Dual Core CPU

jabaroon

Hi All,

Whats the deal with dual core CPU's. I just got one in an XPS system from Dell. I guess I was expecting that it would be a bit faster than it was and was also expecting that while XP was doing one thing that I could be doing another without the same lag that I would normally expect to experience (for example a virus scan running in the background slows the PC down the same amount as my single core processor machine)?

Cheers,
Jab

peterk19

your probably been restricted by the hard drive

jabaroon

peterk19 wrote:

your probably been restricted by the hard drive

Possibly, but what use does WinXP actually make of the dual cores?...does it support them and utilise their full potential as if there were 2 CPU's installed?

conzy

Unfortunately you bought an intel dual-core system which is basically to slow P4 prescotts glued together to keep heat down, a faster single core would have been better for now

And like peterk19 said, you are restricted by the harddrive because it cant read from 2 different locations at once

*update* Also dual-core CPUs have to be installed and affinity has to be given to different programs

jabaroon

conzymaher wrote:

Also dual-core CPUs have to be installed and affinity has to be given to different programs

Yeh do be doing what now?

DemonOfTheFall

Dual core in XPS systems is a bit of a joke really, they offer you no performace gains in games really, except for a few. It will increas over time, but for a purely gaming pc you should have got 1 fast single core.

Dcully

Or maybe an AMD dual core.

K.O.Kiki

Ah, but he bought a Dell instead of building an AMD rig!

Dooom

jabaroon wrote:

Yeh do be doing what now?

LOL. Sorry, it's been a long day.

I'm replacing my FX-55 with an X2 4800+ sometime in the very near future, mainly due to the fact that I've found myself doing more things that'd warrant the investment in it. 'Course I'm still in two minds over it, but I'm pretty sure I will.

Tom Dunne

jabaroon wrote:

Possibly, but what use does WinXP actually make of the dual cores?...does it support them and utilise their full potential as if there were 2 CPU's installed?

Software has to be specifically written to utilise dual cores. A virus checker isn't going to be re-written for dual core, though ideally Windows would offload it to one processor, while you play a game on the other processor. If only....

Software that typically crunches large numbers (e.g. video encoding, graphics programs, games) will soon start appearing with support for dual core. Right now, I can't think of much software that supports it.

You are essentially future-proofing your computer. Give it time, software will appear.

nl

Yea how long do you recon it will take before there is widespread software support for multi core system? 6 months a year mabey? Im giving serious consideration for getting myself a AMD 64 4000+. I just dont see the point in raking out the big bucks for a processor which the majority of software and more importantly games will not make full use of. The price vs performance ratio while using duel core systems at this point in time is crazy.

Dooom

tom dunne wrote:

You are essentially future-proofing your computer

Bit of a futile battle there though. I mean, you could by an X2 now, and wait for the software to appear that'll utilise it properly. But by that time, the current X2's will be pretty much obsolete and the software will most likely require a hardware upgrade.
It's the same with the majority of all PC hardware, and I don't see it changing for the better anytime soon.

netman

Well, future-proofing is something that's actually ok for people who don't upgrade their PC's for 2-3 years. We're seeing some benefit with dual cores even today, not much mind you but there are a few programs out there that make use of the extra CPU.

A major change of direction in software development is needed to make use of dual cores, and unfortunately we're back to the chicken and egg story. Except this time we're damn sure we got the chicken first.. Hardware is out there, it's only a matter of time before the software catches up.

Windows XP will recognise two cores and it's able to work with them. Processes are spread out between the two cores but you won't really see a difference until you either start running multithreaded software that can make use of both cores at once, or start running two cpu-intensive programs at once.

Running less cpu-intensive software has little or no bearing, as windows have been doing multi-tasking with a single cpu for a long long time now.

And unfortunately things that depend on reading/writing data on to hard drives will always be slow, no matter how many processors you get

Dooom

netman wrote:

Well, future-proofing is something that's actually ok for people who don't upgrade their PC's for 2-3 years

That's true alright. For me, it's gotten to the stage where I'm upgrading at least once a year. If not more. I just bought a new system at the end of the summer last year, and I'm already planning on adding a few things to it.
Then by the end of this summer, it'll be a migration to M2.

More money than sense. Both of which are running out fast.

nl

id be one of those upgrade every 2-3 years type people. damn college!! But if I wait till mabey the end of the summer id say there will be a much clearer picture to the relationship between the software and the multicore processors. You'd be able to make a much more logical choice on which processor would suit your needs by then.

irishshogun

The concensus seems to be that the HDDs are the bottle neck, wouldnt running them in a raid array ease up some of that?

DemonOfTheFall

No, RAID wouldn't help at all if you had two different programs trying to access the drive at the same time. To me it feels slower in fact, I dont have any numbers to back that up though.

To get better HDD performance ideally you'd have the data that one app was gonna be working with on one hard drive, and the data for another app on another hard drive. RAID only helps with large sequential transfers, the exact opposite of what running more than one program at a time would do.

Airblazer

u will see a big difference in encoding/decoding video etc...
on my p4 3.4 at home when coverting an avi to vob processor is maxed out..takes bout 2 mins to bring up cntrl+alt+delete screen as cpu is maxed out for the whole operation...on my work system which is dual core (3.2GHz) only using about 50% of total processor output and am able to work away as normal...

rsynnott

jabaroon wrote:

Possibly, but what use does WinXP actually make of the dual cores?...does it support them and utilise their full potential as if there were 2 CPU's installed?

Yes, it does. (In fact, for dual P4s, almost exactly the same as if there were two processors. The dual P4's FSB extents ONTO THE CHIP. (The AMD dual-core chips, and also I think the Intel Core Duo, use a more elegant crossbar solution))

tom dunne wrote:

Software that typically crunches large numbers (e.g. video encoding, graphics programs, games) will soon start appearing with support for dual core. Right now, I can't think of much software that supports it.

There's lots of software that supports efficient SMP operation. It's just that little or none of it is targeted at consumers on Windows

Capt'n Midnight

Stupid question - are you runing XP home ?
Have you enabled hyperthreading in the BIOS ?

run Taskmgr to confirm you can see two "cpu's" in performance


www.7zip.org will use more than one core if you want a small app to see it, pity the user interface isn't as nice as winzip, yet.