Results 1 to 9 of 9

Thread: AMD Phenom II processors utilizing 6 cores is a lie

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Posts
    94

    AMD Phenom II processors utilizing 6 cores is a lie

    I recently purchased PC with AMD Phenom II processor in it. According to its advertisements, I have 6 cores in it. But as the advertisements say that speed increases as all the 6 cores will be utilized, I never saw 6 cores being utilized. I played heaviest games like Battlefield 3, but still 3 cores were only functioning. I think that AMD has lied in their advertisement about the 6 cores working together to give high processing speed. What do other users think about it?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
    Posts
    388

    re: AMD Phenom II processors utilizing 6 cores is a lie

    Let me ask you one thing, when you are invited to a party, you are always told that there will be lot of beverages and food. You go in the party and find that there is lot of food and beverages organized for crowd of 100 people. But do you eat more than you can consume? What is someone forcibly makes you eat all the food? Obviously you can’t eat all of it. Same concept works with the 6 cores. AMD has provided 6 cores in the system but that doesn’t mean it will be fully utilized. Any software which you run, in your case Battlefield 3 is programmed to reserve only needed amount of processors. If it is programmed to use only 2 cores it won’t utilize anything more than that. Even if you force to consume all the 6 cores, no difference in its performance will be noticed.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Posts
    473

    re: AMD Phenom II processors utilizing 6 cores is a lie

    Not many softwares are available in the market that need 6 cores. If you are a gamer than I don’t think there are games that need more than 4 cores. Some heavy games like Dirt 3, Crysis 2 & Alan Wake need 4 cores to operate properly. But even a game like Rage works fine on 2 cores. You can’t manually make a game to utilize all the cores. Games mostly need support of RAM and graphic cards to operate more than they need processor’s support. I still haven’t seen any process or software consuming 6 processors. Every software is programmed to optimize its performance for the processor.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Posts
    415

    re: AMD Phenom II processors utilizing 6 cores is a lie

    The 6 cores are given, but not all the cores are used every time. At the most, 3 or 4 cores are used. When one of the cores out of this 3 core gets overheated or overused, it stops working immediately and another core starts working instead of it. It maintains the consistency in the processing power by continuously switching among the vacant cores and the used up cores. This also helps to maintain the heat that is generated in the system. If all the 6 cores start working at a same time, just imagine the amount of heat that will be generated. It will also require a heavy cooling system.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Posts
    470

    re: AMD Phenom II processors utilizing 6 cores is a lie

    I am a 3D artist and I need to use 3Ds Max for making 3D models and for other purposes. Whenever I render some heavy scene with lakhs of polygons and large scale textures, I notice that it utilizes all the 6 cores for rendering.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Posts
    350

    re: AMD Phenom II processors utilizing 6 cores is a lie

    When the PC is in idle state, only one process is working while other 5 cores go in a standby mode. You can’t expect the processor to assign a task to all the processors just because they are available even when not needed. Processor is developed enough to manage the cores as per need. It uses substitution technique for proper functioning of processor. In football, if a team has 5 strikers, it does not just send all of them all together on the ground. If the team wants to use 5 strikers all together, then they’ll have to compromise the number of players in other positions. Instead only 2 out of 5 strikers are sent to play, when the 2 of them are tired, they are substituted by other 2. This maintains the number of players in other positions as well as maintains the rate of attacking. This is how processor works too.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Posts
    379

    re: AMD Phenom II processors utilizing 6 cores is a lie

    Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X is one game which utilizes around 5 cores. But even in this 5 cores not more than 2 or 3 cores are fully utilized. In other games, 2 to 3 cores handle the entire task. Whether the task is small or big, everything is assigned to 2 or 3 cores. But in Flight simulator X, multi threading technique is used which utilizes more than 4 cores at a time. Actually the game works properly even on 2 cores, but just to provide better performance, developers have programmed it to use more cores.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    608

    re: AMD Phenom II processors utilizing 6 cores is a lie

    Flight Simulator X actually uses only 2 or 3 cores like every other game. The only difference is that some small tasks, or to be precise small threads are assigned to extra cores. These small threads are quickly and easily processed. So this doesn’t put any pressure on main cores as they can concentrate on main threads, while other cores can execute small threads which create no pressure.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    449

    re: AMD Phenom II processors utilizing 6 cores is a lie

    AMD has designed this 6 core processor by keeping the future requirements in mind. They are expecting that most of the softwares and games will need 6 processors in future. At that time the user won’t need to upgrade the system and can continue using existing system. They have designed these processors for a long run.

Similar Threads

  1. Unlocking 4 cores to 6 cores of Phenom II x4 970
    By Sumeet.Pra in forum Motherboard Processor & RAM
    Replies: 7
    Last Post: 10-04-2012, 01:13 PM
  2. AMD Phenom II X4 showing on MSI 870-G45 splash but with only 2 cores
    By $Iain$ in forum Motherboard Processor & RAM
    Replies: 7
    Last Post: 19-03-2012, 11:26 AM
  3. Need to know more about AMD phenom II Opteron 12-cores.
    By Autumn@ in forum Motherboard Processor & RAM
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 16-04-2011, 01:47 PM
  4. Only four cores available in Phenom II X6 1090T
    By Kevalkumar in forum Motherboard Processor & RAM
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 18-01-2011, 06:20 PM
  5. Are there locked cores in phenom 965
    By Mercia mAC in forum Overclocking & Computer Modification
    Replies: 5
    Last Post: 21-12-2010, 12:40 AM

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  
Page generated in 1,711,636,315.48491 seconds with 17 queries