My little test- singel core vs. quad core

cadder

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Nov 17, 2008
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One of the frustrations with my old AMD Athlong system was that if it was doing one thing, like copying files, it was almost unusable for anything else.

I've got the new Q9400 system in place, copying files to it over the network. While copying I thought I would do a little test. So I've got one window open copying about 100MB of files over the network, I opened an instance of superpi and set it to calculate 32M, I've got a couple of other windows open browsing the net, so I go to tvguide.com and start watching videos. I don't have a single hitch with the videos.

Maybe I could do this with a dual core, maybe not. I decided to get a quadcore so no matter what else I've got going I can still use the computer for something else.
 

protokiller

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Copying files is not cpu intensive at all.

You'll find your quad core lagging behind if your copying files and doing something else hard drive intensive at the same time.
 

werxen

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i fail to see how that is CPU intensive at all... im sure all modern cpus can blow through that with no problem.

if you really want to stress your cpu try this:

run anti virus, watch some movies, play a game like crysis and encode a big movie to another format.
 

cadder

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Maybe the amount of "cpu intensive" it is depends on the power of the cpu?

What started this little test- if I was only copying a folder of files, it would dominate my Athlon 1500XP so much that the computer would not be usable for anything else. Today I happened to be copying files in the process of setting up the new computer so I thought I would see how responsive it was for other tasks at the same time.
 

joefriday

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I wonder if DMA was enabled. PIO is the only way transfering files could make the CPU have to do much of any work.