Kyle;161853 Wrote: > Can someone explain the new dual core processors, and why a dual core at > 2.1 ghz would be more than a regular processor at 3.0 ghz?
More, as in faster? You can't really compare GHz clock speeds unless you're comparing CPUs with identical architectures. A (single core) CPU of 2.1GHz could easily be faster than one of 3.0 GHz if the architectures are different. For instance, a 2.1GHz AMD Opteron vs a 3.0GHz Intel P4. Comparing a dual core CPU to a single core, the dual core may be be faster when the computer is doing something that can be divided between the processors. Not a lot of applications themselves take advantage of this capability, but in many cases the operating system will have one CPU core executing the application, while other applications or operating system tasks are given to the other CPU. In some cases, though, a dual core will be slower than a single core of the same clock speed. This is when the application doesn't make use of both cores and when there are no operating system tasks going on. A lot of CPU bound games fit this profile. IMO, dual core is the way to go. On my Athlon X2 I can encode an album's worth of Flac files in a matter of seconds without noticing any slowdowns while I do something else. With my old single core machine, it would max out the CPU and render the machine unusable. -- JJZolx Jim ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=30559 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
