Multitasking bottleneck: 2gb and dual core

[6shiw1]

My question is simple: Will the dual core make better use of the extra ram than single core?

How much of a difference will I see?

ie: running world of warcraft and warcraftIII at the same time.

 

[fire400]

i got a p4 and I can do war3 at max settings and still do stuff

an X2 will own

 

[6shiw1]

I have no doubt it will. But I'm asking about how big of a difference it makes. On a 3500+ I can run WOW and other small applications without a hiccup.

Can anyone also tell me how dual core works?

1) Do I have to select a core to dedicate an intensive application to, and then use the other core to aim/winamp/etc?
2) Or does it automatically switch after reaching a certain load?
3) Does dual core mean twice the heat, twice the power consumptiion?

 

[tbike06]

you can manually set the affinity (which core) or let windows decide for you. it is hotter, but not really twice the heat, or power. But moreso than a single core.

 

[F1shF4t]

1) no windows will do it, but some programs which dont like duallies u wil have to set
2) windows shedules the programs to run on the most unused core automatically
3) not twise, but compared to single core it will be considerably more power output, not quite as bad as single core prescott although.

Duallies are nice and u will be able to do much more, but to get the best performance boost u also have to make sure ur not I/O limited, if u have more than i HDD it helpd when u want to multitask. (running intensive programs which require data off hdd, cause if the hdd cant provide the data quick enough dual core wont do anything)