How much will dual core effect response time?

[wacki]

Lets say you are thinking about these two chips:


AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2000MHz HT 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ 2000MHz HT 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core

Price difference of > $130

I have lseveral programs running in the background and my computer (2.8 Ghz) will often slow to a crawl. At this point the mouse will move slowly across the screen or the computer will freeze for a second or two. This can make it difficult to get work done and I can't offload the processes onto another computer. My main concern is not the speed at which the background processes occur, it's the lag of my mouse and other lightweight programs. How effective is a dual core at solving this problem on a windows XP machine? None of the programs are multithreaded.

 

[Duvie]

It should do very well if you are describing cpu limited items....

I have seen ppl complain after getting a dual core and it still lags cause they were running multiple apps while sharing the same HDD...If the app needs to access the HDD whether it be reading or writing and you only have one drive you could still have lagging issues....

Another issue could be ram if you do not have enough of it....


In most situations dual core will solve many issues of lagging associated with running multiple cpu intensive apps....

A lot of times you should set background items to run in lower priority mode so that doesn't happen.... (for single core systems)

 

[F1shF4t]

Like Duvie, said dual cores will not have a majot effect if ur still using one hdd for progs which need lotsa data to be written and read.
Optical drives are even worse, i think its just a windows problem, but when u put in a optical disk while its finding it the whole comp becoumes almost unresponsive, and dual core in this task has absolutely no effect.

When running little ennoying programs which just take up lots of cpu time without need for lots of data from HDD (unless u have 2 hdds and it accesses from separate ones) dual core will have a major improovement. Like Trillian 3.0, which lags the whole system when u start it up with single core, no such thing happens with a dually.

 

[sindows]

I don't know what it is but IMO a slower clocked P4 feels much smoother than a heavily clocked A64. I personally use a P4 3Ghz(HT turned off in bios) but I've recently got my hands on a single core A64 @2.4 ghz and although the AMD is supposedly faster at everything, IMO, its nowhere near as enjoyable to use as the P4.

For example, in a "light" multitasking environment such as running:

BitComet(torrent)
Winamp(watching a movie)
AIM
Firefox
unzipping a 1 gig file

My P4 would have no problems handling the load while the A64 stutters and is basically unuseable(the video skips, the sound skips, the mouse intermitently works). Both systems use SATA drives(same size, different models) and the A64 had an extra 512Mb worth of ram and had a clean install of Windows. I've been using the P4 for a while now so its not as fast as it could be. Thats just my personal experience so you can choose what you want to believe.

My roommate has a Sempron(1.8Ghz I think) laptop with a gig of ram and its a simlilar situation(although not exactly). If I have any more than four programs running, one of those programs will act up.

I have no idea whats going on...

 

[pcoffman]

Originally posted by: wacki
it's the lag of my mouse and other lightweight programs. How effective is a dual core at solving this problem ...

Perhaps this thread might shed some light on dual-core vs. single core system responsiveness:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1851021&enterthread=y

The OP built two systems (for other people) almost identically configured, except for the dual-core vs. single CPUs. OP was an AMD guy, but his experience with the Intel CPUs made him want to upgrade to a dual-core AMD product.

He writes that the 820 seems more responsive, quicker at opening stuff.

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: sindows
I don't know what it is but IMO a slower clocked P4 feels much smoother than a heavily clocked A64. I personally use a P4 3Ghz(HT turned off in bios) but I've recently got my hands on a single core A64 @2.4 ghz and although the AMD is supposedly faster at everything, IMO, its nowhere near as enjoyable to use as the P4.

For example, in a "light" multitasking environment such as running:

BitComet(torrent)
Winamp(watching a movie)
AIM
Firefox
unzipping a 1 gig file

My P4 would have no problems handling the load while the A64 stutters and is basically unuseable(the video skips, the sound skips, the mouse intermitently works). Both systems use SATA drives(same size, different models) and the A64 had an extra 512Mb worth of ram and had a clean install of Windows. I've been using the P4 for a while now so its not as fast as it could be. Thats just my personal experience so you can choose what you want to believe.

My roommate has a Sempron(1.8Ghz I think) laptop with a gig of ram and its a simlilar situation(although not exactly). If I have any more than four programs running, one of those programs will act up.

I have no idea whats going on...

Thats what i noticed also with A64 and HT enable p4s, although my old northwood seems the same as my a64 in responsivemes for some reason, also my work comp seems a lot more responsive but that could be to the fact that its using window classic (p4 2.8ghz HT Prescot). meh i donno, i guess everything is not responsive to me compared to my dually.

 

[wacki]

Ok, n00000b questions.

Is this setup optimal?

Hard drive A: PostgreSQL and the application that is using it
Hard drive B: Windows XP and my mission critical software that can not lag.

Is that optimal?

Does it matter if I have SATA or just ATA? How much will that effect performace when set up in a dual mode? Last I heard SATA/ATA didn't matter if you had just one hard drive.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: wacki
Ok, n00000b questions.

Is this setup optimal?

Hard drive A: PostgreSQL and the application that is using it
Hard drive B: Windows XP and my mission critical software that can not lag.

Is that optimal?

Does it matter if I have SATA or just ATA? How much will that effect performace when set up in a dual mode? Last I heard SATA/ATA didn't matter if you had just one hard drive.

I don't know necessarily if that's an optimal setup, but it would definitely be better than using a single hard drive. I/O bottlenecks become much more important when you have a dual core (and are then capable of heavy multitasking).

