Quote - > Quote - so in this link http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2049694,00.asp are they a) comparing 4 cores with 2 cores

or are they

b) comapring 8 cores with 4 cores?

QX6700 is 4 cores.  Everything else in the list including the AMD chip is 2 cores.  The names are confusing (and probably not by accident).  Try to get familiar with the specs to go along with the name, there is not a good pattern to predict what a chip is by deciphering the number on it.

 

Thansk for the responses.  I believe they do have motherboards that will take two quad cores(8 core total) or two duo cores(four cores total).  It seems no one has tested an 8 core machine.  I wonder how the memory will be handled for such a machine in rendering.  If you have a very complex scene that requires more than 2 gig of ram will each core need its own 2+gig before ahrd drive swapping occurs?    In that case you would need 16 gig total.  If its animation could the memory possibly keep track of many things that are the same in each scene being rendered?   In other words lets say you start rendering 8 completely different but equally large scenes.  Would that require as more memory than rendering 8 images of an animation where the scene itself is jsut as large but each frame only involves a small change from eachother.

I wish we could see actual tests of these processors out with 2 of the duo core cpus(four cores one machine) and 2 of the quad core cpus(8 cores one machine).

BTW: Another palce to see testing is www.anandtech.com