In doing a little research to see whether systems built around Intel’s new Core 2 Quadro were worth the extra cost, I ran across a review of several pre-production systems from Tom’s Hardware. In typical TH fashion, the story is sliced into something like 16 pages. This Editor’s Opinion on Page 14 was pretty enthusiastic:
For me, working with one of the first quad core systems was amazing. No matter how many applications you run at the same time, the system reacts to user commands quickly. Some applications require half the time to finish tasks. To me, it’s like being catapulted a year into the future and is unlike the past few years when computing power increased only marginally. Intel pumped out 30% more performance with Core 2 Duo and will double that again with Core 2 Quadro soon.
So here it is 10 months later, and I’m starting to see quad-core Intel systems at (sort of) reasonable prices. But is that breathless opinion from last year still valid? If you’ve seen any more recent reviews, pass along links. Or, even better, if you’re using a quad-core system yourself, how is it working for you? Leave a note in the comments.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the ridiculously expensive Core 2 Extreme line. In this case, I’m talking about the Q6600, a quad-core CPU with 8MB of L2 cache and a clock speed of 2.4GHz. Evilkat, in the comments section, points to The Tech Report, where I found this review, which concluded:
Meanwhile, Intel’s quad-core processors are just amazing. Their performance doesn’t seem to be significantly impacted by a front-side bus bottleneck, contrary to what one might expect. They typically scale up to four threads at least as well as Quad FX systems. Their power use is restrained, and as we anticipated, the Core 2 Quad Q6600 looks to be even more power-efficient than the Core 2 Extreme QX6700. In fact, the Q6600 proved to be the most power-efficient processor in our render energy test, beating out dual-core chips in the process. That’s poster-boy-type behavior for the multi-core revolution.
That’s pretty high praise for a chip that can easily live in a $1500 system.
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 
It depends … the benchmarks pretty much speak for themselves. If you have a lot of audio/video work, then yes, you’ll get more (a lot more) done in less time. Gaming is pretty hit and miss and you’d be better off sticking with Core 2 Duo. If you’re surfing the web, writing emails and working with small Office docs, it’s overkill.
Are they worth the extra cost? That depends on what you do and how much your time is worth. If you have to walk away from your PC while you render video or twiddle your thumbs in CS2 and you’re paid by the hour, then going quad-core might pay for itself in a matter of weeks/months.
Except for a few 3D renderers, I am not aware of anything that can tie up four cores just yet. Well I suppose transcoding/endcoding could benefit, but the marginal benefit derived from quad-core is questionable given extra cost.
Here’s a review of the quadro that I trust much more than whatever Tom’s hardware provides:
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2007q2/core2-qx6800/index.x?pg=1
They’ve got a whole slew of benches from games, to 3d renders to encoders, etc.
EK, that’s a review of the Core 2 Extreme family, which is pretty different in price and performance from what I’m referring to. They mention the wholesale price on the CPU they looked at was $1200 back in April. I’ve actually found a Core 2 Quadro system at 2.4GHz with 2GB RAM, Nvidia 7900GX video, 500GB storage, etc. for a price tag around $1500.
At that price, I would consider the upgrade.
Thanks for the link, btw. I found some good details here:
http://www.techreport.com/etc/2006q3/fall-idf/index.x?page=1
“The Extreme version will be followed by less expensive processors to be called ‘Core 2 Quad.’ Seriously.”
More poking around turns up this review of five Q6600 based systems:
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2007q1/quad-core/index.x?pg=13
Conclusion:
“Meanwhile, Intel’s quad-core processors are just amazing. Their performance doesn’t seem to be significantly impacted by a front-side bus bottleneck, contrary to what one might expect. They typically scale up to four threads at least as well as Quad FX systems. Their power use is restrained, and as we anticipated, the Core 2 Quad Q6600 looks to be even more power-efficient than the Core 2 Extreme QX6700. In fact, the Q6600 proved to be the most power-efficient processor in our render energy test, beating out dual-core chips in the process. That’s poster-boy-type behavior for the multi-core revolution. “
More telling:
“As I said earlier, not everyone needs a quad-core CPU, and our gaming tests illustrated that abundantly. Even the higher-end dual-core CPUs aced those tests. For most folks, an affordable dual-core CPU will probably be more than enough processor for the next couple of years.”
Ultimately, it depends what you want to do. The main place I see the power benefit over Core 2 Duo is video rendering.
Sounds like you “want” a Quad core 😉
“Sounds like you “want” a Quad core …”
Not really. The main thing I’m looking for is dual PCIe x16 slots, so I can run three or four monitors. It’s not enough of a priority to justify replacing a perfectly good system right now, but if I could get that capability AND move to quad core without having to give up limbs, well, I might go for it.
System I came from:
Intel BOXD925XECV2, P4 650 3.4 GHz., 3 GB, 2 x 500 RAID 1. ATI X850 PRO
System I moved to in November:
Intel BOXD975XBX, Core 2 Extreme X6800, 4 GB, 2 x 500 RAID 1, ATI X1900 CrossFire + X1900XTX (2 vids).
Adobe Photoshop performance increase (as measured by me for the various hardcore rendering and batch tasks) +100-150% depending on the task. InDesign and Illustrator performance also increased at least 100 fold for very complex publications. We could work in High Res mode ALL the time now in InDesign.
Upgrade:
Swapped out the X6800 for the QX6700 (with D975XBX2 on the backburner for now until the tech shift is done at Intel).
Again, I saw a significant impact on performance with Adobe apps seeing another close to 50% increase in performance due to the extra cores.
Some things where multi-threading was not used like bootup were slower due to the GHz factor between the X6800 (2.93GHz) and the QX6700 (2.66 GHz).
The performance jump from NetBurst to Core 2 was huge. I has indeed paid for itself ten times over already since we jumped on the Core 2 bandwagon back in October November.
The BOXD975XBX and XBX2 have 3 16x PCI-E slots (physically 8x x 2 and 4x respectively) that can enable you to run up to 6 monitors if need be. I run four monitors all the time with the possiblity of 2 more coming down the pipe soon.
For me, productivity jumped exponentially from 1 to 2, and then again from 2 to 4. It makes a huge difference on the workflow, especially for those of us who work in publications, but also remote server management.
Philip
MPECS Inc.
That’s exactly the sort of real-world testimony I was looking for, Philip. Thanks!
After July 22, when Intel drops prices, there will be a quad-core CPU available for around $260, if you’re interested, Ed.
One more thing: NEVER trust Tom’s hardware blindly, without checking on hardware forums. They tend to rig the results according to the interests of their advertisers.
Whats wrong with AMD? I havn’t used Intel for
10 years. Unless you are looking for max performance
AMD is a lot cheaper and rock solid in my book.
Ray, AMD’s latest chips just can’t compete with what Intel is putting out. They make some fine CPUs if value is your goal, but for performance the gap is getting wider every day.
I am planning on getting a quad core soon and would recommend them to anybody looking for a new computer; except to wait until after July 22nd
See: http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/news.php?tid=789466&starttime=0&endtime=0
Intel is having another round of price cuts which will lower the price from its current price of around $500 to only $266! Quad core is definetely the future as more and more programs are being optimized for multi-cores (including the next generation game, Crysis, which is designed for improvements with dual and quad cores as well as DX10)
I just bought a Q6600 a couple of weeks ago. I have only good things to say about it, but I can’t compare with a Core Duo, my last PC was a Pentium 4 🙂
Scott Hannselman bought one , near future he will give his opinions, this guy one of those i am trust.
the most of the site reviews just get money for their surveys thus I’m not trust them.