Legacy application performance on multi-core environment

[Qacer]

I'm trying to get a better perspective. If I have an application that requires, at minimum, a Pentium 4 1.8 GHz processor, will a dual-core processor rated at 1.4 GHz still be able to run it?

Or in cases like this, should I assume that the application will only utilize a single core and thus, will be limited to 1.4 GHz?

These are just my silly questions.

 

[dbcooper1]

The core2duo will run it very well; the architecture is different and it's clock for clock roughly twice as fast as the older P4. Even if it just uses one core it should be about twice as fast; if it uses both, all the better.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: Qacer
I'm trying to get a better perspective. If I have an application that requires, at minimum, a Pentium 4 1.8 GHz processor, will a dual-core processor rated at 1.4 GHz still be able to run it?

Or in cases like this, should I assume that the application will only utilize a single core and thus, will be limited to 1.4 GHz?

These are just my silly questions.

Yes, the dual core @ 1.4 will still be able to run the software. A Core2 or AMD X2 is more powerful, clock-for-clock, than a Pentium 4 1.8. Also, that P4 has to support the OS and background tasks while running your application all on a single core, whereas even if your application doesn't support the 2nd core, your OS will, and will take advantage of it to a certain extent.