what's your overall impression of dual core?

[her34]

dual core has been out for a while now. what's your experience? in a blind test, would you be able to tell the difference between a dual core and a comparably fast single core cpu?

are you looking forward to more cores (quad-core)?

would you have been just as happy if intel/amd decided to make faster single core cpu's?

(and what type of things do you do with your comp?)

 

[imported_Kensai]

Hell yeah!

I'm waiting.

I'd say fvck them and go with dual-cpu systems.

Gaming, Gaming, Gaming, Gaming, Neffing, Browsing, "Backing up"

 

[stevty2889]

Well it really heavily depends on your usage. If you don't run SMP aware software, or don't heavily multitask than you aren't going to notice a huge differance. For just gaming my pentium-m is better. (running at 2.4ghz) For doing multiple CPU intensive things at once, or rendering with SMP aware software my X2(@2.475ghz) is quite a bit better than either my Pentium-m or my P-4 @3.8.

 

[Markfw]

I will never buy another single-core for myself. Once you are a power user, and have many things open that are taxing, you can see the difference night and day.

 

[virtualrain]

The future of computing lies in parallelism. The only way computers are going to get much faster now is to start introducing more parallelism. You can now run dual cores, dual graphics cards, dual channels of RAM, dual (or more) disks in RAID0 arrays, dual monitors, etc. All of this is not just intended to get you to spend twice as much. It is the only practical way to continue to improve computer horsepower.

As for it being noticable... it is definitely something you grow into. I would not have considered running multiple intensive apps together before. Now I can! I'm now doing things with my dual-core PC I would never have tried before. More and more software will start to support SMP and then if you don't have parallelism in your computer, you will be hating life.

 

[TheStigma]

In the short run, I'd rather have single-cores. Multicores right now are a waste of resources except for power-workstations where you actually keep multiple processes going all the time while working.

However, multicores are definately the way to gain incredible processing power for the future. Its going to be a slow and painful transition getting multi-threaded software to become the standard, but after thats done we will never be CPU-bound ever again, only cash-bound =)

Just immagine a dual-slot motherboard with 2 top-end quad-cores, all being able to work towards the same process (say a game app). That would easily be the equivalent of having a 20Ghz sincle-core CPU right now, and thats not even considering the general speed advances that will come by then.

So no, I wont be buying dualcore for a long while I predict (atleast not until 2-3 years from now I think), but when multithreading starts going mainstream, il be THERE baby! =)

-Stigma

 

[Griffinhart]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I will never buy another single-core for myself. Once you are a power user, and have many things open that are taxing, you can see the difference night and day.

Same here. I'll never buy a single core processor again. The overall computing experience is MUCH better than a single core no matter what I am doing.

 

[theMan]

i think, if i had a dual core, i would start multitasking way more. like, instead of encoding a dvd and leaving the room, i would start encoding a dvd and then open up a game. it would be sweet.

 

[PKing1977]

It is by far the best processer I have owned..... It is night and day from a single core processer.

PKing

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I will never buy another single-core for myself. Once you are a power user, and have many things open that are taxing, you can see the difference night and day.

i second this....I will never buy a single core cpu again....

 

[SonicIce]

are there any single applications or that benefit from DC cpu's? i know photoshop works alot faster on them. what are some situations where dual core would really come in handy?

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
are there any single applications or that benefit from DC cpu's? i know photoshop works alot faster on them. what are some situations where dual core would really come in handy?

If an application (ie photoshop) works faster on dual-core, then obviously its multithreaded, so what is your question ????

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
are there any single applications or that benefit from DC cpu's? i know photoshop works alot faster on them. what are some situations where dual core would really come in handy?

MOst encoding apps and video renderers....

http://home.comcast.net/~duvie23/x2-2662-11242-tmpgenccpu1.JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~duvie23/x2-2662-11242-tmpgenccpu2.JPG

Most CAD rendering apps....

http://home.comcast.net/~duvie23/x2-2662-11242-povray37-bench-1cpu.JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~duvie23/x2-2662-11242-povray37-bench-xcpu.JPG

http://home.comcast.net/~duvie23/x2-2662-11242-ADT2004-1CPU.JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~duvie23/x2-2662-11242-ADT2004-MULTI.JPG

Lame MP3 has a multithreaded version

 

[Darkstar757]

Im loving the dual cores

 

[Velk]

Originally posted by: her34
dual core has been out for a while now. what's your experience?

Great.

in a blind test, would you be able to tell the difference between a dual core and a comparably fast single core cpu?

Absolutely yes.

are you looking forward to more cores (quad-core)?

