Question on Northwood vs Dual core AMD

[phillyman36]

I have a 3.2 mhz Northwood. Should i jump on the dual core bandwagon when it comes out or should i wait several months before i switch. What are most of you all doing with your northwood rigs. Other than internet surfing light gaming and video encoding and dvd burning and some photo shop stuff what do i have to gain by switching to the AMD dual core

 

[Duvie]

From the 3.2ghz??? The difference will be big...You HT now only adds 20% in the most multithreaded apps....Those are the same apps that likelt see the largest 50-80% leaps now going to dual core....So basically look at the 840 Non EE model and figure you would lose by about an additional 30-50% in those apps that the dual cores beat the single core...IE multithreaded apps....HT is no substitute for real 2 cores or dual cpu systems...

 

[AnandThenMan]

It's pretty simple Anyone that does processor intensive stuff while doing several other tasks at the same time NEEDS a dual core system.

 

[imported_bum]

Just because it will give you better performance doesn't mean you NEED to upgrade, though. If you can accomplish what you need to do without major drawbacks on your current system, why not save that money? That isn't to say you can't upgrade later, but to me it makes sense to wait at the moment.

Dual core will only improve performance when doing more than one of those mentioned tasks at a time. Most notably something intensive like video encoding + internet surfing, etc, etc. Otherwise, there isn't too much magical about it.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: bum
Just because it will give you better performance doesn't mean you NEED to upgrade, though. If you can accomplish what you need to do without major drawbacks on your current system, why not save that money? That isn't to say you can't upgrade later, but to me it makes sense to wait at the moment.

Dual core will only improve performance when doing more than one of those mentioned tasks at a time. Most notably something intensive like video encoding + internet surfing, etc, etc. Otherwise, there isn't too much magical about it.

Wrong!!! Some single apps now will just speed up!!! 3dsmax7 in rendering is multi threaded and will speed up performance bynearly 80% over running same thing with a single core....

Some encoding apps like TMPGenc will speed up as well by as much as 50+%.....

So it does not only help in multitasking on runing multiple apps...For some of use it has single task ability....


There is nothing magical about it cause it is really no different then a dual cpu system and those above increases happen there as well now....