Stupid Question: What does dual core mean in real-world performance right now?

[bluemax]

That's the kind of info I was hoping to hear - everyday use difference. I'm with you about having lots of browsers, music playing, office apps going at once. If I'm playing a game, I'm not doing those other things....

I really wish there was a low-cost alternative to the 805. I'm seriously considering jumping straight to the 930 processor because it's 65nm and much, much cooler right off the hop. It may be $80C more expensive, but it is noticably faster and cooler. I don't want a toasterPC. The only way I'd go with the 805 is if I were to add a $65 Typhoon and that negates the price difference between the two options.

The X2 3800+ is still $110C more expensive than the 930.

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: bluemax
That's the kind of info I was hoping to hear - everyday use difference. I'm with you about having lots of browsers, music playing, office apps going at once. If I'm playing a game, I'm not doing those other things....

I really wish there was a low-cost alternative to the 805. I'm seriously considering jumping straight to the 930 processor because it's 65nm and much, much cooler right off the hop. It may be $80C more expensive, but it is noticably faster and cooler. I don't want a toasterPC. The only way I'd go with the 805 is if I were to add a $65 Typhoon and that negates the price difference between the two options.

The X2 3800+ is still $110C more expensive than the 930.

I know it's difficult to wait, but I would definitely recommend doing so for Conroe. From what I've heard, it should be less expensive and outperform the X2 3800. If you do go with an after-market cooler for the 805, then I'd suggest looking in the FS/FT forums. I've seen Big Typhoons go for $35 shipped on there. The Scythe Ninja and Thermalright SI-120 are also very good heatsinks. There's actually a Ninja for sale right now for $27 shipped. You would just need to buy a 120mm fan to go on there.

 

[Rangoric]

Originally posted by: OhNoPoPo
I've read a lot of articles, read a lot of benchmarks -- the general impression that I get is that not a lot of real world performance gains are to be had right now with dual core over a single core. But I'm wary of benchmarks...

1) I'm not a gamer. I play Warcraft 3; let's just say that not quite a "new" game.

Won't help here. Most games use only a single Core. Galactic Civilization II is a multithreaded game however.

2) The main complaints are my current rig (3.6 P4, 6800 Nvidia, 1gb ram) are: sometimes there are delays when switching around programs, after something big downloads it takes forever to "process" (I don't really get what it is doing...it gets to 99% and starts "copying" to the desktop even tho that is the location I downloaded to), and general "snappiness" sometimes. Are these all ram or Hdd speed related? Or can a dual core actually improve these processes?

The Copying thing is that for large downloads windows will use a temp directory to store the download, and then copy it to the place you want when its done. This keeps you from thinking it done beforehand. Dual Core will not help there.

Switching Processes will be faster with 2 cores, if your processor is maxed out. If you are running Warcraft 3 and switch tasks, the speed of that switch will be helped by Dual Core as most games max out a processor and don't play as nice as they should (especially older games). This improved response time is due to the fact that a single threaded program cannot really use both cores. So the other program you switch to will be able to hop on the second core that the original program wasn't using.

However, adding more ram can also improve the response speed when your RAM is maxed out. You can check this with the Task Manager. Also if your computer has ever told you its increasing the pagefile, or if you change tasks and hear the HDD reading a ton, thats a good indicator that you could use more memory.

HDD speed also has something to do with it, but boosting HDD speed will make it just a shorter delay. Dual Core and More Ram can eliminate the delay.

3) When does the second core actually kick in? Most apps are not dual core aware, so how does the OS allocate resources? Can someone explain this in a plain english, simple manner?

It should use the Second Core as soon as possible and automatically.

It would annoy me if Windows didn't automatically put itself on one core and let you have your way with the other.

 

[Amaroque]

I went from a 3500+ @ 2.5 GHz, to my X2 @ 2.8 GHz. Not only is everything faster (300 MHz faster cores), it's much "smoother"

It's difficult to capture the smoothness in any benchmark, but you can absolutely feel it. IMO It's a night and day difference.

 

[dguy6789]

It all depends on your usage of the computer. For someone who has a workload that often takes advantage of dual processing cores, they will experience phenomenal performance gains. Someone who does little to no multitasking will not see much of a benefit.

When I am using my pc, I typically have some heavy loads. I am a perfectionist in keeping my pc running at top performance, so while I am web browsing(Usually Firefox with 10 tabs or so), I also run Microsoft Update, Adaware SE update and scan, Spybot Search and Destroy update, immunize, and scan, Spyware Blaster update and immunize, and Windows defender update and scan, Kaspersky Antivirus scan, CCleaner, Windows media player, MS word or whatever application fits the situation, and Outlook. This is just my normal web browsing load. On a single core, the pc would slow down quite a bit doing these tasks all at once. On my current pc, it doesn't flinch. It is as snappy and responsive doing all of these tasks at once as it would be if I wasn't running any of it.

There are also other benefits to dual core. I could play a game while burning a DVD and have no slowdowns on either the game or the burning of the disc. I can compress or uncompress some massive file and play a game at the same time without slowdown in either one. I could do those long and boring anti virus scans and play a game at the same time.

This is why I like dual core. All of those tasks that you had to let your pc do overnight, or have to wait until your pc is finished doing; those tasks can now be done on your pc while you are using it with little to no performance loss.

If anyone is pondering on whether or not they should get dual core, they should definately get it. Dual processor users have been experiencing this awesome multitasking capability for years. Now, dual core processors make running SMP systems affordable and reasonable for a large amount of people.

You do not necessarily need to take just my word for it either, look here.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2410&p=9

On that page, you will see how long it takes the various systems to run dvd shrink in a multi tasking environment. Observe how much less time it takes the dual core machines to complete the workload when compared to the Athlon 64 FX55(2.6Ghz single core).

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2410&p=10

On the next page, you see the systems running a multi tasking scenario again. File compression in a multitasking environment. Here you see the FX55 keep up with the dual core processors. So one may think, oh the dual cores are not so good afterall. Think again. A quick look at the next benchmark shows that while the FX55 was competitive with the dual cores on one of the tasks, the FX55 accomplished virtually nothing on the second task, while all of the dual core processors completed large amounts of work.