On paper, the Core i9 might not sound that exciting: It’s a lot like the Core i7, except built with a 32nm fabrication process and two extra cores, for a total of six. Early benchmarks, though, say it flies. Sometimes.
The i9 doesn’t extract significant advantages from its pumped core count (which brings processing thread count up to 12) in a lot of day-to-day tasks, so don’t expect to see an increase in game performance, Windows startup speed or other single-core optimised tasks. It’s when you start rendering video or doing 3D modelling – tasks that are suited to parallelisation – that the i9 flexes its muscles.
The i9 processors won’t ship until sometime in early to mid 2010, and when they do, expect them to be a bit on the expensive side. But man, 50 per cent. I think I can stand to save up a few more bucks, honestly. [PCLab via Electronista]
matt
November 24, 2009 at 10:17 AM
again, having more cores is not the problem, its just that most tasks don’t need that much processor power, not even most games! (you can thank the consoles for holding us back there). when coders get more imaginative, and better at multi-threading, more cores is the only way to go.
having said that, if GPGPU takes off, powerful cpus might die out all together. will be interesting to see…
of course gpgpu has the same problems as this processor, many cores, way too powerful for mosts needs…
Report PermalinkKhuntza
November 24, 2009 at 8:48 PM
Why are we thanking the consoles?
The 360 has 3 cores and the PS3 has 7 active cores..
Report PermalinkJared Mackean
November 25, 2009 at 1:27 AM
requiering more resorces can allso just mean lazy coding and optimization, just because it takes the latest and gratest tech to run dosent mean it should or that the same couldnt be made to run on less. but more allwase sounds better.
Report Permalinkanonyman
December 5, 2009 at 5:34 PM
matt you aren’t making any sense, provide some facts with your info.
Why would they be making a 6 core chip if more cores aren’t needed?
You obviously dont use many programs at the one time, because its obvious that one program will not need 6 cores, but if you are running a program that can use dual-core, and run that 3 times, your using 6 cores, am i right?
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