Help Are octacore CPUs worth it?

[Fallingwater]

I'm torn between two phones. One is a quadcore, the other one is an octa. There are other minor differences, and they don't cost the same. What I can't figure out is how much of a weight the additional four cores should have in my decision.

Octacores have been around for a while, but when they came out the general consensus was that no apps were paralleled enough that they'd actually use all eight cores, so the CPU would find itself with at least half of the cores idle most of the time. As a result, there was no noticeable increase in speed or response from the phone compared to a quadcore CPU of equivalent per-core power.

That was some time ago, though, and I'm wondering if the situation's stayed the same for what concerns app development and parallelization. In other words, would I see noticeable speed improvements from an octacore CPU now, all other things being equal? Can this difference be quantified in a practical manner - that is, not with just an Antutu number-crunching benchmark but in real-use terms?

 

[funkylogik]

AFAIK octocore sOcs are really just quad core with four extra low-power cores for "always listening" features and the like so I wouldn't pay too much extra for an octocore unless it's a better (more modern) chip.
What types of chip is it you're trying to decide between?
Maybe someone who knows more about them can give you more info

 

[Hadron]

There are octocores and there are octocores. The first Samsung octocores were buggy. The latest one looks pretty good. The latest Snapdragon 810 does too, despite the FUD that some have been spreading (and if you want to know the truth about that there's a recent article at semiaccurate.com that's worth a read - a clue: ask yourself who benefits if misinformation is spread about the SoC that all but 1 major manufacturer is going to be using this year?).

But a lot of MediaTek octocores are not the big.LITTLE arrangements Funky describes but just 8 lower end cores. A good quad would be better, frankly. Remember that the gpu matters as well.

Personally I think there's an element of using the number of cores as a marketing tool in all of the octo stuff, and would look at the device overall without giving much weight to that.

 

[EarlyMon]

The first octocores were actually independent dual quads. Either the high performance quad ran or the low power quad ran, not all eight. That was big.LITTLE by design. Later, all 8 were allowed to run at once, and that's what the latest Snapdragons do, despite still being big.LITTLE.

I don't know who told you or where you read that apps need to be optimized for octocore use, but they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

This Apple meme began when the first dual cores appeared.

It wasn't true then, it wasn't true when quads came, it's not true with octos and it's never going to be true with Android.

Android is not Apple iOS.

The Linux kernel uses asymmetrical multiprocessing. Period.

All apps have always been written so multiple threads of control are possible and design dependent. If the Linux kernel sees more cores, it simply distributes the threads accordingly.

This is why - unlike iPhone apps - Android apps are always ready to work on the full processor regardless of number of cores.

And this isn't a Windows 95-like cooperative multitasking like iOS, Android uses preemptive multitasking and there are far, far more than 8 threads running at any given time.

Now, that said, isn't it true and just common sense that apps could be optimized for 8 cores with Android?

Yes - if and only if you don't believe what I just explained.

Apple resells core optimizing apps and wants you to believe that Android is deficient if you don't get that.

Android apps are future proof by design and definition because the entire operating system is.

No multicore optimization programming is required in Android by app developers - it's already baked in.

The general consensus that you've heard that said otherwise is totally, completely, and absolutely wrong.

And btw - AnTuTu is a joke. A not funny one but still, a joke.

 

[funkylogik]

I hate AnTuTu (the wife's s5 beats my phone)
Benchmark apps are FOS!