Performance boost of dual-core

[grrl]

I'm going to build a new computer in July after the AMD price cut, but I'm debating between a regular Athlon 64 and the X2. The most intensive thing I'll be doing is RAW conversion and other stuff in Photoshop 9.0. From what I've read, PS runs much faster with dual core, but most other programs won't see much benefit except when multitasking. Does anyone know how much of a boost I can expect with the dual core when doing everyday stuff? How efficiently can the OS split the processing between the two cores?

I'll be running Win2K.

 

[Markbnj]

Everything running under Windows benefits.

Get one.

</thread>

 

[grrl]

Originally posted by: Markbnj
Everything running under Windows benefits.

Get one.

</thread>

Is it really that simple? The articles I've read seem to suggest the benefits will only really come in when more SMP-aware software is made.

 

[Polish3d]

real men use dual core

 

[secretanchitman]

Originally posted by: Frackal
real men use dual core

lol...

well, think about this. compared to my friends athlon64 3200+ system (has a 74GB raptor, 1GB of memory) overclocked to 2.5-2.6, his windows felt...sluggish compared to my "old system" (p4 2.4C @ 2.9Ghz, 512MB ram). he told me that i had an extra core thanks to hyper-threading, which sort of sped up windows for me.

but dual-cores (the REAL hyper-threading), are nice. just think about a nice fast regular athlon64 3200+. now multiply by 2! so if one core gets loaded by a program, the other core is free to help out or just sit there and be useful for other programs!

i think thats how it works.

 

[grrl]

Originally posted by: secretanchitman

Originally posted by: Frackal
real men use dual core

lol...

well, think about this. compared to my friends athlon64 3200+ system (has a 74GB raptor, 1GB of memory) overclocked to 2.5-2.6, his windows felt...sluggish compared to my "old system" (p4 2.4C @ 2.9Ghz, 512MB ram). he told me that i had an extra core thanks to hyper-threading, which sort of sped up windows for me.

but dual-cores (the REAL hyper-threading), are nice. just think about a nice fast regular athlon64 3200+. now multiply by 2! so if one core gets loaded by a program, the other core is free to help out or just sit there and be useful for other programs!

i think thats how it works.

That's what I've read, but there seems to be conflicting opinions about just how efficiently Windows can utilize the dual cores when multitasking.

 

[n7]

Honestly, dual core isn't as beneficial to the average user as hype would make it out to be.

Unless you run appz that utilize both cores, there won't be huge benefits.

Or if you run many heavy CPU intensive programs simultaneously, then things are obviously a lot smoother.

I would recommend a dual core if at all possible though, unless budget doesn't allow.

 

[broly8877]

There are $120 dual cores now, no reason not to!

dual core ftw.

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: n7
Honestly, dual core isn't as beneficial to the average user as hype would make it out to be.

Unless you run appz that utilize both cores, there won't be huge benefits.

Or if you run many heavy CPU intensive programs simultaneously, then things are obviously a lot smoother.

I would recommend a dual core if at all possible though, unless budget doesn't allow.

:thumbsup:

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: grrl
I'm going to build a new computer in July after the AMD price cut, but I'm debating between a regular Athlon 64 and the X2. The most intensive thing I'll be doing is RAW conversion and other stuff in Photoshop 9.0. From what I've read, PS runs much faster with dual core, but most other programs won't see much benefit except when multitasking. Does anyone know how much of a boost I can expect with the dual core when doing everyday stuff? How efficiently can the OS split the processing between the two cores?

I'll be running Win2K.

If you are in a habit of running things in the background(eg encoding), an X2 would be very useful so your foreground tasks won't grind down to a crawl.

If the application is not multithreaded, then about 1/2 the processing capacity of an X2 will be left unused. Depending on which Photoshop filters you usually use, some may or may not be multithreaded. The problem with photoshop benchmarks is that they don't usually explain what filters/tasks were done.

 

[krotchy]

I like dual core, just because windows might say 0% cpu usage, but you always have virusscan and tons of random applications open in the background using some of the core. So even when using single thread apps/games, one core can handle all the background the other can handle apps/gaming. Plus have you ever gotten really annoyed when virus-scan was on a pre-set time and you used the computer at that time, and it took over and brought everything to a halt? I have run a virus scan while gaming on my dual core, and the game ran fine.

