Core duo processors.

Ok.. so if I have core duo 2.0 ghz.. (to my understanding two 2.0 ghz processors) would that be equal to a 4.0 ghz single processor?

Or would is just be 2 2.0 ghz processors..

 

It would just be two 2.0GHz processors. They are able to increase multitasking via the first core offloading some extra instruction work to the second core to speed things up, but they are not able to work in tandem as one giant 4.0GHz processor.

 

while they can't work as one giant processor.. does it offer any advantage to gaming?

 

Only if the game can take advantage of multi threadig, or your running a second intensive program in the background.

 

Only if the game, or any other application for that matter, is coded to take advantage of both processors. As dual core processors become more prolific in the market, that will happen.

 

Are there any games/applications out there now that take advantage of core duo/core 2 duo processors?

 

Both Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4 have patches that enable use of a dual-core processor, and it gives large performance boosts (up to 87% according to the readme). They will also take advantage of HyperThreading if you have a Pentium 4 (up to a 25% performance boost).
Oblivion has also been known to benefit from a dual-core processor - about a 20% increase in performance according to benchmarks.

 

A lot of professional applications also take advantage of dual core/HT.

 

Video software tends to get a MASSIVE boost in performance from dual core systems. I know in my experience Adobe Premiere Pro runs insanely faster on my 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo than it did on my old 2.4GHz Athlon 64.

And as mentioned before, certain games will see a performance benefit, but remember that after a certain point your games will be largely GPU bound.

 

I thought it was two 1.0Ghz processors... Am i wrong?

 

They are two 2.0 procesadors. You can see it as a big 4.0, better see it as two procesor that helps each other. If one is full of things to do the other one will take care of the programs that the first one can handle, or they can slipt a big procedure and do a part each so it will execute a lot faster.

 

If you bought two cars, could you drive twice as fast?
The same applies. it doesn't affect how fast one "job" can be performed. But if the workload can be split between the two, it makes a big difference. (Say you have to transport 10 people from A to B. No matter how many cars you have, one trip from A to B takes teh same amount of time. But if you have one car, you have to make two trips. If you have two, everyone could fit in (at least if you squeeze together a bit), and you'd only have to make one trip. (Of course you'd need someone else to drive the other car, but hey, it's still not a bad analogy )

The same applies to CPU's. If you have a workload that can be split across CPU's (and the programmer has to make that possible), then you do get twice the performance. But if the workload can't be split, you get the same performance as with a single 2GHz CPU.

 

Great analogy!