Hypothetical Woodcrest performance question

[spike spiegal]

What would be faster in terms of general desktop application performance: A dual processor (quad core) Woodcrest, or a single Core 2 Duo running at the same clock?

Games, Photoshop, CAD, rendering, Office Apps. Whatever benchmarks you want to consider I don't care, and I'd appreciate links to some if they exist along with strong opinions. As long as they are real application benchmarks of course and not synthetic ones.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I don't think you'll find many Conroe vs Woodcrest benchmarks out there. The chips are intended for different purposes.

At the same clock speed, expect them to perform at about the same speed except in the rare occasion that you can successfully utilize more than 2 cores with a single app. Maybe during CAD or 3d rendering.

Unless you multitask heavily, the Woodcrests won't give you much of an edge.

 

[spike spiegal]

I know that 😀, but I'm trying to get some benches to prove it.

Matter of fact, a Core 2 Duo running at a faster clock than a Woodcrest, like a 3ghz Core 2 Duo vs 2.66ghz dual processor Woodcrest will result in most apps being faster on Core 2 Duo system.

Gee, what system would be a lot cheaper to build?

 

[ForumMaster]

depends on what work you're doing. for example, the Mac Pro with it's dual CPU dual core woodcrest would be faster with any application that's multithreaded. for gaming though, a C2D should be enough as very few games are multi-threaded.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Actually, a 4-core system may not provide any performance gain with multithreaded apps. Duvie had a good thread here

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...hreadid=1830732&enterthread=y&arctab=y

That showed his Opteron 270 rig leaving 1-2 cores unutilized in many cases when running individual multithreaded apps. In most cases, for workstations, two cores is enough.

Per core, the Conroe will probably be faster due to higher clock speeds and more responsive memory.

 

[ForumMaster]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Actually, a 4-core system may not provide any performance gain with multithreaded apps. Duvie had a good thread here

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...hreadid=1830732&enterthread=y&arctab=y

That showed his Opteron 270 rig leaving 1-2 cores unutilized in many cases when running individual multithreaded apps. In most cases, for workstations, two cores is enough.

Per core, the Conroe will probably be faster due to higher clock speeds and more responsive memory.

i doubt there will be a differnce if you compare one woodcrest to one conroe cause it's the same CPU. it might beslower in certain apps due to higher latency or things like that. but if an app is written to take advantage of quad core, then i don't see why it wouldn't be faster on the quad core. the woodcrest and conroe are the same CPU just different sockets to allow the woodcrest to be in a mutli-cpu system.

 

[DrMrLordX]

My point is, most apps aren't written to take advantage of more than two cores to any significant extent. If you look at Duvie's benchmark his results confirm that, even when running multithreaded apps.