Larry Beaulieu wrote:
Also note that right now you'll see 2 different dual-core product
lines. "Core Duo" processors started shipping earlier this year,
"Core 2 Duo" is the later iteration and offers an incremental
performance improvement...
When shopping for a dual-core laptop earlier this Fall, I used this article:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2808
as one reference, which says essentially the same thing - that the newer
Core 2 Duo provides a small, incremental improvement.
According to the article Core 2 Duo should be available in laptops now
(the article is from early August, and thus a bit dated), and selling
for the same price, so it would be the preferred option, though I
haven't noticed it in any of the laptops advertised to consumers. If
you're willing to use the non-2 version, you'll have more model choices,
and will probably get a better price.
The article also mentions AMD's Turion 64 X2 and notes its limited
availability. That doesn't seem to still be the case. I've seen lots of
models with X2s lately. However, I believe the benchmarks still give the
edge to Intel's dual-core CPUs (on performance; I don't know about power
consumption).
Nicholas Kathmann wrote:
Last I heard, the dual-cores offer a 1.4x - 1.8x performance upgrade
over a single processor. You don't get full 2x...
At a recent BLU talk by Alex Vasilevsky, Founder of Virtual Iron (they
make "Enterprise-Class Virtualization" software (Xen based)), gave
similar numbers. I think he said 1.5x. Probably depends on the benchmark
or application.
Scott Ehrlich wrote:
How does this really differ, if at all, from having two separate
processors on the motherboard?
Is two sockets even a practical option on a laptop? I've never heard of
such a thing. If so, it'd be a very high-priced specialty model.
anandtech.com and most of the other hardware sites have background
articles on dual-core technology.
Ignore budgets for now.
Dual-core shouldn't have a big impact on budgets. It's quickly becoming
the mainstream, pushing single core models to the value market.
I've seen laptops with Intel dual-core CPUs selling in the $500s and the
Toshiba I purchased was $700. Buy a Dell through normal corporate buying
channels with support contracts, and of course you'll pay more, but the
premium for dual-core shouldn't be too bad.
-Tom
--
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/
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