Is there such a thing as an 8 core pc?

Ghost9

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I notice that macs are touting an 8 core, 16g ram system. Is this possible on a pc? I haven't been able to find a mobo that supports two quad cores or more than 8gig of ram.
 

rodney_ws

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Well, if you take the "P" out of PC, yes you can go with a server board... I'm sure there are many people out there running 8 core, 16 core and probably even 32 core systems at home... Why? Unless you work for George Lucas I'm honestly not sure how any normal person could put that sort of rig to good use. To each his own I guess.
 

dobby

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those mac you your seeing around are just workstation consoles, and there not cheap, for the same price (but probable much cheaper) you can buy a server/workstation board, that can house to clovertown CPU's, this is the same way MACs do it, you'll also haev all the availbe RAM modules, which you can construct up to 16Gb. Many of the boards have PCI-ex X16 so you put in a decent/bussisness GPU.

The advantge of this is you could run Windows XP x64 or Vista x64 (becuase of ram usgae must be x64)

If you want one premade i think HP have one, im sure they have a duel woodcrest (2*2) so they should have ugraded to dual clover town (2*4).
 

the_vorlon

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Can always get a Power5, 8 cores on an MCP, draws only 500 watts and has amazing FP performance, can also access up to 1024 gigs of RAM.

Might be a bit out of your intended price range however.
 
Well, if you take the "P" out of PC, yes you can go with a server board... I'm sure there are many people out there running 8 core, 16 core and probably even 32 core systems at home... Why? Unless you work for George Lucas I'm honestly not sure how any normal person could put that sort of rig to good use. To each his own I guess.

Here's the 3 things I'd use it for, in order of heaviest use
1. GCC.
2. GCC. Yup, I run Gentoo :D
3. Running the DNA chip probe-match scripts I work on in the lab for all 24 chromosomes (22 autosomes + X and Y) at once instead of one at a time. However, each chromosome requires an absolute bare minimum of 1.0-1.1 GB for the data set and usually more like 3.3-3.6 GB, so that's 24-96 GB RAM, and all of the I/O capacity to go with it...oooh...the FSB is gonna be hurting...
 

SEALBoy

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Aug 17, 2006
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Well, if you take the "P" out of PC, yes you can go with a server board... I'm sure there are many people out there running 8 core, 16 core and probably even 32 core systems at home... Why? Unless you work for George Lucas I'm honestly not sure how any normal person could put that sort of rig to good use. To each his own I guess.

It's not hard to use all 32 cores. All you need is to be running 5 different virus scans, 3 copies of Supreme Commander, 8 of BF2142, 7 Oblivions, 10 FSX's, and a couple DVD's ripping.
 

justjc

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It'll take some time for the processors to come out(Phenom FXs are due in November) but othervise the AMD Quad is the only gaming motherboard that will let you run 8 cores on a gaming PC. There should however be a new version, made by AMD and supporting Crossfire, that will come around the same time as the processor, that might be a better pewrformer.