 

[teiresias]

I'd have thought a running anti-virus program's HDD accesses would pose relatively more performance problems (in terms of gaming) than the associated CPU usage.

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: teiresias
I'd have thought a running anti-virus program's HDD accesses would pose relatively more performance problems (in terms of gaming) than the associated CPU usage.

I suspect you're right. Then again defragging the HD would make even more difference too

*wanders off to defrag HD*

 

[furballi]

Have an A64 754 oveclocked to 2.68GHz. Transcode a DVD in the background, run stock trading application with 200 symbols and 600 alerts, and browse the internet. The transcode time increases by 1% (six seconds). I see NO slowdown in system performance.

There are those who use extreme example like gaming and transcoding a movie SIMULTANEOUSLY to justify spending extra $ on a dual core CPU. At this time, I see no clear advantage of DC for the average user. Peak CPU core clock is still KING for most applications. If you do a lot of video stuffs, then go with 2GB of RAM.

 

[Markbnj]

Unless you run appz that utilize both cores, there won't be huge benefits.

I guess it really depends on your definition of 'huge.' If having Windows act like nothing else is running 99% of the time is huge for you, then it's huge. If it's not, it's not.

From a technical standpoint: the _vast_ majority of the processes you have running under Windows right now run more than one thread. All those threads need to be scheduled. A dual core allows you to schedule twice as many threads per time slice. That's double the throughput no matter how you look at it. If you only run one CPU-intensive task, and don't mind that ordinary things like surfing the net may be slow when that task is running, then the difference probably won't be 'huge' in your case.

That and the current price points literally make duallies a no-brainer from my perspective.

 

[furballi]

For a PC, a drop of a few milliseconds is viewed as "system slowdown". For an average person, a delay of 0.3 second is barely noticeable.

Browsing the net is NOT a very CPU intensive task. The limiting factor is usually the speed of the ISP.

A single core A64 runs about $93. The equivalent DC version will cost about $132.

Remember the hype behind dual channel memory vs single channel memory for A64 platform? What about 1T vs 2T timing?

Drop by your local Circuit City to check out the performance of a DC machine vs a SC machine. If you notice a big performance jump, then go with DC.

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: furballi
For a PC, a drop of a few milliseconds is viewed as "system slowdown". For an average person, a delay of 0.3 second is barely noticeable.

Browsing the net is NOT a very CPU intensive task. The limiting factor is usually the speed of the ISP.

A single core A64 runs about $93. The equivalent DC version will cost about $132.

Remember the hype behind dual channel memory vs single channel memory for A64 platform? What about 1T vs 2T timing?

Drop by your local Circuit City to check out the performance of a DC machine vs a SC machine. If you notice a big performance jump, then go with DC.

Exactly. The bottom is that the performance increase of having a dual core is overrated for the typical home user.

Until the new drivers from Nvidia/ATI came out to utilise the 2nd core, the X2 was also not a gamers cpu.

 

[jackwhitter]

dual core is a very nice thing to have as it makes your computer feel VERY fluid. at almost any given time there is always a cpu ready to take instruction instead of having to wait for something to finish first. ie, you want to open firefox, word, winamp, and update your virus scanner as fast as you can click them... have you ever gone to click on your start button and had to wait a 1/2 to 1 sec (God forbid) for the menus to pop up. dual core/dual processor largely keeps that from happening.

as to most programs not being able to use dual processor that is true, except, any current operating system can send individual threads to any available processor meaning that 2 programs running concurrently can each have their own processor even if they think that processor is the only one in the system. multitasking is the dual processor's power.

as previously stated, for such a small increase in price (when the price drops occur), there is no reason to not have dual processors. if you run more than 2 or 3 programs at once (including virus scan, web browsing, mp3 player, bittorrent, etc) then you will get far more enjoyment out of dual processor.

when you start banging on photoshop while downloading the latest release of the debian distro (many many discs) while watching a divx video to pass the time for photoshop to finish the render, you will greatly appreciate the dual processor setup. will you take advantage of dual processors all the time? perhaps not. but is <$50 worth it for the times when you do? that is up to you.

