Is it worthwhile upgrading to quad core processor ?

[dandare]

Helo everyone !!

Not sure ! can Linux make productive use of quad core processors ?

We are running dual core now but if worthwhile upgrading we will
upgrade to quad core ,we always use AMD over Intel and have no issues with AMD processors .

Thanks

[Irithori]

Can linux use multiple cores efficiently? Yes. Our bread and butter machines have 16 cores, the more beefier db machines 24.

Can you use a quad? No idea. Depends ony your workload on that machine. What does it do?

[dandare]

hello.....thanks for the reply and confirmation .....we are just running a home pc for multimedia and graphics ...camera ..photo etc but just wanted to know if it would be worthwhile to upgrade from dual core amd x2 240 64 to amd quad core phenom II 850 to improve speed ..

thanks

[Irithori]

To clarify:
It depends, if the applications you run can benefit from multiple cores. Reading documentation should help you there.

An easy example:
The compression tool bzip2 will use only one core.
So it will not run faster on a multi CPU machine.

But there is
https://github.com/kjn/lbzip2
This produces compatible output, but works much faster as it splits the compression work on (potentially) all cores.



In general, if you run multiple apps at once, then you will also benefit from multiple cores.

[dandare]

yes thanks for the extra info ..i will check all the programs docs to see if there is info on this.... before upgrading ..! but i get your point about multi-tasking ..

[Krendoshazin]

I would have to say yes, especially if you compile a lot of code. It used to take me over an hour to compile Firefox, but when I upgraded to a 2.6GHz quad-core CPU it only took 20 minutes.

[dandare]

OK thanks ....now I am fully convinced that we can benefit from upgrading to quad core ..although we do not do a lot of compiling of source code i do see the the advantage should I wish to do so...

many thanks

[Rubberman]

I have a number of Linux programs that are multi-threaded, and hence can take advantage of more cores. I have a dual quad-core system (8 cores), and having that many cores means that virtual machines don't hog the entire system. Also, when I build a kernel or other big application, I can reduce the time to build a 64-bit kernel from 2 hours down to 15 minutes...