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Look what my parents sent me for my birthday! :D http://ur1.ca/a80j9
Thursday, 13-Sep-12 20:15:00 UTC from web-
@shadowdash454 that looks shiny and awesome! What is it? I know I've heard of the brand before
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@pony The motherboard is made Gugabyte the processor is made by AMD and the water cooler is made by Corsair
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@shadowdash454 right! the cooler brand was familiar! Of course I know AMD, but I really only know ASUS for motherboards.
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@pony I had a ASUS motherboard but it stop working :/
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@shadowdash454 I think my old one is fried as well. xP I don't know whetehr to buy a new one or not
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@shadowdash454 I'm terribly out of date on processors. That one looks really nice though!
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@pony Yeah it's a AMD Six core :D
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@shadowdash454 woah.. explain that to me please! how in Luna's name are there 6-cores out now?!
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@pony There are also octacores.
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@pony there are eight cores to lol well what do you want to know? lol
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@shadowdash454 @yodelerty xD oh my! so wait.. umm.. well, what I'm most curious about is the difference in speed between a single, dual, ... 6, 8, etc. What difference in performance is there?
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@pony Hardly any, unless you have software that can use all of them. Most only supports 4.
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@pony Beats me. Presumable there is some noticeable difference between core number. Having more than 4 is usually pointless, though.
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@yodelerty @eaglehooves ah interesting! yeah I've heard about that now that you mention it. the software matters greatly.. it'll be nice when all software is compatible
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@pony Multitasking performance is the primary benefit you see with more cores. I have six myself.
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@toksyuryel ooh.. hmm. so what's an example of multitasking exactly? I mean computers are constantly running multiple processes..
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@pony That'll be nice, but I'm still on dual. I'll need to throw down some money when the next leap in software finally releases.
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@pony On a single core, the programs are actually being very rapidly switched out. On multiple cores, the OS can (and does) actually have programs genuinely running at the exact same time.
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@pony It's not a case of the software being "compatible". The software isn't "incompatible" with the processor, it just isn't programmed to take advantage of the additional cores. Which in many cases is just fine, not every task *can* be split into multiple threads. Rewriting existing software to use multiple threads also takes a long time and is very error-prone. But this isn't really a problem if you treat the main benefit as enabling better multitasking, because then it doesn't matter if a one piece of software uses just one thread as that just leaves room for other pieces of software to use the other cores.
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@pony Well I'm always running my web browser and a chat client at the same time. That's an example of multitasking. Sometimes I'll also run a game or a music player too. Occasionally I'll be running all four of those at one time. That's multitasking.
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@toksyuryel ooh! cool! so then the OS divides the processes?
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@pony The OS is responsible for that yeah
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@toksyuryel oh cool! so are most OSs only compatible with 4 then? or is there any limit?
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@pony Most OSes are fine with any number, but the more physical cores you have, the more the OS can split them up to increase efficiency (because multiple cores can run literally simultaneously, whereas extra programs beyond that number need to be rapidly switched between - so fast you can't tell the switching is happening, but it is).
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@pony I'm not aware of any OS with a hard limit, 4 or otherwise. Must be a Windows thing. Linux gives you the option of setting an arbitrary limit to conserve a small amount of memory, but it's just an option. And I don't know anything about other OSes.
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@toksyuryel Windows doesn't have a process limit either. Except maybe Windows 7 Starter, but that has a ton of ridiculous restrictions with no basis other than "persuade people to buy the 'real' editions", anyway.
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@pony What I've been told is that 4 is where the law of diminishing returns comes on. Windows can handle 8 (or more), but in a desktop, the gain from 4 to 8 isn't as big as 2 to 4 while costing more money.
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@eaglehooves There's no diminishing returns when it comes to multitasking ^_^
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@toksyuryel How much stuff do you run at once?!
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@eaglehooves @toksyuryel @bitshift oh interesting! #smartponies Thanks for sating my curiosity.. and sorry for the #latereply
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