The practicality of quad core and SLI?

So my HS robotics teammates were telling me having 2 or more graphics cards and quad core processors didn't do anything because the tech to make use of them doesn't exist. So I guess I'll ask, does having 2-4 graphics cards instead of 1 boost FPS (or is it just a scam?), and for part 2, are there any real world applications that actually use all 4 cores of quad core processors? I think I know the answers to both but I don't want to be outdone.

 

For the question concerning SLI, games certainly do use it, not so sure about CAD programs.

As for quad core CPUs, definitely, see attached screenshot of a "simple" flow simulation for a class. Of course, not all programs make use of 4 cores, but if you are using programs that require some heavy processing, they will probably make use of 4 threads or more when available.

Programs like Word and Excel don't need to use 4 cores, but specialized software as well as a handful of games do use quad cores. Even if you have a program that makes use of only two cores, that leaves two more core for the other stuff should the need arise. The windows thread scheduler tends to distribute the load on as many cores as possible when needed.

 

There are plenty applications can fully utilize all 4 cores of a quad processor.

Basically any video editing/encoding tools(adobe premiere, pinnacle studio etc), photo editing programs(photoshop, GIMP) and 3D modeling/rendering programs(Maya, 3DMax, Poser) can take advantage of all of the cores of a quad processor. Video encoding and 3D rendering can even totally tax all the cores to 100%(or close to 100%) to process faster.

And don't forget about games too, there are lots of games that use more than 2 cores too, SC2, BF3, DA:O, Total war series, TW2..... there are too many!

As for SLI/CF systems, they benefit games for sure, but for other uses, I am not sure, I haven't never seen a workstation with 2 professional cards like Quadro2000M SLI, so I assume programs can't make use more than one? I could be wrong, of course.

 

Any number-crunching software can take advantage of multicore/mutliGPU. BOINC platform and Folding@Home can be good examples. There are many people, who build their PCs especially for this purpose.

 

Actually, many CAD/CAM, 3D Design and Video Rendering platforms are now GPU Accelerated too. SLI, Triple SLI and so on add even more horsepower.

NVIDIA Quadro and AutoCAD 2011

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_sli.html

 

Yep, never underestimate the needs of the power users. I'm currently running heat exchanger simulation and i'd want to shoot myself if i didn't have a quad core right now. If it takes half an hour for the simulation to return an error when it's not converging on my 920xm, imagine what would happen if that was on a dual core...

Whether getting one in a laptop depends on what you do with it, but the software and users who need ridiculous amount of processing performance are certainly there.

 

They are churning out Cheap Octo-Core Xeons now (and 2-4 socket 2011 MBs).. You would be a prime candidate for one.

 

Well, if i had the money

That being said, my demand for a PhD just got accepted so when i start it this summer, a workstation paid by the university will probably see the light of day which means a nice dual xeon setup... For now, i'll stick to my 920xm in the G73 and the i7-2600K at home.

 

Congrats! That is excellent news!

 

Any software has to be designed to take advantage of multiple CPU cores and SLI video systems. Many modern games take advantage of both technologies, while most workstation programs (ArcGIS, CAD, Matlab, scientific and engineering applications, etc.) are designed to utilize multiple cores.

However, the scalability of SLI is limited as performance does not increase proportionally with the number of video cards. The same thing goes for multiple CPU cores.

 

Yeah, 2 video cards doesn't mean a 100% performance increase over 1 video card and you hit diminishing returns pretty quickly with more than two video cards. 4 cores doesn't equal 4x the performance either, but it's still well worth it in the end.

 

SLi scales pretty well. Most of the time, you will see returns of up to 100%. That's not too shabby at all.

Here's an old video where GPU power was necessary.
FASTRA - Official Movie - English - Shorter Version - YouTube

 

Well for 2 cards, it does scale pretty well. however, on 4 card, the 4th card doesn't do much, three cards is debatable, i'd rather have the third one dedicated to PhysX for example.

 

It sounds like your teammates learned what they "know" about quad-core and SLI in 2007 when the technologies were just coming out. At that time, there were very few practical uses for them - most software couldn't use the extra cores and SLI performance in games was only worth a small boost. However, in the past 5 years, software programming has learned to take advantage of them to a much greater extent, so they're definitely useful. At the same time, most typical PC users wouldn't notice the real-life difference between an i3 and an i7 Extreme, as their processing power is way greater than most everyday tasks would ever need.

 

That is probably the case. Sometimes technology changes and what was, is no longer. For example, I just learned that there is a faster way to copy files between PCs than using an RS-232 Cable! Imagine that!