1 Quad Core VS. 2 Dual Core

[legocitytruck]

All else being equal which offers the greater performance advantage/ versatility; A single socket board with a Quad core processor or a Dual socket board with two Dual core processors? Are there some tasks that one setup can do that the other can not?

 

[Blain]

Stick with a single quad core processor, if you even need that.
A dual socket configuration would cost you more than you're willing to pay (unless you're independently wealthy).

You've been around here long enough to know the drill...
* What types of tasks are you performing on the PC
* What's your budget
* Yadda, yadda, yadda...

 

[dguy6789]

There are some minor factors, but they would be just about the same when it comes to performance. The advantage to a dual socket board is you could run two quad cores in the future if you wanted to. You could buy a dual socket board and put a single quad core in it and put another quad core in it later if you wish.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: legocitytruck
All else being equal which offers the greater performance advantage/ versatility; A single socket board with a Quad core processor or a Dual socket board with two Dual core processors? Are there some tasks that one setup can do that the other can not?

Depends on the architecture.
For AMD, their dual cores slightly outperformed a dual socket single core.
In general, that's probably not true though. The dual socket board has greater aggregate memory bandwidth (assuming each cpu gets its own memory, which I think it does for AMD and i7) and more total memory.

There's not much performance difference though. For older Intel products, I'd stay away from the dual socket boards though, they lose a lot of performance due to the FSB system they use.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

dual socket mobo's? (aside from server-class hardware)
i thought those went the way of the dodo since c2d and c2q.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: BlahBlahYouToo
dual socket mobo's? (aside from server-class hardware)
i thought those went the way of the dodo since c2d and c2q.

Skulltrail is the only "enthusiast" dual CPU MB that I know of.
But it still requires socket 771 processors and buffered memory.
I don't hardly think legocitytruck is going to travel down that road. :laugh:

If someone wants to take on buffered memory, there are plenty of dual CPU MBs out there.

 

[mmntech]

There's a few i7 Boards that are dual socket but they're all for servers. Really no point in going the dual CPU route for a home system unless it's a MacPro. Most games are still only single threaded and high power tasks such as video editing can be handled just fine by a single i7, which is more than enough in most cases. More than four cores are only needed for serious computing (scientific research, CAD, web servers) tasks provided the software is there to take advantage of them. Running two dual core processors in the same system just doesn't make sense these days.

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: Fox5
Depends on the architecture.

Bingo.

There should be no performance difference between a Core2 Quad and dual Core2 Duos, since the "Quad" is essentially two Core2 Duos.

The i7 should have a significant performance advantage over dual Core2 Duos, since it is a true quad-core proc + has architectural differences such as hyperthreading, on-die memory controller, etc. One particular task that would be of note is transcoding: the i7 would blow away dual Core2 Duos.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Slugbait

Originally posted by: Fox5
Depends on the architecture.

Bingo.

There should be no performance difference between a Core2 Quad and dual Core2 Duos, since the "Quad" is essentially two Core2 Duos.

Except for the fact that with a C2Q, the FSB communicating between the chips is internal, so much lower latency than a dual-socket system. :rolleyes;

 

[masterbm]

I would stick to the quad core. I have 2 single core xeon on my web server and from testing for most part all my dual core machine will beat it. Interconnect bandwitdh ie most cpu have on board cache to store all request coming into the waiting for cpu to do it. From what I seen on my machine that in case of two different physical cpu is they talk though mainmemory which is slower then on board cpu cache. So quad core is my vote