Dual-Core or Double Hype? - How Dual-Core Is(n't) Faster
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Many of the press releases claim you can do fantastic, demanding tasks in the background of other demanding tasks. For instance, they all tote the line that you can play games while burning CDs. That’s great news, if you have a CD burner from 1999. Anymore though, the people buying these high-end systems will have the most recent burning hardware. It takes more time to tell the program what to burn and how to lay out the CD than is does to burn anymore. By the time your computer has loaded Half Life 2, your CD will have popped out already.
And once you’ve loaded up your game of choice, you might be disappointed in the performance. At this stage in the technology, a premium single core processor will out-bench any of Intel's dual-core processors. In fact, the majority of any software will not run any better on a dual-core system. There are a couple reasons for this.
First, the premium dual-core processors are clocked lower than the premium single-cores. Sticking another core on the processor die increases the size, power consumption, and heat of the processor, and with these increases comes an increased number of defects. Manufacturers have to use higher yield transistors, which lowers clock speeds, to smooth things out. The result is that Intel’s fastest dual-core will run at 3.2 GHz. Their fastest single-core is 3.8 GHz. In comparing price for performance, the single-core will come out on top. If programs or games like Doom 3 push your hardware to the limit currently, upgrading to the highest power will show more improvement than upgrading to a dual-core system. Some have said Doom 3 was optimized for dual-cores, but the benchmarks wouldn't agree; single-core chips put dual-cores to shame in Doom benchmarks. Then again, it’s possible AMD might change this when its dual-core ships. They are supposed to be developing theirs at 2.4 GHz, the same as their 4000+ (faster than any Intel chip available).
Second, most programs are not optimized for multiple or dual-core processors. The software has to support symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), or in other words be aware that there is a second processing unit, before it becomes an advantage. If you are running one program that is not aware of a second processor, the program will just use one. The other processor will be left unused, wasting time daydreaming or playing solitaire with itself. The vast majority of applications out there are like this: instant messaging programs, office suites, web browsers, games, media players, and other commonly used software. There are few packages of software that support SMP already. Most of them are very specialized 3D and video editing/rendering and image editing programs, probably the most common of which is Photoshop. Most people don’t own these programs or use them enough for it to be worthwhile. Once more programs begin to outgrow single-core processors and dual-cores start catching on, more programs will doubtlessly follow in making themselves SMP capable. This isn’t the case now, and it certainly won’t be for quite a while.
Next: What Dual-Core Will Do >>
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