Dual Core vs oldie but goodie

[squeakyknees]

HI I've been drooling over barebones kits for some time now and I'm almost ready to give in and build my own computer. I've been repairing, upgrading for awhile now. WHat I'd like to know is why I should go to the expense of a new dual core processor that runs at ,say, 2 Ghz when my old eMachine runs at 2.6Ghz and handles everything I do extremely well, several programs at once? I don't NEED a new puter, just like building them but I'm thinking I just may opt for a 3 or 3.2 Celeron or whatever rather than a slower dual core. Is there something I'm missing in the way they are rated?

[mojo]

Which dual core processors are you talking about? AMD clock speed and the new intel Core 2 Duo clock speed cannot be compared with P4's or Celerons. ANY AMD dual core processor or any Intel Core 2 Duo processor will be significantly faster than what you have.

[squeakyknees]

Oh I see So it's like comparing apples and oranges then

[newbuilder14]

You seem to be confused about the operating frequencies. Let me put it this way, think of a 2ghz processor as 2ghz x 2. It has 2 processing cores. A single core would be like this: 2.6ghz x 1. In essense what I'm trying to say is ANY DUAL CORE PROCESSOR can beat any single core chip, regardless of operating frequency. It is no longer a game of operating frequency in the CPU world.

[glc]

Yes, each core runs at 2 GHz, but that is NOT as fast as a single core at 4 Ghz.

The issue here is the new core architectures. Both AMD and Intel's new cores are a lot more efficient than the old cores. Raw clock speed is now essentially meaningless. What you need to do is benchmark comparisons - to see how fast work gets done.

[squeakyknees]

ok I understand much better now Thanks a lot!

[TwoRails]

Originally Posted by squeakyknees ...WHat I'd like to know is why I should go to the expense of a new dual core processor that runs at ,say, 2 Ghz when my old eMachine runs at 2.6Ghz and handles everything I do extremely well, several programs at once? I don't NEED a new puter ...

I think you answered your own question: you don't "need' a new system. Dualies are here to stay, and quads are coming out soon, so one day you'll build with one. Whether or not you should get a dualie depends on what you do. My Better-Half still runs a 1.333 GHz system and that's plenty for the work done on it, which is emails, business letters, and some surfing. The main reason I've upgraded is that I have a ton of movies I want to burn to disk. That takes horse power to getter done in a quick fashion. But, more importantly, is that with a dualie I can now actually use my computer for other "normal" work while a move is crunching in the background. Before I did either "work" or crunch a movie, but not both at the same time, and that is the reason I'm so far behind in the movie biz. Heck, the other day, I forgot I was crunching a movie and actually played a game while doing so!! Yes, it was an "older" game, but it didn't miss a beat.

So, if you want to do something that takes a lot of horse power and use your computer for other things, then dualie is the answer. If not, then you don't need one, as you stated.

[glc]

Then again, if your 2.6 is a Celeron, that's kinda weak.

[mojo]

TwoRails, what exactly do you mean by "crunching"? Are you compressing the movies using xvid or some other codec or burning them off onto DVDs? Most good video software is actually multi-threaded, so it still hogs your whole computer even with a dual-core, it just gets done much much faster. I have an AMD X2-4600+ and I can max out both cores when I'm compressing movies with Xvid, because the codec supports SMP. The computer is still useable since I run the thread at low priority, but I definitely don't have one core that's just sitting around waiting for me to give it things to do.

[TwoRails]

I pretty typically use TMPGNec for my crunching. I do have other programs, though. TMPGNec has an on and off the switch for multithreading, but my 4800+ has enough horsepower that even when I am using it in multithreaded mode I can use to computer for other tasks.

[mojo]

I wish I could have a 4800+. It seems to be vaporware for socket AM2. I've seen a couple OEM chips now, but back in august there was absolutely nothing to be found.