Jeremy Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 You gotta have at least 2x to get rid of the ziggys! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puntoMX Posted January 6, 2007 Share Posted January 6, 2007 My friend argues that dual cores can help reduce stuttering, jerky frame rates in games. For example, when an e-mail arrives. It's hard to see how even a fast single-core can avoiding this. I guess I'll get a dual-core, although I'm still a little bit skeptical.If you play a game, why would you have MSN messenger open, Media Player playing a movie and converting a DVD9 to DVD5? If you want to do that, then get a dual core .. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ripken204 Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 i have trillian open, opera usually open, winamp possibly playing, possibly dloading something, all while playing a game such as oblvion with no lag. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 Yes, with a single core it is fine. I tested my AMD 3700+ (2.2 GHz) yesterday with PuntoMX. I ran 35 processes; encoding, virtual machine running, DVD playback, and 10 or so other programs open, then I played BF2 with maybe a slight drop in FPS. That's it.So that being said, I don't know why people think they need to go spend money on a dual core system and a $500 video card just to play their favorite game while doing 2 or 3 things in the background. I just did it with one core. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ripken204 Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 jeremy, have u checked any of the prices? my friend got an e6300 for 183$ and a 7900gs for ~150$ and he has no lag in any games so far on full settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcarle Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 READ THE FOLLOWING CAREFULLY BEFORE FLAMING.I am not, and I repeat, NOT trying to sound like a jackass, nor am I trying to make anyone feel stupid. I am neither trying to say that anyone/everyone is stupid. I am NOT. Repeat NOT! With that out of the way...I think that anyone who thinks a single core processor is better then a dual core processor is completely missing the point. Can a computer run fine using a single core processor? Yes... and they have since 1981 when the first PC was released to the public. However, the same computer can run BETTER with a dual core processor. And that's the point I think everyone is missing.I went from a Pentium 630 (3.0GHz single core, 800MHz FSB, 2MB Cache) to a Pentium 930 (3.0GHz dual core, 800MHz FSB, 4MB Cache) and IMMEDIATELY saw a difference. I changed NOTHING else in my machine, not a piece of hardware, not a piece of software, not even a BIOS setting. And when changes in computer technology speed are measured in milliseconds (such as the difference in memory timings), to be able to objectively see a difference in the speed of my computer simply by changing to dual core, it's something great.What a lot of people are forgetting is that there is no such thing as true multi-tasking and true multi-threading on a single core computer. That's where the concept of time-slicing came in (which, if I'm not mistaken, was invented by Microsoft with Windows). Before time-slicing, everything was one application at a time and one task at a time...Think DOS. When you're running a computer in DOS, you can only do ONE thing. You can run a program and only that program. Once you're finished, you come back to the DOS prompt where the computer waits for it's next command. Windows gets beyond this by time-slicing the processor between all the different programs that are running (or system processes).If you have a single processor, well, you're dividing all the work to be done between it. So if you have 4 applications running which would require 100% CPU then each application gets to use the CPU 1/4rd of the time (and for those who are more astute on time-slicing, I'm over simplifying). So each program will take 4x the time to do it's work then if they were running alone.The same scenario using a dual core processor is completely different ball game. The same 4 applications running which would require 100% CPU would each get 1/4 of the processor as in the first scenario, but this is where the cores come in. Since they are 2 cores, each core shares the work. So one core takes two applications, the other takes the other two. Each application then gets 1/2 of each core. So instead of taking 4x the time to complete, the applications will take only 2x the time to complete.On my machine, I have 28 processes that start with my computer. That includes the Windows system processes, different services and background utilities. On a single core machine, that means that the processor has to be time-sliced 28 times. On my dual core, each core can be distributed with 14 processes. That's a significant difference.Windows does all of this work transparently so you don't even need to worry about it. But if you want to get finicky, you can always set a process to work exclusively on one core only. You could even make all windows threads work on the second core only, and have a single dedicated core available to whatever it is you want to do, such as play a cpu intensive game.At the price of current CPUs, why wouldn't you get a dual core processor? Hell, I can't wait for intel to release a 3.0GHz quad-core, there's just too many benefits to more cores.Read more about Time-Slicing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ethanmcf Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 The New AMD AM2 X2 5200 - 5800 That are about to be released aww yes, i cant wait i do not like Intel at all Ethan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puntoMX Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 ... The same scenario using a dual core processor is completely different ball game. The same 4 applications running which would require 100% CPU would each get 1/4 of the processor as in the first scenario, but this is where the cores come in. Since they are 2 cores, each core shares the work. So one core takes two applications, the other takes the other two. Each application then gets 1/2 of each core. So instead of taking 4x the time to complete, the applications will take only 2x the time to complete...... At the price of current CPUs, why wouldn't you get a dual core processor? Hell, I can't wait for intel to release a 3.0GHz quad-core, there's just too many benefits to more cores ...jcale,No, a dual core CPU will not be double as fast as a single core CPU at the same clock speed. Then RAID would give you also double the speed and SLI with 2 cards too... It’s just not like that as we all know.The quad cored CPU will more likely have the power of 2.5 cores in reality, but still not double the power of a dual core and certainly not four times the power of a single core.But hey, I know you were just making a point . