-=PCTechTalk=- Re: Single vs Dual Core speeds
- From: Gman <gman.pctt@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:53:01 -0400
Yes, No & Maybe, but you already knew that. ;0}
When it comes to making direct comparisons, everything is dependent on
everything else. Within a given system, it's just as important to note what
it will be used for as it is to make sure the review systems are as closely
matched as possible. As you said, running an OS and software that is not
multi-threaded will yield no noticeable difference between a single core
proc and one side of a dual-core (or one quarter of a quad-core, etc.).
However, very few people still run an OS that doesn't at least recognize
multiple, hyperthreaded or multi-core CPUs.
As long as the OS is designed for true multitasking (as opposed to
task-switching), you will get more done faster with more than one thread
working at a time. Even if you only run one single-threaded app all by
itself (nothing else opened) within a multi-core system, it will still
complete faster than a single core proc because the OS itself has a lot
going on in the background. Having more than one core allows the system to
split duties between the cores so that they interfere with each other less.
On the other hand, give it a multi-threaded task to run and the proc will
REALLY show off what it can do.
Then, you have folks like me who normally have 12 different windows open and
are working on several projects at once (many of them for you folks, I might
add lol). When I made the switch over to a dual-core system, most of
my own 'wait times' went away completely. I still have to wait for web
pages to load (a product of my DSL speed), programs to start up (a product
of bloatware) and I still have to manually select whichever windows are
brought to the front so I can work with them (I can't wait for true speech
recognition and full speech control over the OS), but once they're up and
running, I no longer have to wait for one process to finish before Windows
can get to what I really need done before I can move onto my next step. Add
in the time it takes for an OS to switch between processes and it's easy to
see how 6 processes broken up across 2 cores will complete more than twice
as fast as the same processes hoisted upon a single core, and this is
assuming that all 6 processes are single threaded. If only half of them are
multi-threaded, the time to completion will be dramatically reduced even
further.
Of course, there's a LOT more to this than what I've covered, but I hope it
gives you some insight into how much more these multi-core processors are
than what initially meets the eye. As die sizes continue to shrink, heat
issues will continue to follow and they may eventually get back to
increasing the top speeds of the Chips they make for us. In the meantime,
we are still gaining tremendous benefits from the inclusion of additional
cores. As more and more apps are redesigned to take advantage of
multi-threading, those benefits will be magnified greatly. In other words,
if you buy a multi-core proc today and never upgrade again, you will
continue to see significant gains as more apps adapt to the technology.
Peace,
G
"The only dumb questions are the ones that are never asked"
----- Original Message -----
From: <dsw32952@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 12:54 PM
Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Single vs Dual Core speeds
>
> All else being as equal as possible to make a faie comparison - is a 3GHz
> single core processor faster or slower than a dual core operating at a
> typical 2.0 GHz speed?
>
> It seems to me that without an OS and software written to support the dual
> core that there will be little if any benefit to a dual core processor
> unless each core operates at the same (or near same) speed as the single
> core being compared to.
>
> Ditto with 64-bit processors.
>
> Can someone here put all this 32/64-bit single/dual/triple/quad-core
> gobbledy-gook into a perspective that makes sense to me (and everyone else
> here)?
>
> Thanks,
> Don
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