Are Quad-Core Mobile Procs Overkill?
PrintWith Intel's quad-core mobile chip soon coming to a laptop near you, some are wondering if a four-core chip might be overkill for a mobile platform. The answer is a resounding 'No' and anyone who thinks otherwise automatically loses 100x4 points of geek cred.
Okay, that might be a bit harsh, particularly since there are compelling reasons to support such blasphemous thoughts. While it's difficult to fathom ever having too much computing power, even desktop owners are still waiting for that killer app that will make everyone ditch their dual-core processor in favor of a quad. Moving to a mobile platform, wasted horsepower becomes even more of an issue as OEMs try to deal with heat dissipation, battery life, and the grand-daddy of them all, cost.
Nevertheless, there will be a market for four-core chips. Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest, says quad-core mobile chips are "definitely not" overkill, noting that the boutique OEM has been "putting quad-processors in (laptops) for a long time."
Details about some of Intel's upcoming quad-core mobile chips - like the Core 2 Extreme X9100 - are floating around the web, but others have yet to go public. Citing un-named sources, Cnet claims system vendors may start disclosing more details as soon as August 11. Will anyone care, or is dual-core still good enough for a laptop?
Image Credit: Intel
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Keith E. Whisman
July 25, 2008 at 2:16am
Hey now. Laptops are getting mighty powerfull these days. It's in the spirit of MaximumPC. If you read Maximum PC like me then you would demand a quad core in your laptop unless it was a super low power laptop from the ground up. Then it needs Intel Atom for brains. Heck laptops even have 7200rpm hdd's unless they quit making them.
I had a $700 dollar cheap laptop that I gave to a friend and on it I was doing alot of dvd back ups and it was speedy with it's old Core Duo 1.7ghz processor and 1 gig of ram.
gatorXXX
July 24, 2008 at 2:20pm
Putting a quad in a laptop is like putting that stupid 8 cylinder engine on a harley....overkill.....
ThE OnLy wAy 2 pLaY!
bholstege
July 24, 2008 at 1:47pm
The thing is, most things that need quad cores are being moved to the GPU. Video encoding can be done by both Nvidia and ATI cards, and Aodbe plans to make CS3 GPU accelerated. The need for quads is shrinking, not growing.
gordonung
July 24, 2008 at 1:08pm
They don't get you any extra performance.
Please note that because quad-core CPUs will not get you any extra performance, I will be helping people who were victimized by quad-core CPUs with an exchange. Please send any quad-core Socket AM2 or LGA775 CPUS to my attention at Maximum PC and I will drop a replacement CPU to you. The replacement will be an improvment over your quad-core and is guaranteed to have only two cores or possibly even one core if possible!
austin
July 24, 2008 at 11:06am
Dual core is still good enough for desktops. Dual cores are actually better than quads for gaming due to higher clock speeds and the lack of games utilizing more than two cores.
The only people who need quad core are people who do photo and video stuff or lots of media encoding. Quads are also good for DC, but I doubt very many people base purchasing decisions on how well their rig can fold proteins.
bholstege
July 24, 2008 at 10:25am
I find it absolutley hillarious that you guys wrote this article after your $2500 build had more than $1000 spent on a quad core CPU.
chaos.13037
July 24, 2008 at 7:10pm
This articles aim is for practicallity, talking about everyday needs and problems that people can encounter when trying to make a purchasing decision on laptops.
The dream machine is the ultimate PC they can build, nothing practical about it. One of those "Because we can" type projects.
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