A question that I myself and anyone else out there has been wondering when buying a computer is should I go with the quad core or the dual Core. This question is even harder though for a company who needs to buy more than 10 computers to replace their out of date computers they are using right now. Well the choice is not an easy one so I will try and break it down into pros for quad cores and pros for dual cores.
Quad Core
• Future Proof
A quad core is the CPU of the future. Dual cores can only go so fast before the laws of physics comes in. So the only thing left for CPU’s is to add more cores. The only problem is only a handful of programs right now actually utilize more than 2 cores, which brings me to my next point.• Better for rendering, encoding, or scientific applications
If you compare a $210 Quad Core Q6600 to a $190 Dual Core E8400, guess who performs better? The Dual Core, but the quad core does perform better in rendering, encoding and scientific apps. The reason is because no programs are written to utilize 4 cores right now. Eventually in a couple of years though you will find that almost all programs will start to utilize 4 cores as the quad core becomes more standard.
Dual Core
• Cheaper
Of course buying will always be cheaper than buying a quad core. You can buy right now a 3.0GHz Dual core for under $200, but to find a 3.0GHz quad core it will cost you over $1,000. That is a huge difference in price is you ask me, but in reality you are getting double the processing power with 4 cores instead of 2, the problem is utilizing all of it.• Performs Better to date
A test was done at the Website Codinghorror.com a while back that compared a Dual Core 2.4GHz to a Quad Core 2.4GHz. The results showed that the quad core only performed better in rendering, encoding and scientific apps. So pretty much they were exactly the same. So with that extra money you saved by buying a dual core you could buy an even faster dual core for the same price as that quad core and outperform it on almost all tests.
So when you put all the facts in front when it comes down to buying a quad core or a dual core for your works PC you still more than likely will be undecided. The fact is there is no winner in this point of time, but when you are talking about holding on to a computer for 4+ years,( Which most businesses do) then the logical choice will be the Quad Core because by then the programs will have adapted to use all 4 cores. Now when you are talking about having a computer for only a couple of years then you are better of buying the Dual Core, unless your business is heavy into animation and encoding and rendering.
Hope this article helped, good luck and I hope you make the right choice!
