newnie to this. dual core vs. faster ghz regular cpu?

[firemedic69]

Just wanting to know what is better for everyday use? i hear alot of hype about the dual core processors but is it worth sacrificing the speed overall? i know alot of regular cpus can go up to like 3.4 ghz and teh dual cores i see are only like 2- 2.8ghz? are they slower of what. just need to know the read difference before i decide. we do mostly pictures and videos. some gaming.

 

[n7]

Welcome to the forums

I'd recommend you do a little research on current CPUs.
There are a lot of good reviews on the main Anandtech site.

To really quickly & roughly summarize things:

Clockspeed is not a good way to measure CPU performance between different model lines.

[overall] fastest CPUs out there right now: Intel Core 2 Duos
[overall] secondary alternative: AMD Athlon 64 X2s
[overall] crap choice alternative: Intel Pentium Ds

The reason why there's no reason to get a single core CPU these days is that you can get dual core for so little more, & performance will be better for multitasking & future applications, or current video/graphics appz, & some games.
That being said, for tasks that do not benefit at all from dual core, there is occasionally an argument for a single core CPU.

 

[BoboKatt]

I always say that once you go dual core you will NEVER want to go back to single core. The extra MHz here and there will never make up for the functionality and flexibility of dual cores.

As stated before with the recent price cuts of most of AMD X2 dual cores and the decent prices of core2 etc, it simply makes sense to go dual core especially when most likely if you are already running a 939 chipset mobo or any decent Intel chipset you are already set up to just slap a dual core and have at it.

I can think of one person I know who would never notice the benefits of dual core ? my dad. He simply checks him email, and when he uses Word, that?s all he does. He does not know how to burn a CD/DVD, does not play games and essentially when he does one thing on hic computer, that?s all he does. He devotes all his efforts and attention to that one application. He will never need dual core.

In my case at any given time I have 4 or 5 apps going ? I might be downloading, joining a massive archive, listening to mp3s, checking my email, and have 3 or 4 webages open on the go comparing prices, reading reviews etc. Then I could be playing a game online while having a crap load of stuff still running, checking maps online, still listening to music and possibly burning a DVD all the same time. I could never do this on my previous CPU ? when I would alt-tab or minimize say a game everything would just crawl. Try using a program that rebuilds a damaged file (like .par2 etc) and at the same time surf, check email and play MP3s on a single core. It feels like it?s just going to implode.

Anyhow there?s my pitch

 

[Bobthelost]

Dual core is a waste of time for most people, you need to be doing Media transcoding for it to really shine.

A semperon can multitask, that's what i'm using now. When reviewers mention multitasking they aren't talking about a few piddly little webpages while you run photoshop. They are talking about running movie transcoding while you game or run a database analysis. Two heavy CPU load programs rather than one and a few nothings like itunes and bit torrent.

Burning a DVD does not need a dual core, nor will that help it. Gaming does not need a dual core, nor do the vast majority benifit from it. Watching a film with bit torrent, firefox, antivirus and firewall do not need it (i'm doing exactly that with a semperon 3000).

As to faster clocks vs more cores, it depends what you're doing.