I run Vista Premium x64, and everything runs so very smoothly. I -am- on of the “Science Geeks” that runs SETI/Einstien/QMC/TANPAKU @Home on a constant basis; and sometimes, even when I'm playing games.

At a given time, all 4 of these projects are running at the same time, and often, each “project” is running multiple computations. This is all ignoring the “basic” background tasks – Outlook 2007, Google Desktop, etc.

Typically, there's no noticable decline in performance when all of these processes are running. By the way, I have 4GB of memory; just for referance.

When there are slow-downs, it usually is caused by the one bottleneck of 90% of computers: the hard drive(s).

It would appear that Crysis uses all 4 processors, because each only peak at 23% usage when playing. Usually, I set the Crysis process for affinity of only 2 cores. The system (maybe AMD drivers, maybe Vista) seems to distribute the rest of the workload pretty well.

And the coup-de-gras: My ATI card has an DVI-HDMI adapter, and the sound is routed through that as well.

I could not be more impressed with the performance of my Spider. With Tabbed Browsing running all sorts of web content (such as YouTube, etc.), I can absolutely see how Quad-Core CPUs can benefit the “average user”. Keep in mind, also, Windows Vista – at least Ultimate – has MANY no-cert-needed home server applications. WinAmp is pushing their new Orb-based Web-to-Home music system, and many other “end user” applications are moving in quite the same direction… none of which are geared toward “Power Users”.

Don't knock it until you try it. It's really something else. AMD calls this Phenom a “9500+” for a reason – it's 4-2.2GHz processors, each sharing nearly-evenly distributed work.

As far as cost goes… This system costed me about $1500. And that's generous, because I'm estimating the addition of HDD's, Optical Drives, keyboard, mouse, etc. – all of which I already had. The Proc+MoBo+Mem+VGA=$1050.

I built it myself, so I also didn't pay for labor.

- Kris

I run Vista Premium x64, and everything runs so very smoothly. I -am- on of the “Science Geeks” that runs SETI/Einstien/QMC/TANPAKU @Home on a constant basis; and sometimes, even when I'm playing games.

At a given time, all 4 of these projects are running at the same time.

Powerusers are not the norm. Most people do not run servers at home. And spending extra money just so you can run SETI@home seems like a waste as well.

Did you read Robs comment?

“Photo and video editing software, as well as some transcoding products, and a couple of games will use multi-core right now. I expect this will change by the end of the year.

Right now one of the benefits is that if a background process (anti-virus for instance) kicks off it may have less impact on what you are doing on one of these systems. “

He said basically what you just said, so he didn't miss anything.

For the general consumer though, 4-8 cores is a waste of money and nothing but marketing hype.

General consumers

1) Probably will not have a home media server (this is changing slowly though)

2) Do not even know what virtualization is

4) Do not know what SETI at home is

You tech writers keep missing part of the point of having multi-core processors. There are several ways in which a consumer can take advantage of either four or eight cores, even without multi-threaded software.

1. Power users, like me, like to have many applications open at once. The more cores, the merrier, in these situations.

2. A server for home or small business could take advantage of multiple cores, since a lot of processes would be going on at once.

3. For virtualization, again, the more cores, the merrier.

4. Science geeks could run more instances of distributed computing apps at once. (e.g., Einstein@Home or SETI@Home.)

So, really, there's no need to wait for specialized, multi-threaded software in order to benefit from multi-core processors.

Right now one of the benefits is that if a background process (anti-virus for instance) kicks off it may have less impact on what you are doing on one of these systems.

Both Intel and AMD are focusing on power conservation and future systems will power down their cores more aggressivly. The X2 card is actually rather impressive in this regard and appears to drop into a low power state when you aren't pushing it.

Generally the focus on these high end boxes has been more focused on raw performance, but, like you I'd like to see this change because I'd like to stop being the major funding source for my power company.

Over the next few weeks I'll be seeing what products actually make use of this performance and will write up what I find.

It seems to me that Intel and AMD should really be focusing on power consumption more than raw-processing. People want a green machine that is powerful, especially quiet (like you point out) and good looking.

When will the software side catch up to using this many processors?