Hexus
Six-core chips will battle it out for supremacy in the enthusiast desktop market in 2010.

Not really - AMD will be pitching their 6-cores against Intel's 4- and more likely 2-core chips (which Intel are focusing on at the expense of their 4-core). There's no battle in the enthusiast market as Intel are the only entrant.

What apps are ready for 6 cores ?

kalniel
Not really - AMD will be pitching their 6-cores against Intel's 4- and more likely 2-core chips (which Intel are focusing on at the expense of their 4-core). There's no battle in the enthusiast market as Intel are the only entrant.

C'mon - have a bit of faith in AMD :P

Phage
What apps are ready for 6 cores ?

Anything that's multithreaded (rather than coded for a specific amount of cores) presumably.

Premiere will get a nice boost, but I don't do enough video editing any more for this to worth it for me. I can certainly see the value in such a chip for those who would actually use it though. It should shave hours off of some encodes, and that'll pay itself back quickly for many. :)

Phage
What apps are ready for 6 cores ?

Databases and vmware?

Reading DigitalFoundry's interview with Codemasters, they say that there EGO engine is heavily geared towards many-core systems so i suppose that 4 cores and greater are beginning to bear their fruit in games - only one i know.

Most of the PCs gamers have are either dual core with an increasing number of quad cores. TBH,most people will get acceptable framerates with a dual,triple or quad core for the next few years IMHO unless games companies want to star alienating a whole lot of their user base(not the tiny percentage of hardcore enthusiasts who want the latest technology). I know loads of PC gamers who have moved to using consoles instead so companies do probably realise that making a game more scalable makes more sense - the fact that even Crytek is trying to make Crysis 2 even run on consoles is an indication of this.

Phage
What apps are ready for 6 cores ?

If you don't know chances are you aren't a user…

Media Encoding/Design/CAD/DB/Virtualisation (basically anything that has been justifying 4 cores over 2) & very very heavy multitasking (perhaps you are the kind of person who wants to play games, watch HD, browse the web, do a virus scan and manipulate massive Excel sheets all at the same time, with multiple mice in each hand).

Very few games and standard desktop applications make full use of quad cores, nevermind hex cores…

CAT-THE-FIFTH
Most of the PCs gamers have are either dual core with an increasing number of quad cores. TBH,most people will get acceptable framerates with a dual,triple or quad core for the next few years IMHO unless games companies want to star alienating a whole lot of their user base(not the tiny percentage of hardcore enthusiasts who want the latest technology). I know loads of PC gamers who have moved to using consoles instead so companies do probably realise that making a game more scalable makes more sense - the fact that even Crytek is trying to make Crysis 2 even run on consoles is an indication of this.

I've been considering moving up to quad core at some point but simply put there are no current games that I can't run at least acceptably if not very well indeed with my creaking old E4300. While a hex-core CPU is of considerable interest there's no way I could possibly justify the cost; for myself, and I presume the majority of home users, the power available has far, far exceeded the requirement for the moment.

Even my media PC only runs an underclocked 4850e and a 780G/HD3200 GPU which combine to play hi def content perfectly.

Tarinder
C'mon - have a bit of faith in AMD :P

It's not lack of faith - it's the market they are deliberately targeting.

Okay, they don't have a part to compete in the enthusiast market either, so it is forcing their hand a bit.

They'll come back in the future - Bulldozer is a good starting point but what it's ultimately leading to is the exciting bit, and they seem to be ahead of everyone when it comes to where that is going… But that's a long way off.

Still, give me a motherboard that I can use both today and when that is, and I'll go AMD with my next build.

kingpotnoodle
If you don't know chances are you aren't a user…

Media Encoding/Design/CAD/DB/Virtualisation (basically anything that has been justifying 4 cores over 2) & very very heavy multitasking (perhaps you are the kind of person who wants to play games, watch HD, browse the web, do a virus scan and manipulate massive Excel sheets all at the same time, with multiple mice in each hand).

Very few games and standard desktop applications make full use of quad cores, nevermind hex cores…

Indeed not. I only just upgraded from a P4 to a quad. Dual is sooo 2005. ;)

kingpotnoodle
If you don't know chances are you aren't a user…

Media Encoding/Design/CAD/DB/Virtualisation (basically anything that has been justifying 4 cores over 2) & very very heavy multitasking (perhaps you are the kind of person who wants to play games, watch HD, browse the web, do a virus scan and manipulate massive Excel sheets all at the same time, with multiple mice in each hand).

Very few games and standard desktop applications make full use of quad cores, nevermind hex cores…

Very few current games. Most console ports take advantage of multiple cores and more and more games will take advantage of them.

My favourite use of multi-cores has to be compiling software
#make -j6

Mmmmmmmm, speedy.

Steve
My favourite use of multi-cores has to be compiling software
#make -j6

Mmmmmmmm, speedy.

Mine too. :D