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zxian Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 @punto - Why do you say that quad cores will only have 2.5x the power of a single core? That doesn't make sense to me. Since we're actually able to make use of 100% of 4 cores when running stress test programs like Prime95 or Orthos, then it means that the CPU is still the bottleneck in terms of the computation pipeline - even with 4 cores. There are members of SETI@Home and similar programs who have had their work units double because of dual-core setups. I'd be interested to see someone here sacrifice a week or two on single and dual-core instances of SETI@Home to see how their average work changes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puntoMX Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 Just test it out Zxian. CPU load has nothing to do with power by the way. Second core will not double the calculation power... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcarle Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 Just test it out Zxian. CPU load has nothing to do with power by the way. Second core will not double the calculation power...Um, yes it will. It's a full blown processor. This is NOT hyperthreading that we're talking about. Dual core processors have the same power as dual processors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puntoMX Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 (edited) Dependencies of Chipset, RAM, cache and other internal CPU constructions, you will get max. 89.5% more out of a C2Q then a C2D, but that is only with programs like 3Dmax, In general, and with programs from this moment you will get like 50-60% more out a C2Q then a C2D.So, let’s say you will get 80% more out of a single cored Core2 and a C2D plus that 50-60% more when you have a C2Q above the C2D. 1.8*(1.5 to1.6) will get you 270 to 288% of a singe cored CPU, so not 400%, not even close but it will be up to 359% with 3Dmax.Don’t even bother with games… Edited January 8, 2007 by puntoMX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmX.Memnoch Posted January 13, 2007 Share Posted January 13, 2007 (edited) ... The same scenario using a dual core processor is completely different ball game. The same 4 applications running which would require 100% CPU would each get 1/4 of the processor as in the first scenario, but this is where the cores come in. Since they are 2 cores, each core shares the work. So one core takes two applications, the other takes the other two. Each application then gets 1/2 of each core. So instead of taking 4x the time to complete, the applications will take only 2x the time to complete...... At the price of current CPUs, why wouldn't you get a dual core processor? Hell, I can't wait for intel to release a 3.0GHz quad-core, there's just too many benefits to more cores ...jcale,No, a dual core CPU will not be double as fast as a single core CPU at the same clock speed. Then RAID would give you also double the speed and SLI with 2 cards too... It’s just not like that as we all know.Those analogies don't even translate to CPUs. That's comparing apples to oranges and bananas. Also, multiple graphics cores do exhibit a MUCH better speed advantage than multiple CPUs.Also, even if an application is single-threaded both the OS and the CPU will make determinations as to which core/CPU the thread will run on. I can have two single-threaded applications running at the same time and the OS and CPU will automatically adjust the affinity so those threads run simultaneously instead one having to wait on the other.You are correct in that it's not a doubling of CPU power. Not even dual CPU systems get double the power. There is a substantial gain in performance, but it's not even close to double. The gain is much better with dual-core CPUs than it is with straight up dual CPU systems though. This simply has to do with the front-side bus (the cores don't have to go across the bus to talk to each other).However, y'all are also talking like people only run one application at a time. We aren't running Windows 3.1 anymore and in this day and age when you're pretty much required to run antivirus, antispyware, filters for this, blah, blah, blah in the background single CPU systems just can't compare.I can prove this with my workstation at work. It's a dual Xeon 3.06GHz machine with hyperthreading enabled. I've had it running Nero Recode at real-time priority with absolutely zero impact to performance of other applications. Try that with a single CPU system...I can also tell you with absolute certainty that I can tell a difference in our single CPU systems vs. even our P4 HTT systems at work just by how they perform. I can even tell you without checking the BIOS if one of the P4 systems doesn't have HTT enabled. It's that noticeable on the overall system performance.On the gaming front; game developers know that dual-core and quad-core CPUs are the thing of the future so they are coding their future games to take advantage of this. Some existing games have even been patched to take advantage of this (Quake 4 as an example). And those of you saying "well, I only run CS:S". What's to stop Valve from updating the Source engine to take advantage of it?If you're buying/building a computer now you'd be absolutely crazy not to go with a dual-core or quad-core based computer. I recently upgraded from a P4EE 3.4GHz to a C2D X6800. I noticed the difference right away. I LOVE how smooth my system runs now...and it was no slouch before. Edited January 15, 2007 by nmX.Memnoch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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