Not at all.

would you have been just as happy if intel/amd decided to make faster single core cpu's?

Not unless they made them a *LOT* faster, no.

(and what type of things do you do with your comp?)

Gaming, development work, encoding, dvd burning and web browsing.

 

[Griffinhart]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
are there any single applications or that benefit from DC cpu's? i know photoshop works alot faster on them. what are some situations where dual core would really come in handy?

Multi-threaded apps I use on a regulare basis are:
-Digital Media Converter (Shareware) to convert MS-PVR files to something more weildy
-Pinnacle Studio 9 for video editing.
-Photoshop Elements 2.0 (an older Free version of the software)

Cases where DC comes in handy:
-Using any of the above apps
-Switching in out of games to a second app is fast (to access apps like Ventrilo os teamsound)
-Able to run multiple instances of EverQuest more readily.

On top of all that, Windows is just more responsive.

There are just so many compelling reasons to go Dual Core, both tangible like faster performance in Photoshop, and intangible like a better overall feel in windows. All of them are well worth the relatively high cost IMHO.

It's also worth mentioning that while there aren't any games that support dual core yet, and they won't flood the market any time soon, there are several games that will use the second core over the next year. Unreal, Eldar Scrolls: Oblivion, Age of Empires 3 will all use the second core.

 

[fatty4ksu]

Good performance

but..TONS OF BUGS!!

Unstable.

 

[Brian23]

Originally posted by: fatty4ksu
Good performance

but..TONS OF BUGS!!

Unstable.

HUH?!? can you give at least one example?

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: fatty4ksu
Good performance

but..TONS OF BUGS!!

Unstable.

Is that you Dothan?

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: Brian23

Originally posted by: fatty4ksu
Good performance

but..TONS OF BUGS!!

Unstable.

HUH?!? can you give at least one example?

He will list the speed up bug for a few games...Howvere he likely has't loaded the amd drivers and just wants to bitch and moan...I had one game do that and 2 steps later it was fixed...I mean fatt4ksu must be the biggest fvcking idiot to call that unstable and to even moan about it....

sell that chip!!! You are a disgrace to even own it....We (amd users) dont even want you to represent amd owners...

 

[PKing1977]

Originally posted by: fatty4ksu
Good performance

but..TONS OF BUGS!!

Unstable.

notice how someone who does not even claim to own the chip is expressing his opinion on the stability of the X2. At the same time, everyone who accually owns the chip loves it and has nothing but good things to say about it.

I really do not know how he can even justify saying the processer is unstable. I have loaded up XP pro, XP 64x and a couple of distros of Linux on my X2. The processer is solid. To claim otherwise just shows ignorance.

PKing

 

[Griffinhart]

The only "instability" I see with my X2 is in EverQuest. And it's not the processor. It's the game itself. The same problem happens on Intel Dual core and any multi-processor system. The solution is to just tell the game to use a single core. That's not really instability though. That's just a game what doesn't know what to do with more than one processor.

Other than that, I have seen no instability at all. I have no wierd crashes, hangs, glitches or gremlins. It's every bit as stable as the single core processor it relplaced.

 

[Jeff7181]

What people forget is that hardware really needs to advance ahead of software. No, not a lot of software is multithreaded... and no, not a lot of software benefits from the increased dynamic range of 64-bit computing... and no, not a lot of software needs more than 2 GB of RAM. But someday these things will be necessary. I'd rather have the hardware already when it becomes necessary rather than use obsolete hardware that takes forever to do what I want to do and just sit here and wait for hardware to catch up... then get price gouged because everyone wants the hardware cause everyone's sick of their slow, obsolete crap.

 

[Griffinhart]

I was pleasantly suprised on how many of my Apps were actually multi-threaded, actually.

I don't know if Office 2003 is multithreaded, but honestly, that one doesn't matter to me since I never wait for anything in Office. But, all my apps that take a significant amount of time to run are multi-threaded.

 

[ncasebee]

Both Gabe Carmack and John Carmack(Mr. ID) aren't particularly hot about dual core. If the developers aren't hot about it, then don't expect games to use it for quite awhile. When games start seeing a large increase in performance with dual core, I'll hop on and buy one. I find though that this whole Dual Core thing might not really start being integrated for quite awhile. Look at the hype that was 64 bit games. Where are the 64 bit games I ask? How old are the 64 bit Amds now? I have no interest in multitasking, like some people do. I'm gonna stay with a very fast single core for now. Now, when the developers start really multithreading, I'll get on, if it's worth it. Currently though, for gaming, I see no reason for dual cores.