Question about dual cores

[Xtremerunnerars]

I've always wondered, what would be faster on a pc? Would it be a 1.7 dual core, or a 3.4 single core? I'm leaning towards the single, just out of common sense.


By faster, i mean handling large photoshop images, and encoding video.

[carrotderek]

It's not all about clock speeds. XD Clock speeds are, in a nutshell, how fast a processes info, getting it in batches, processing it... it's a cycle. Dual Cores process more per cycle. So even if it does seem slower, its doing much more (twice as much?) than the Single Core, so it makes up for its slower speed.

Powerful single cores are great for running games.
But for multi-tasking, the extra computing power makes Dual Core the king!

[Deadloader]

roflrofl and i got told my single core was shit for gaming when it's actually more than double my friends dual core.. roflrofl to them though i do see how it would be possible for it to be heightened from
the use of a dual core.. or would it really effect gaming much with the use of a lower clock speed on a dual core system?

[carrotderek]

A dual core with lower clock speed will be beaten by single core in terms of gaming until developers start making games that make use of 2 cores. Which is like now probably XD
Even then single core is best for just running the game.

But if you want to, say, burn a DVD, listen to music, encode/decode video, play a game at the same time, then dual cores are awesome.

[Nightfire]

Also hasn't a duel core processor in the amd athlon X2 or something gone up to 5ghr already? though it's like $900 XD

It might have come out a few months ago I think not sure though. But if you can get that it wouldn't matter for games that just run single core.

[carrotderek]

If there WAS a 5GHz processor out, then IBM wouldn't be flaunting its stuff about its Power6

[Dale]

There is a quad core processor now

[Illegalx17]

Yea seriously. My buddy was telling me about the best setup ever, something like cuad core ht with dual SLI's....


:drool:

[Samuel]

A dual-core will ALWAYS out preforme a single core, even it's core speed is lower. The new Intel Core 2 Duo's havea 1066 mghz Front side bus, 64-bit support, and you multiple all that times 2.

Since the single core only has L1, and L2 cache on one CPU die, the dual cores hace l1, l2 on BOTH dies. So basically, it can keep more information in it's cache, witch makes hell of alot faster. Not to mention that those new dual-cores overcloak like crazy! ^_^

And instead of two ALU's on the processor, there's 4 ALU's! So that doubles everything...just about. =)

[Xtremerunnerars]

I was waiting for you to jump in on this bfg. Thanks for the info!