 

[CP5670]

I also think that dual core is pretty overrated for normal usage. It might be useful if you keep a lot of programs and services running in the background, but I try to keep those things to a minimum anyway. I am actually considering switching the processors in my computers, so that my main gaming one would have the single core. I haven't seen any performance improvements in stuff I do regularly except in one or two specialized programs (basically Mathematica and Basilisk, which I use more on the other machine anyway) and the affinity problems in several older games are starting to annoy me.

 

[Duvie]

Pretty much most people around here are ignorant to the advantages of dual cores period...I have shown its increase goes from dvdshrink, video encoding, photo processing, video editing (all which even the average joes do now with home camcorders and digital cameras and what not)...I show huge increases in most CAD programs...There are huge advantages in doing distributed computing...These are things that may not be the mom and pops but for technologically aware ppl like thopse of us that hang here should be able to take advantage of...

The bottom line is to many of you ppl build $1000+ system to play games...and that is just sad...Buy a frekkin Xbox 360 for 400 dollars and use a PC for more productive things....That is my 2 cents....

The advantages are there for far more then just multitasking...I run many apps that use 2-3 ad even 4 cores effectively...

If I was a narrow minded 16-18 year old gamer like most of you I guess I would find dual core a waste!!!!!

 

[mshan]

Does the fact that Athlon 64 has the memory controller on the cpu chip offset some of this "feel of speediness? dual core advantage?

 

[grrl]

Originally posted by: jackwhitter
as to most programs not being able to use dual processor that is true, except, any current operating system can send individual threads to any available processor meaning that 2 programs running concurrently can each have their own processor even if they think that processor is the only one in the system. multitasking is the dual processor's power.

Is Win2K that good at threading?

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: Duvie
Pretty much most people around here are ignorant to the advantages of dual cores period...I have shown its increase goes from dvdshrink, video encoding, photo processing, video editing (all which even the average joes do now with home camcorders and digital cameras and what not)...I show huge increases in most CAD programs...There are huge advantages in doing distributed computing...These are things that may not be the mom and pops but for technologically aware ppl like thopse of us that hang here should be able to take advantage of...

The bottom line is to many of you ppl build $1000+ system to play games...and that is just sad...Buy a frekkin Xbox 360 for 400 dollars and use a PC for more productive things....That is my 2 cents....

The advantages are there for far more then just multitasking...I run many apps that use 2-3 ad even 4 cores effectively...

If I was a narrow minded 16-18 year old gamer like most of you I guess I would find dual core a waste!!!!!

LOL

Anyways i do game and i like being able to use my comp even when i have dvd's encoding. I'm responsible for encoding all the family videos from tapes to dvds. Now when u got 26 or so to do its not funny, say 3 hours to copy to ur comp and 2-3 to fully encode (uncompresed DVI to dvd) With single core u absolutely cant do anything in the background, cause it lags its a** off. With a dually its all good.

There is absolutely no comparison between a dually and a single core, unless u used u cant appreciate how much better it is. Try dual priming, encoding a dvd and playing a game at the same time on the single core and see how u like it , on a dually i can do that no probs.

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: grrl

Originally posted by: jackwhitter
as to most programs not being able to use dual processor that is true, except, any current operating system can send individual threads to any available processor meaning that 2 programs running concurrently can each have their own processor even if they think that processor is the only one in the system. multitasking is the dual processor's power.

Is Win2K that good at threading?

Ordinary tasks like browsing/email isn't going to be perceptibly faster. But with the prices expected to crash, I'd still recommend an X2 because PS/raw conversion should be alot faster.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: Duvie
Pretty much most people around here are ignorant to the advantages of dual cores period...I have shown its increase goes from dvdshrink, video encoding, photo processing, video editing (all which even the average joes do now with home camcorders and digital cameras and what not)...I show huge increases in most CAD programs...There are huge advantages in doing distributed computing...These are things that may not be the mom and pops but for technologically aware ppl like thopse of us that hang here should be able to take advantage of...

The bottom line is to many of you ppl build $1000+ system to play games...and that is just sad...Buy a frekkin Xbox 360 for 400 dollars and use a PC for more productive things....That is my 2 cents....

The advantages are there for far more then just multitasking...I run many apps that use 2-3 ad even 4 cores effectively...

If I was a narrow minded 16-18 year old gamer like most of you I guess I would find dual core a waste!!!!!

:thumbsup: