Duo vs. Quad Core

[Albert]

What type of logic goes into deciding whether a faster Mhz Duo is
better then a slower Quad Core. What types of applications take
advantage of the Duo and Quad Cores? For example the following two
are similarly priced.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz LGA 775 Processor - Retail
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor - Retail

 

[Frank McCoy]

What type of logic goes into deciding whether a faster Mhz Duo is
better then a slower Quad Core. What types of applications take
advantage of the Duo and Quad Cores? For example the following two
are similarly priced.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz LGA 775 Processor - Retail
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor - Retail

It depends almost entirely on what application you're running.
Oh wait ... That's what you were asking.
Sorry.

 

[John Doe]

It depends almost entirely on what application you're running.
Oh wait ... That's what you were asking.

lol

 

[geoff]

I'll be firing phasers, modulating the shield frequencies, jumping to warp
speed, while the replicator makes my kope luwak.

-g

 

[Guest]

What type of logic goes into deciding whether a faster Mhz Duo is
better then a slower Quad Core. What types of applications take
advantage of the Duo and Quad Cores? For example the following two
are similarly priced.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz LGA 775 Processor - Retail
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor - Retail

I'd go for the E6850. At least for the next few years, the
benefit from a quad core chip won't be with single apps,
but with multitasking, e.g. playing a game while encoding
videos. Currently very few consumer apps utilize four
cores (Adobe Premiere Pro is one example). Otherwise
you're better off with fewer cores and a faster clock speed.

 

[John Weiss]

What type of logic goes into deciding whether a faster Mhz Duo is
better then a slower Quad Core. What types of applications take
advantage of the Duo and Quad Cores? For example the following two
are similarly priced.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz LGA 775 Processor - Retail
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor - Retail

That is a significant difference in clock speed, so any app that is not
multi-threaded will likely do better with the Duo.

An exception may be if you have many background apps actively running as
well as your foreground app. The multiple CPUs will handle the multiple
apps better.

Photoshop and some other high-end apps are multi-threaded. Few office apps
are.

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <470bfc43@kcnews03> "John Weiss"

That is a significant difference in clock speed, so any app that is not
multi-threaded will likely do better with the Duo.

An exception may be if you have many background apps actively running as
well as your foreground app. The multiple CPUs will handle the multiple
apps better.

Photoshop and some other high-end apps are multi-threaded. Few office apps
are.

Few office apps need to be -- When was the last time you saw Word take
any significant amount of a 2GHz+ CPU (other then a hang preceding a
crash, of course)

 

[John Weiss]

Few office apps need to be -- When was the last time you saw Word take
any significant amount of a 2GHz+ CPU (other then a hang preceding a
crash, of course)

Word may not need 2 CPUs, but Outlook Express could benefit from them. It
hogs a CPU for many seconds when compacting its database...

Besides, that is the point of the argument. A single-threaded app will
benefit more from the higher clock speed than a 3rd and 4th CPU core. For
the same $$, a Duo will perform better than a Quad for office apps.

 

[Frank McCoy]

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt "John Weiss"

Word may not need 2 CPUs, but Outlook Express could benefit from them. It
hogs a CPU for many seconds when compacting its database...

Agent is as bad. Mine can take many long minutes to compact; but that's
because I have several multi-gigabyte-sized files containing *years* of
complete archives of quite a few newsgroups.

However, the advantage there is that another processor is still
available. It won't really speed up the compacting much. In fact, the
slower dual might even make it take longer.