quad core, when will it be useful?

[badjokes]

i was considering a 45nm quad core cpu when it launches in q3 but I'm not sure if it would be worth it.

I do a lot of 3d and architectural work, lots of rendering and i can appreciate some gaming but not too much.. would a quad core be worth an extra 200/300 dollars? 800+ million transistors on the 45nm variants, I'm just not sure if it'll be worth it.

any thoughts?

 

[limqareb]

well if you do a lot of 3d rendering and stuff a quad core would be needed , but it must be multithreaded , yeah well in gaming dual cores till now are more than enough maybe after duals are fully used i might go for a qued

 

[FragTek]

Quad cores are currently VERY useful.

Distributed computing FTW.

 

[nathan]

What do you use for 3d animation etc? 3 studio max's latest version i multi core compatible so would make use of the extra cores very well!

 

[badjokes]

3d studio, inventor and a tiny bit of autocad.

what about windows? i was thinking about picking up a copy of vista. are quad cores productive with vista?

and one last thing i heard you need about 4 gigs of ram to feed the four cores, is that true?

 

[FragTek]

3d studio, inventor and a tiny bit of autocad.

what about windows? i was thinking about picking up a copy of vista. are quad cores productive with vista?

and one last thing i heard you need about 4 gigs of ram to feed the four cores, is that true?

Depending on what you're doing 4gb is about optimal on a quad core, giving at least 1gb / core. You'd probably be just fine with 2gb however and may not even notice the difference. I have no clue what kind of memory requirements the programs you use have. Also keep in mind that 4gb is the physical limit that Windows x86 (any version) can handle, if you decided for some reason to go with more than 4gb's you will need to run an x64 version.