Would I have been better off with a single or dual core rather than quad?

Just to clarify:

I have Task Manager running continuously on a separate screen and it's been an education. I have the Processes screen open and the CPU column clicked so it will continuously sort with the highest CPU usage on top. For example, you can go to the CME site and copy the Time and Sales data for yesterday's ES. (Don't try this with any browser other than Chrome; both IE and Firefox will likely buckle.) Paste that data into Excel. While you are doing each step of all of this, keep watch on that sorted CPU column on Task Manager's Processes screen. If you have a quad core, you'll see that it is a CPU bottleneck, no doubt.
 
Quote from J.P.:

Just to clarify:

I have Task Manager running continuously on a separate screen and it's been an education. I have the Processes screen open and the CPU column clicked so it will continuously sort with the highest CPU usage on top. For example, you can go to the CME site and copy the Time and Sales data for yesterday's ES. (Don't try this with any browser other than Chrome; both IE and Firefox will likely buckle.) Paste that data into Excel. While you are doing each step of all of this, keep watch on that sorted CPU column on Task Manager's Processes screen. If you have a quad core, you'll see that it is a CPU bottleneck, no doubt.
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If I'm understanding you correctly, it's not a "bottleneck"... it's just a single threaded app running on one core.

When your Excel is running 25%, try doing something else simultaneously that is CPU intensive.. like maybe burning a DVD. See if you don't get 2 cores each running "25%".
 
Quote from Scataphagos:

I'm not sure of your semantics.. Does "being 25% maxed out".. mean to you that one of your 4 cores is working hard and the other 3 are not? If that's the case, "that's how it works" if the app is single threaded.
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Yes, that's right. But I didn't realize the ramifications before this. As even though Excel is touted as being multithreaded, it's not completely. Opening a file, saving a file, large cut and paste operations, etc., all run on only one core; i.e., 25% of the CPU's capacity and significantly slower that if I had a single or dual core. That's the point. My ignorance; I should have done some research first. Thanks, S.
 
Quote from Scataphagos:

If I'm understanding you correctly, it's not a "bottleneck"... it's just a single threaded app running on one core.

When your Excel is running 25%, try doing something else simultaneously that is CPU intensive.. like maybe burning a DVD. See if you don't get 2 cores each running "25%".
More...
That's right. But 99% of the time I'm only doing one thing, along with the OS's background tasks of course. So it would be far better for me to get a single or at most dual core, I think.
 
Quote from J.P.:

Yes, that's right. But I didn't realize the ramifications before this. As even though Excel is touted as being multithreaded, it's not completely. Opening a file, saving a file, large cut and paste operations, etc., all run on only one core; i.e., 25% of the CPU's capacity and significantly slower that if I had a single or dual core. That's the point. My ignorance; I should have done some research first. Thanks, S.
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Nothing you could do about that. You've probably realized by now that the idea of "4 or more cores" is more of a marketing gimmick than anything else. To fully utilize 4 cores, you need multi-threaded apps which can take advantage of all the cores, or be running 4 "CPU intensive" apps at once.. that would be hard to do in any normal usage... unless you're trying to set up a torture test. Then again, you could be trying to run LOTS of single thread apps at once.. in that case the OS would juggle and assign tasks to various cores as efficiently as it can.

Not "significantly slower"... In fact, faster. Running "only 1 core out of 4" is still faster than running on a single core or on a dual core (which would also be running only on 1 core almost all the time, just like your quad).

When the quads first came out, they were significantly more expensive than the duals... but the performance increase in quads at the same clock speed was not that much. Now that the price of quads has come down to be only about $50 more than a C2D, you're not hurting yourself in getting a quad. And who knows, perhaps soon there will be enough multi-threaded apps to make it worthwhile.
 
I have tradestation open - et about 20 webpages open and about 4 -6 other apps. I have not shut down my quad core since I bought it about 2 months ago and it is only using 2- 20% of my cpu.

I have a quad core with 8 gigs and windows 7. It is so good I do not want to leave it. so I work from home now instead of the office.
 
Quote from jem:

I have tradestation open - et about 20 webpages open and about 4 -6 other apps. I have not shut down my quad core since I bought it about 2 months ago and it is only using 2- 20% of my cpu.

I have a quad core with 8 gigs and windows 7. It is so good I do not want to leave it. so I work from home now instead of the office.
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That's because most of the time, most of your stuff is running out of RAM..
 
Quote from J.P.:

That's right. But 99% of the time I'm only doing one thing, along with the OS's background tasks of course. So it would be far better for me to get a single or at most dual core, I think.
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No. All but the slowest dual cores are MUCH faster than any single core. And a quad, at the same clock speed of a dual core, is faster.... of the same platform, of course.
 
Quote from J.P.:

That's right. But 99% of the time I'm only doing one thing, along with the OS's background tasks of course. So it would be far better for me to get a single or at most dual core, I think.
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I saw this thread and had to close it then I came back because I didn't believe I read it right the first time . . . but I did.

Some software will utilize the multiple cores and some will not.
Period.

I run a Quad Core, Win 7 64bit OS, 8GB RAM and multiple HD's for my main trading PC. My Office software barely puts a single core to task while my charting software utilizes all 4 and quite efficiently. Bottom line it becomes a matter of use but with todays prices it makes no sense to go backward in efficiency when newer software will have the potential to utilize the multiple cores.
JMO
 
Quote from Scataphagos:

No. All but the slowest dual cores are MUCH faster than any single core. And a quad, at the same clock speed of a dual core, is faster.... of the same platform, of course.
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Just to set your mind at ease, I looked these up on Passmark... I'm sure these are "maxed-out" test performance numbers...

Score..... CPU
1283..... Pentium D., 3.73 Ghz (single core)
1901..... C2D, E8300, 2.83 Ghz (dual core)
3776..... C2Q, Q9400, 2.67 Ghz (quad core)
4884..... Xeon W3520, 2.67 Ghz (quad core)
5587..... i7, 920, 2.67 Ghz, (quad core)
 
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