Duo Core?

I've asked a lot of people but I haven't gotten a definitive answer yet. I usually get, "It's better." Well yes, I know it's better but how much better? What is the comparison exatly?..

How exactly does the Duo Core compare to a non Duo Core?

Would say, a 1.0 Duo Core be the same as a 2.0 non Duo Core?

It's suppose to take the place of two CPUs...thus, it runs at double the speed?

 

have a quick look on google, came up with these..

Here and here

Core Duo means two cores on one die, not that the cpu runs at double speed (has two cpus in effect). How better or faster they are i think boils down to if the application can take advantage of running on two cores, in affect give each core something to do (true hyperthreading). try google or wikipedia and will explain it all...

 

errr dual/duo core is basically two CPU cores in one CPU. dual CPU is two physically separate CPUs with a core in each of them. the advantage of having two cores is that each core can be used to do a different task, such as playing a game while running your antivirus. it doesnt really run twice the speed but unless both cores are working. so for example a 2ghz dual core CPU is actually 2 2ghz cores in a single CPU, each core runs at 2ghz so they total 4ghz if they are both being used.

 

That makes sense.

Thanks.

 

How much control have you got over the two cores? Can you tell them to work together/independantly?

 

you dont have much control except around the area of voltages and if you want it to slow down when not being used to save power. I think however in task manager on XP there is an option to assign each task/program to a single core, not sure how effective that is. however how the cores interact with a program depends on whether the program supports dual core or not

 

Ok - I'm assuming you can do the same thing in Vista?

 

Santa Rosa Core 2 Duo's are supposed to be able to deactivate the second core if it is inactive. If a program is coded to work with multiple cores you will see a defiant improvement in performance, as both cores will be working in tandem, creating a pseudo 4GHz (2 x 2GHz in this case). If software isn't, you can run two CPU intense programs at once, like encoding movies/music. Dual core is worth it, as the benefits are a lot more than the added cost.

 

It's "dual core" (no caps), if you refer to a CPU having, well, two cores.
If you refer to Intel's brand name in particular, it's Core Duo (with caps)

As for what it means?
Well, if you have two cars, can you go twice as fast?
Sure, if you need to transport 10 people, it'll be twice as fast overall (stick 5 people in each car, and you only have to do one trip instead of two).
But if it's just yourself, and maybe a friend, you could get to your destination just as fast in a single car.

That's pretty much how it works in CPU's as well. If you have a lot of applications running, the CPU can run two at a time, instead of just one. Or if the application is made to utilize this, it can try to use both cores at the same time, at least to some extent. (It's near impossible for one app to get 100% usage on both cores. Usually the task it's running on core 2 will depend on what's going on on core 1, so it'll have to wait for core 1 from time to time)

In realworld performance terms, you might see a ~30% improvement in performance in the general case. A few apps might be able to get higher than that, and a lot will give you less than 30% extra, but it's probably not a bad rule of thumb

 

Well, today's dual core CPUs (C2D) have architectures that are a lot more efficient than non dual core ones... so essentially saying "C2D=2x2ghz = 4ghz = 4ghz Pentium 4" is still wrong. The C2D should be much faster than the 4ghz P4.

 

Not quite... A Core Solo is the same architecture as Core Duo, and is just as efficient as one core in a Core Duo chip.
Same goes for AMD, one core of an Athlon X2 is just as good as an Athlon 64.

But yes, today's architectures are much faster than the P4, even with the same number of cores.

 

Really... They will out perform the non dual cores?

 

these days speed is only one factor in determining performance, so saying a 4ghz P4 must be faster than a 2ghz C2D simply cuz 4 is a larger number than 2 is incorrect.