As far as SATA/ATA, IMO it doesn't matter too much nor will it really impact performance too much (unless you have both hard drives on a single IDE channel, you don't want to do that ). The important thing is that you spread the I/O load to two (or more) hard drives, on separate channels (or controllers). I have one drive for Windows and most of my apps/games, and another large drive for HDTV recording and encoding workspace. Works quite well for me, and I can play games at the same time I'm doing heavy video encoding on another hard drive (though my recent upgrade to 2GB RAM helped a lot there as well, 1GB wasn't really enough).

I don't claim to be an expert in any of this, but I think if you just think about what type of heavy multitasking you're often likely to do, and split those commonly-running-at-the-same-time tasks to different hard drives, you'll be doing pretty well (and it sounds like you've put some thought into that already). You certainly don't want to buy a dual core only to realize that your performance is barely better than before, due to a hard drive (or RAM amount) limitation.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: sindows
I don't know what it is but IMO a slower clocked P4 feels much smoother than a heavily clocked A64. I personally use a P4 3Ghz(HT turned off in bios) but I've recently got my hands on a single core A64 @2.4 ghz and although the AMD is supposedly faster at everything, IMO, its nowhere near as enjoyable to use as the P4.

For example, in a "light" multitasking environment such as running:

BitComet(torrent)
Winamp(watching a movie)
AIM
Firefox
unzipping a 1 gig file

My P4 would have no problems handling the load while the A64 stutters and is basically unuseable(the video skips, the sound skips, the mouse intermitently works). Both systems use SATA drives(same size, different models) and the A64 had an extra 512Mb worth of ram and had a clean install of Windows. I've been using the P4 for a while now so its not as fast as it could be. Thats just my personal experience so you can choose what you want to believe.

My roommate has a Sempron(1.8Ghz I think) laptop with a gig of ram and its a simlilar situation(although not exactly). If I have any more than four programs running, one of those programs will act up.

I have no idea whats going on...

I have to disagree with this....I did extensive testing and a P4 with HT off was as bad as my old Barton...A64 was just as equal in multitasking...the only way the P4 could handle same load better was with HT on, then it was phenomenally better....

Dual core A64s have been even better then the P4 with HT, and now quad cores with Raid setup and backup storage drive is a dream....I haven't seen lag or unresposonsiveness...

 

[fixxxer0]

it sounds to me like you have some background app running at a priority higher than normal, and its stealing power away from the lightweight simple programs you are using.


and yes dual core will save u cuz u can run those req background apps on a set core and do other things on the other.

 

[pcoffman]

Originally posted by: wacki
I heard SATA/ATA didn't matter if you had just one hard drive.

Mildly disagree.

The following benchmarks show the initial crop of SATA 150MBPS / 1.5gbps drives outperforming a parallel ATA drive: benchmarks.

Old PATA hard drives maxed out at a theoretical throughput of either 100MBPS or 133MBPS. Current generation SATA drives at 300(MBPS) or 3 gbps. These figures are theoretical and probably never achieved in actual practice. Nevertheless you should get at least a little boost from SATA.

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: pcoffman

Originally posted by: wacki
I heard SATA/ATA didn't matter if you had just one hard drive.

Mildly disagree.

The following benchmarks show the initial crop of SATA 150MBPS / 1.5gbps drives outperforming a parallel ATA drive: benchmarks.

Old PATA hard drives maxed out at a theoretical throughput of either 100MBPS or 133MBPS. Current generation SATA drives at 300(MBPS) or 3 gbps. These figures are theoretical and probably never achieved in actual practice. Nevertheless you should get at least a little boost from SATA.

What a crap review, if you're going to compare hard drives to each other they need to be roughly the same size, as anyone who has read a HD review known the larger a HD is the faster it it.

By comparing a ford model T to a smart car we can see that a smart car is not only blisteringly fast but also more suitable for towing a trailer.

 

[wacki]

OK one final question. How much can a single core take advantage of the dual hard drive setup? Is a dual core really required if the CPU isn't maxed? I'm guessing it shouldn't matter.

 

[Markbnj]

I question whether there is any impact here at all. First, hard drives are so much slower than the CPU interconnect that someone is going to be waiting for something regardless of how fast they are, and how many of them you have. Secondly, you'd have to architect your storage carefully to get any advantage, ensuring that core 0 was looking for stuff on disk 0, core 1 on disk 1, etc., and that would also require setting affinity for the processes that are using each disk. If you did all that it would probably mean better performance. I could see it being worthwhile in certain server applications.

The primary benefit of dual core is simply that windows has a lot of threads to run. The more cpu cores you have to run them on the better the system performs. If you run one very CPU-intensive app, that saturates a core to 100%, the system will still pretty much act like nothing is running. That's my real world experience with x2 4400+.

 

[pcoffman]

the larger a HD is the faster it it.

Shouldn't this be reworded to the greater the arial density the faster? As far as I know, disks with more platters are not any faster than disks with fewer platters.

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
What a crap review, if you're going to compare hard drives to each other they need to be roughly the same size

The reviewer notes: in all cases, the newer drives generate substantially better scores in real applications than the older WD800JB. How much of this is due to differences in platter size versus the interface type isn't really known.

I welcome benchmarks comparing PATA to SATA of the same size.

 

[pcoffman]

Originally posted by: wacki
OK one final question. How much can a single core take advantage of the dual hard drive setup? Is a dual core really required if the CPU isn't maxed? I'm guessing it shouldn't matter.

I don't think it matters that much whether you have one hard drive or more than one, if they are left as JBOD. Dual-core should help, even under light load, because at any give time, you have lots and lots of processes going on.