Almost nothing. These things are for work. A reasonably fast quad core (anything Ivy Bridge or newer, really) is fine for almost any casual programs. Going up to eight cores makes sense for gaming since the new consoles will be eight core.
The consoles have been 8 core since 2013 dude. PS4 and xbone are 8 core. 8 slow cores, which should have prompted swift acceleration of multi threaded game engines.
Half of this console generation Intel was in the lead and they kept milking the core count. Until 3,4 years ago they were selling dual core cpu as i7 on mobile. It wasn't until AMD came up and basically showered everyone with 4 and 6 core cpus for half the price is when Intel dropped the BS and started offering real 6 core cpus in the lower tier consumer market and 4 core real 4 core cpus in mobile etc. I blame only Intel.
And we saw slow progress toward multi-threaded games throughout the generation. There are way more games today that can take advantage of 4+ cores than there were in 2013. It takes time to adapt game engines and not every kind of game will even benefit from more cores. All I'm suggesting is that if you play games you have some reason to go beyond four cores.
Jaguar uses complete cores, albeit "small" ones in terms of area - in design and performance terms they're somewhere between the old K8 Athlon 64 and K10 Athlon II processors.
I think the confusion comes in because the console implementation of Jaguar has 8 cores split across 2 "modules" which is the same terminology used for 'dozer, but referring to a different thing: Bulldozer module = 2 cores with shared FP resources Jaguar module = 4 independent cores, like a CCX in Zen
8 cores at 1.6GHz (PS4 as the slowest) is at best the same as 4 cores at 3.2 GHz, assuming everything else equal and perfect MT. Plus those cat cores were essentially half as capable as the current stuff, normalized by clock. Therefore, consoles have about the same as 2 proper desktop cores - the lowest end CPUs you can buy. Anyway, there are many games that use more than 4 cores these days. Especially stuff coming out now when also Intel started offering more cores and AMD having competitive if not superior chips.
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cfenton - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Almost nothing. These things are for work. A reasonably fast quad core (anything Ivy Bridge or newer, really) is fine for almost any casual programs. Going up to eight cores makes sense for gaming since the new consoles will be eight core.TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
The consoles have been 8 core since 2013 dude. PS4 and xbone are 8 core. 8 slow cores, which should have prompted swift acceleration of multi threaded game engines.Yet here we are.
milkywayer - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Half of this console generation Intel was in the lead and they kept milking the core count. Until 3,4 years ago they were selling dual core cpu as i7 on mobile. It wasn't until AMD came up and basically showered everyone with 4 and 6 core cpus for half the price is when Intel dropped the BS and started offering real 6 core cpus in the lower tier consumer market and 4 core real 4 core cpus in mobile etc. I blame only Intel.cfenton - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
And we saw slow progress toward multi-threaded games throughout the generation. There are way more games today that can take advantage of 4+ cores than there were in 2013. It takes time to adapt game engines and not every kind of game will even benefit from more cores. All I'm suggesting is that if you play games you have some reason to go beyond four cores.evernessince - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Consoles were based off jaguar, which really had 8 half cores that shared execution units. So really, 4 cores.scineram - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
No.Spunjji - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
You're confusing Jaguar for Bulldozer.Jaguar uses complete cores, albeit "small" ones in terms of area - in design and performance terms they're somewhere between the old K8 Athlon 64 and K10 Athlon II processors.
I think the confusion comes in because the console implementation of Jaguar has 8 cores split across 2 "modules" which is the same terminology used for 'dozer, but referring to a different thing:
Bulldozer module = 2 cores with shared FP resources
Jaguar module = 4 independent cores, like a CCX in Zen
Zizy - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
8 cores at 1.6GHz (PS4 as the slowest) is at best the same as 4 cores at 3.2 GHz, assuming everything else equal and perfect MT. Plus those cat cores were essentially half as capable as the current stuff, normalized by clock. Therefore, consoles have about the same as 2 proper desktop cores - the lowest end CPUs you can buy.Anyway, there are many games that use more than 4 cores these days. Especially stuff coming out now when also Intel started offering more cores and AMD having competitive if not superior chips.
nevcairiel - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Casual everyday users absolutely do not need such CPUs.DigitalFreak - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Exactly right. Core count is the new Mhz race for the uninformed.