Core Solo Not to bad...

Well, I've been doing some heave duty tests with my Core Solo procesor to see what it can actually do. I was very, very suprised when I was downloading songs, converting a video file, and surfing the internet at the same time as super pi was going...and it finished only one second slower than when theres nothing running. I also didn't experience any lag while surfing the internet. I know that core duo is the best for the future... But my core solo is good enough for now.

 

now try gaming and doing all that 8)

 

You make an excellent point and beat a drum I've been hitting for a long time. In terms of power, 90% of the buyers out there don't need the latest and greatest. In fact, I think better than half would get along fine with Celeron, so remember everyone, unless you need the power, don't pay a lot more for CPU upgrades.

 

Who would need to do all of that at the same time?

 

someone with very little time and some crazy multitasking skills.

 

Why do u need to do all of that at the same time?

 

It was just a test...But I wouldn't do all of that normally

 

That's a much better example of real-life multitasking. People rarely play games and edit video at the same time.

 

Indeed. And most people wouldn't also encode video and play at the same time right now - but with a good dual/quad core CPU you can do that, and I would say most people would realy like to do it (there any a number of other problems like heavy HD access during both gaming and encoding, so you need more than just a multicore CPU to do that effectively, but you get my point).

 

I know, I was just messing with him ebcause he asked that guy why in the world one needs to playa game and surf the internet at teh same time...

 

Yeah, there's no knocking the Core line, they really are fantastic CPUs. What's great is that your Core Solo can be upgraded down the line just as easily as any Core Duo, so for people looking to save pennies and have a solid upgrade path, Core Solo is really a great option.

 

Ella Grande has made an excellent point. I can play music, and use MS Word, and run Firefox all with only a 1.3Ghz Pentium III CPU. Most buisness users will use little more than that, and therefore a Celeron or Core Solo will be more than enough for them.

 

I had similar arguement on the latest Sempron in another post. To me, the new Sempron might be the counter part of core solo, and the replacement of Turion single core.

People just don't care what's everyday running on their computer and crasy for 2 cores.
Talk about CPU load, I would think of:
1. How often would I scan virus(spyware) while I am doing other stuff. Once a day? Once an hour? or Every 10 minutes?
2. How often would I editing movie while watching another DVD? Everyday? Every week?
3. How much game I play? How games support 2 cores well?

I don't think I would pay extra $100 just for quicker boot system or rarely used parallel tasks.
Two facts will triger me to buy 2 cores:
1. OS and Apps are optimized for it.
2. User can put one core in sleep stage on the fly.

 

The sad thing is, there are many users out there that dont take care of our notebooks like some of us do. Many of them have computers that are extremely slow,bogged with spyware, and cannot run properly. Thats why you see many people going to mac's because there more user friendly and simpler to use(I respect Mac's). If the average computer user actually took care of there computers, then there wouldnt be a problem of slower computers and more power.

 

More saddly, Open Tiger project shutdown. No OSX like system available for normal PC users. iBook is physically a hot potato.

 

People often make the mistake of assuming that "If I run more than one program at the same time, dualcore is the way forward".

And yes, if you run two *CPU-heavy* apps, that's true. For example, gaming and encoding movies is possible (barely) on a dualcore CPU, but hopeless on singlecore.

But for "normal" tasks, it doesn't make a scrap of difference. Even a single core can switch between tasks very quickly, and if it isn't being heavily loaded, it has plenty of free time to give to all running processes. Even if it runs one CPU-heavy task, and a bunch of light ones (like word processing, internet browsing, MP3 playing), it's just not a problem. The CPU-heavy task will have to give up maybe 2% of its CPU time, which isn't really something you notice.

You can run 20 different programs simultaneously, and your singlecore system will be entirely responsive and feel as fast as any dual-core system. Hell, open Task Manager and see how many processes you have running already. Then enable the Threads column, and see how many threads each process requires the CPU to run. That's how many tasks a CPU can switch between without the system feeling slow or unresponsive.

 

Me

I have been know to play a game, have AIM open, and be downloading a thing or two at the same time. ALso when I work I do alot of heavy programming and CADD work, so for the real world I am part of that small percent that actuall require a dual core processor.

