core 2 duo vs quad core

quad core is a pointless waste of money in my opinion

in most cases windows does not even use a dual core, so to buy a quad core would be a complete waste of money
 
How are you guys managing to complicate this? :o
Core2 refers to the architecture...
The Solo, Duo and quad refer to the number of cores on the CPU package
Solo would be 1, duo 2, Quad 4
 
The new CPU from Intel, the Core2Quad, is 'n quad-core CPU. It is a single silicon chip with four CPU units on the die and they all use a pool of shared on-die memory or cache (4MB for each 2 cores to share if I am not mistaken). The Core2Duo is an older CPU which has two CPU units on the die and they share a pool of on-die memory or cache. The amount of on-die memory or cache differs, for example Core2Duo E4300 (which runs at 1.80GHz per core) has 2MB of shared cache, while the Core2Duo X6800 (which runs at 2.93GHz per core) has 4MB of shared cache.

The advantages of running a dual-core CPU over a single-core one is because you can achieve true multitasking with two cores. Each process is assigned it's own core and both are executed independantly. This works great if you are running two processes simultaniously, as with a single-core CPU each had to be assigned a time to be executed, leaving the other process to idle. A good example of this is listening to music whilst playing a game. The game will stutter when the song changes (in most cases).

The advantage of quad-core over dual-core is that four processes can be executed simultaniously instead of two. That means that, theoretically, you can listen music, play a game, burn a DVD and download a file without the CPU being a bottleneck (the hard drive will become the bottleneck in this case).

If I am not mistaken, the first Core2Quad runs at 2.4GHz per core. So you might not experience performance benefits while running a single process.

To clarify:
Core2Duo - 2 CPU units on a single silicon die
Core2Quad - 4 CPU units on a single silicon die

Hope this helps.
 
shock g let me ask you a question man

ive got a core 2 e6300 and whehn my anti virus scans my system slows down just like it used with a single core

someone said i have to tell the anti virus which core to use?

so you can multi task but only by telling cpu to do so?

marketing rubbish to me :)
 
hey killadoob where's the question there? :o

Anyway, even if the OS is multi core ready and aware, it has to be the application that is also multicore/CPU aware. If the app is agnostic to the number of cores then it will utilize the same amount of resources on a dual core as it did on a single core. The power advantage of multi core is in the parallelism it brings not in the linear performance scaling of just doubling instructions, executions and the like.
 
so would you say that most appz and games still only use 1 core and that dual core is rather pointless

so basically a 3800+ amd dual core would work just as well as the 3800+ single core on 99% of appz and games in windows?
 
killadoob said:
so would you say that most appz and games still only use 1 core and that dual core is rather pointless

so basically a 3800+ amd dual core would work just as well as the 3800+ single core on 99% of appz and games in windows?
Click to expand...
Not exactly. There will be a performance gain because there are two processors sharing the work. But as you say, to get the ultimate peformance, the programs have to be written especially to use it.
 
IMHO the operating system will do the load sharing between the CPU cores. This was defacto already in place when Dual processor boards came out and worked on W98 as well as NT4, four years ago. Look at current reviews with existing software and programs and notice how many more threads can be run faster concurrently on the multicore cpu's. If you speak about a single game or similar application then I agree to a degree, the game may not be faster per se' but the overall performance of the PC while the game is playing will improve, like server software, MP3 decoding etc.
 
froggytoo said:
IMHO the operating system will do the load sharing between the CPU cores. This was defacto already in place when Dual processor boards came out and worked on W98 as well as NT4, four years ago. Look at current reviews with existing software and programs and notice how many more threads can be run faster concurrently on the multicore cpu's. If you speak about a single game or similar application then I agree to a degree, the game may not be faster per se' but the overall performance of the PC while the game is playing will improve, like server software, MP3 decoding etc.
Click to expand...

LOLm while i mostly agree with you, win98 could in no way or fashion utilise a dual processor setup except as seeing a single core...
 
supersunbird said:
LOLm while i mostly agree with you, win98 could in no way or fashion utilise a dual processor setup except as seeing a single core...
Click to expand...

That would then say the system would not boot? or reconize the hardware?Sorry as far as can remember my dual CPU P2 system booted and ran well with Two CPU's both with NT and W98 second edition. I never had issues with it and as far as I recall it ran faster too. The bios identified two CPU's.
 
supersunbird said:
No, only that Windows 98 just saw and utilised one of the CPU's...
Click to expand...

That I agree as they was not written for SMP but it did work and was "feeling" faster maybe due to the fact that the MB was designed for Dual system. Who knows. Dual booting with NT4 and later 2000 worked well at the time tho.

The point is that there is benefits using a dual or even quad core compared to single core, irrespective the software due to multi threading OS's.
 
The answer isn't so simple. For instance gfx cards drivers are aware of multiple cpu's so they can make use of that fact by setting up scene meshes on both cores or sharing the work between the cores that will be streamed to the gfx card. That is why X2 is faster than single core with all games esp with a powerful gfx card
 
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