OT: Building a new computer...

[AstralWanderer]

Raapys said:
I don't think your approach to SEV multi-threaded would work. You could have one core per AI, but that doesn't help you any because the AIs do their turns one after the other, with their decisions being made depending on the previous AI's actions that turn.

You could at least in theory make AI processing multicore by splitting out the "opponent invariant" parts (aspects that don't depend on the current tactical actions of other players like research, diplomacy, production and movement in systems held by that AI exclusively) and each individual combat could be handled by a separate thread (with the main AI thread moving on to other systems pending battle completion).

Whether SEV could do this though, depends solely on the underlying code and so is a question only Aaron could likely answer.

As for more general purposes, there are plenty of situations where a second core comes into play even for single-core applications (e.g. Nvidia's graphics drivers with some of the image quality options will use it) and for on-line gaming you'd benefit from having another core for security software (firewalls, anti-virus scanners, etc) so with a dual-core application, you're already talking about quad offering real benefits. And Intel's budget quad-core Q6600 may offer "only" a 2.4GHz clock but there are plenty of reports about the G0 stepping overclocking to 3.0Ghz+ with air cooling alone.

Finally, it seems that even eight cores can be made use of by some games - for example Lost Planet.

[Fyron]

Firewalls and resident AV engines use almost 0% of CPU cycles... unless you are running some sort of Norton bloatware or something?

[AstralWanderer]

Fyron said:
Firewalls and resident AV engines use almost 0% of CPU cycles... unless you are running some sort of Norton bloatware or something?

Firewall CPU usage will depend on the amount of network traffic it has to process - some filesharing programs can open hundreds or even thousands of connections resulting in significant CPU usage on some systems. For AVs, it depends on how much they have to scan - those with web traffic scanners can slow throughput if they don't have enough CPU.

Of course there are examples of both AVs and firewalls that minimise CPU usage, but in many cases by performing less thorough checks (poorer unpacking support for AVs, weaker leaktest performance for firewalls).

[Fyron]

Or, just by being intelligently designed, so as not to be huge and bloaty... For some nice anecdotal evidence:

Even with managing all those torrents on the SE file tracker, my firewall has had a massive 2:16 CPU Time over the last... 2 weeks? of system up-time. Almost always at 0% CPU load. And its one of the best windows personal firewalls out there...

A game is not web traffic, and neither is something like a torrent client. A bloatware AV resident scanner with "web traffic" scanning shouldn't even enter the picture... Hell, my resident AV scanner has exactly half the CPU Time as the firewall (1:08)! It certainly does what it needs to do as a resident AV scanner...

And this is even on a 5-6 year old pentium IV system with its outdated, bulky, slow silicon...

[AstralWanderer]

Fyron said:
Or, just by being intelligently designed, so as not to be huge and bloaty...

Well one person's bloat is another person's critical feature and the top-performing firewalls are now expanding into areas like system, process and registry control. That is of lesser relevance in this thread though - the point I was making was that security software can benefit from an extra core.

[Suicide Junkie]

Kids these days don't appreciate how good they have it. Terribly wasteful with their CPU cycles...
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/nick/p...es/se5beta.png

[Fyron]

AstralWanderer said:
"...the top-performing firewalls are now expanding into areas like system, process and registry control..."

Good god man, that is not at all what a firewall should be doing. All it should do is monitor and shape TCP and UDP packets according to a defined set of rules... Talk about feature bloat. The only way a firewall should "expand" is by more expressive rule language, or covering IPv6 packets...

"...the point I was making was that security software can benefit from an extra core."

That point is mistaken though; good security software that does its job properly, and doesn't try to include the kitchen sink, has a minimal footprint. No background processes should necessitate the need for a whole CPU core...

[Randallw]

Well it's getting close to me buying a new computer. I reread this thread and will be going for a reasonably high end dual core system with plenty of RAM (3GB perhaps), helped by how well our dollar is doing at the moment. I know things differ from US to Australia equipment wise but I wonder if there is some way of making the computer more silent I could mention to the store bloke. I don't want to try mucking about with fancy cooling systems. My mother hooked me up with an expert last time who built my system for me and I've never been entirely happy with how loud it is. Are fans less loud than 3 years ago. As it is I keep my computer down stairs because it can't handle hot weather and even then I need to turn it off in the middle of the afternoon sometimes during summer.

Does anyone have any advice that could be useful?

[Atrocities]

Fyron said:
For reference, Ars Technica maintains some good hardware buying guides:

http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200708.ars

Thanks, this is very helpful to those of us who our of date as far as knowledge goes.

[Fyron]

The type and size of fan you get determines how loud it will be. Larger fans tend to be quieter, since they can push out the same amount of air at a lower rotation speed. 120mm case fans are ideal, compared to 80mm, if you can get a case that uses em.