Is there any consumer / or commercial workstation (ie not-server) software that really can make use of more then four cores? I can see needing more cores on a server machine that probably has many server instances serving large numbers of users. But for a computer someone is actually sitting in front of and using, how much utility is there to adding more and more cores?
There is also benefit to having the ability to run multiple applications, performing simultaneous tasks, each with access to it's own processor thread.
1.lame/winamp/wmp/itunes decoding cd's to mp3's
2.dvd movie playback
3.browsing sites with silverlight/flash
4.active ftp download
5.playing <insert logic game (chess)> on master or expert level
6.chat windows
7.anti-virus / anti-spyware
8.decoding massive archives
9.compiling project in visual studio
Best regards,
-boggsie