 

Very informative thread. I agree that many people go for a dual, when they do not need to. I was recently faced with the dual/solo debate. The price difference was $150. I chose dual. Why? Mainly for future-proofing. I have always gone by the moto "get the best you can afford" so that your computer will take you further into the future. Dual cores are becoming very popular, and i do believe you will see more and more software take advantage of it.

I'll be honest, i was not the one paying for the computer, so i went for the duo. i was prepared for a notebook to cost me more, but i found all i needed for under a thousand. it is not too often that i take advantage of having a second core, but for the odd time i do, i appreciate it. on my desktop, i would always get pissed when norton did its scheduled virus scan, and slowed my computer down.

 

Dual core helps in everything as background services (auto update, AV, firewall, anti spyware) can all be handled by one core, while the other core does what you want. Everyone from a light to heavy user will feel the difference with two cores compared to one and as dual core becomes more mainstream, there will be significant perfromace improvements in future programs.

Glad to see the solo can take a beating though, is it locked at 0.95v for the min multiplier aswell?

 

I dont like the term "future proofing", as in a few months my PC will be extremely out of date. But it will do everything I need for a while. But usually PC's get long in the tooth after a few months.

Yeah dual core will help the casual user as they go about their business. But most wouldnt notice the increase. But now with alot of gaming and some apps will go multithreads and/or can take advantage of multiple cores, so yes thats a clear advantage. But as far as normal gaming a core solo with my specs vs. my core duo(with only the game open) would be identicle.

 

Then you need to learn how to take care of your 'puter! I just loaded Half-Life 2 on my friend's old Compaq 550MHz PIII! It actually runs! He's got 768MB RAM and a 64MB TNT2 Ultra graphics card. He uses it for web-surfing, office stuff, listening to music... the basics. Except now he can play HL2: Deathmatch on it, LOL!

Honestly, I think stating that a computer is outdated the second you buy it is just an excuse to buy new stuff. Only if you are competing with someone is it necessary to upgrade every couple months. With enough RAM, any computer built in the last 10 years can probably run most software out there today, but I'm not talking about playing FEAR or using CS2 for your job.

Anyway, I tried to offer input on the whole multi-threading (MT) thing earlier, but the forum was too slow. Dual-core CPUs and even quad-core CPUs are an awesome thing for people that are doing really intensive tasks in tandem, but given the number of services and apps that run in the background at any given time on the average PC (not including tweakers that prohibit such background activity), dual-core can make a computer feel more responsive, especially once you get anti-virus, IM, media players, and Internet browsers running on top of everything else.

I'm one of those people that likes the idea of having a system powerful enough to encode H.264 streams while playing Oblivion, but I would rather attempt to force the hardware into applying itself to one thing to the best of its ability.

 

Well in a few months they will have the 800mhz c2d and then my 667 yonah will be left behind. BUt the excuse of my PC being out of date is a valid one....how else do you expect for me to explain an upgrade to my wife without loosing my head

 

LOL, ain't that the truth...

Well, if it still does everything you need it to, I wouldn't call it outdated. Now when Vista, DX10, Core 3 Ocho, solid-state disk drives, and DDR3-1333 become the norm, then we can say we're behind.

 

Well, I see dramatic improvments with my Core Duo in PhotoWorks inside Solidworks. I also see improvements in meshing and calculations in Ansys Multiphysics. I see alot of improvements in all of my engineering programs. However, I see very little improvements in Matlab.
-Ham

 

Excellent point! Many make the assumption dual core = much better multi-tasking which is only partly true because the overall performance gain is about 10-30% over single cores in single threaded applications. Windows XP and most software is single threaded at the moment so the performance increase is small-ish. What you need is MULTI-THREADED software to really benefit from dual core. Benchmarking with multi-threaded apps has shown over 60%+ increase over single cores. Multi-tasking is NOT multi-threaded, its STILL single threaded.

Its not multi-tasking you benefit from dual core its just that dual cores are slightly faster than single cores on single threaded software. *Core duo is generally 10-30% faster than pentium-m/core solo in most situations including multitasking.

*excluding multithreaded software where you'll see a much larger increase

 

Just as long as you have the RAM, you can do quite a bit. As long as you are not doing rendering, encoding or heavy calculations.