Some software I'm thinking of getting recommends a Quad core processor for the work I'll be using it for.
What's the difference between a Dual Core and a Quad Core processor? – other than two Cores…….. and what's a Core anyway?

What software?

For most stuff that most folk do, more cpus cores (processors effectively, to do things concurrently) don't help much. You'd be better served with more RAM or a SSD.

Basically, if you don't know why you need a quad core, you probably don't.

Document scanning – approx 180 full colour images/minute, so not the stuff that most folks do!
I do this now, and for the last 4 years) with a pretty decent PC that for 95% of us would be fine. But the new scanning software has a load of new features and carries out a LOT more processes on every image in realtime, which is great but the processor power required is right up there to maintain the scanners full speed – hence the high spec.

As IA says, a lot of software hasn't caught up with multi-core processing yet, so fast disk(s) and plenty of RAM is the way to go 🙂

Ah ok, I can see how serious scanning would require a lot of CPU.

In that case, look for something with a quad core intel i5 – there a decent speed hike over the older core 2s, should mean you get a bit more life out the system.

In simple terms

1 Core – Do one process/task/thing at a time
2 Cores – Do two processes/tasks/things at a time
3 Cores – Do three processes/tasks/things at a time
4 Cores – Do four processes/tasks/things at a time
etc…

In the old days a single processor/CPU had one core and if you wanted more than one core you had to have multiple processors. Nowadays you get a single processor with multiple cores. I think the i7/Xeon CPU from Intel can have something silly like 8 cores.

Most software only runs as a single process/thread so only needs a single core. Now if you run lots of software at the same time multiple cores are useful. One for Word, One for Outlook, One for AV etc. However you have to remember that although these may be loaded at the same time the chances of them wanting to all do something processor intensive at the same time are slim. Alternatively you can get one program that can run multiple processes/threads. This is usually stuff like video editing software, database stuff etc.

I've got a Quad core at home which is good for web dev (IIS, SQL Server, VS, Firefox). Also good for Virtual Machines as I can run a virtual machine on each core or a meaty one on two cores. However when you start doing this you run out of RAM. Assuming you use Windows XP or higher you can access a maximum of around 3GB of RAM. If you want to access more go 64 bit preferably Windows 7, or OSX/Linux if you're that way inclined.

From what you say it seems as though the OCR software can carry out quite a few parallel processes so go for a quad core, they're not that much more expensive than a dual core. Also don't be a pikey and cripple it with 2GB of RAM, get 4 at least.

Or what IA said 🙂

One core can do plenty of things at a time (using a kind of time-sharing), but the more cores you have the more they can all handle IF the software is written in a certain way which I believe a lot is these days – especially if it's serious software that knows it takes a lot of power ie Photoshop filters and so on.

If you want to run one intensive aplication at the same time as another, then multiple cores help – ie encoding video AND doing other stuff at the same time.

It's worth noting though that your PC likely only has one disk, so only one application can read off the disk at once and most apps are reading from disk a lot.. you can mitigate this if you have two disk for example if you want to encode video, you put the video files all on one disk and then windows and everything else on another – that way your encoding process will run on one core and have a disk all to itself and your other core(s) can do whatever they want with their own disk.

It's also worth noting that the vast majority of software hardly uses the CPU at all – if you are sending email or writing a doc, your CPU does practically nothing. So having Outlook say on one and word on another will make no difference to if you were using them on the same core. Only stuff like video, image processing, games etc use full CPU power.

If the software reocmmends it, then they have probably designed their software to take advantage of multiple cores, so go for it. Also get tons of memory because as noted above, if you really are gonna use 4 cores then you'll also benefit from lots of RAM.

Thanks guys……. that's what I needed to know., just need to add the cost of the PC onto the £5k scanning software 🙁