS. I know that you’re running Ubuntu under VM on your system. I was wondering how many CPUs does VMware Workstation allow you to see? All four or only two?

Looking forward to your ZDNet post.
‘sodo

By: Svenskpojken

Svenskpojken — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:20:34 +0000

Question for Cyberdude:

I’ve just build a Quad Core 6600 system with Windows XP Pro, SP2, and it’s flying. However, I can’t recognize more than 2 CPU’s in Task Manager. Would you or anyone else in the group know if I am supposed to be able to see all 4 in task manager? or is XP’s limit 2 Processors?

Thanks.

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:59:58 +0000

iVan,

Try it with a library of 6500 photos. There’s a genuine performance difference.

By: iVan

iVan — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 07:09:19 +0000

That was funny to hear from you that a window full of thumbnails draws “instantly”. (strong emphasis on your italics) hihi… i just wanna say, Vista does cache your thumbnails to disk. (period) once rendered vista draws that “instantly” –yes even on my Sempron 3000+ PC. =P

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:59:38 +0000

Turned out I didn’t install both ATI Radeon drivers. I also needed something called ‘Avivio’ installed.

I posted a comment on The Green Button about 6:30 this morning. By 8:00 am more than 15 people had read my post and one of them had the solution. If only everything was this easy.

Aaron

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:10:01 +0000

I haven’t tried XP on this box, Cypherdude, so I can’t answer any of those questions. Maybe someone else who has read this can. You might also check some of the reviews I pointed to earlier.

By: Cypherdude

Cypherdude — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 03:56:56 +0000

I purchased Windows XP Pro SP2 last year but I didn’t use it. Lately, I’ve been reading Intel Quad Core 2 Q6600 reviews and about its recent price drop. Compared to Vista, what would the performance be if I used XP Pro SP2 instead? I’ve read a number of Q6600 reviews and the testers all seem to use XP Pro SP2. Vista has a new feature for quad cores called “load balancing.” How much of a difference would it make if I used XP without this feature?

I will be running 2 CPU intensive business apps and a special permanent memory resident disk program. If I bought the Q6600, in XP if possible, I would manually assign the last 3 cores to these tasks. I would leave the first core for regular system usage and other apps. Would this setup work in XP and would there be any performance difference compared to Vista? I do not want to buy a whole new set of software again.

Thanks.

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:18:59 +0000

Aaron, have you installed the latest ATI drivers and then rerun the WEI test? With that card you should get killer scores.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:03:06 +0000

I’m running the same processor with 2gb of RAM in Vista x32, per your recommendation a week or so ago. My WEI is 1.0 based on the score of 1.0 for the ‘Graphics’ category and the ‘Gaming Graphics’ category. I’m running the ATI Radeon 1650 PRO. Vista AERO is working.

Right now, I’m on an old LCD monitor to test the system out before I put the machine in my living room. Resolution is set at 1024×768.

Any thoughts? Thank you.

By: Steven

Steven — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:17:59 +0000

Have you run any x64 guest OSs within your VM on that dimension 9200, such as a VM machine of XP x64 or Vista x64? I’m curious if that machine’s BIOS supports Intel VM (the processor certainly does).

By: Navdeep

Navdeep — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 23:19:53 +0000

I also got the same PC. Question for you: were you concerned with the 375W PSU when you upgraded the HardDrive and Video card? or did you replace the PSU also?

Btw; i love how quiet the PC is.