confused single or dual core

algi

Distinguished
Aug 24, 2004
4
0
18,510
I always believed that dual core was a money trick to trick people into thinking it was better and charging a lot for them, but most people on this forum support them so i'm confused.

If i open photo shop for example wont a athlon 4000+ single core be faster than an athlon 4000 x2. Because a x2 would only use one core which would be equiv of a 2000+ athlon.

Won't gaming be better with 4000+ rather than 4000 x2 because it's one programme. With my 2200+ at the moment i can burn a disk and surf the web so what is the deal with dual core. I've heard vista supports dual core and takes advantage of it but i'm planning on sticking with xp.

whats better dual or single core?
 

algi

Distinguished
Aug 24, 2004
4
0
18,510
i have seen an athlon 4000+ and a 3800 x2 for £58 each. Should i go with the dual core or single core.

also the single core is socket 939 and dual core one is socket 940. am i right assuming socket 940 is a more recent type of motherbaord.
 

sirheck

Splendid
Feb 24, 2006
4,659
0
22,810
i have seen an athlon 4000+ and a 3800 x2 for £58 each. Should i go with the dual core or single core.

also the single core is socket 939 and dual core one is socket 940. am i right assuming socket 940 is a more recent type of motherbaord.

the s939 is the older style.
the s940=am2 is the newer one.

go for a dualcore.

what socket do you have now?
 

algi

Distinguished
Aug 24, 2004
4
0
18,510
i have to get a new motherboard anyway this is too old. supports only agp graphics cards.

i have decided to get a 4600 x2 for £70
 
Socket 940 and AM2 share the same number of pins BUT they are not pin-compatible. A Socket 940 processor will not operate in a AM2 socket.

Socket 940 is a 940-pin socket for 64-bit AMD Opteron server processors - the overwhelming majority of which feature dual socket motherboards requiring 2XX series Opty's.

Quad socket 940's require 8XX series Opty's.

I will assume that 2XX or 8XX Opty's will work in a single 940 socket mobo but that kinda defeats the whole SMP enterprise, huh ???

2XX series 940 Opty's come in single- or dual core flavors. YEEHAW!

NOW the crux of this post AM2 is for DDR2 and mobo's may be EITHER Athlon or Opteron socketed depending upon the version/manufacturer

Socket 940 is only DDR1 and ECC (which is not really a problem in a server/workstation environment because AMD memory management utilizes something like 97% of the theoretical bandwidth . . . )

You will be tested later . . . .

(Hope you didn't waste a bunch of $$$)
 
DANG! . . . .I forgot . . .

Most Adobe products (Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere, Encore) are multi-threaded and recognize/utilize multiple cores/procs.

In practice I have seen 40-50% increases running an Adobe app on a dual cpu board as compared to a same-speed single socket mobo so your performance gains will be REAL in Photo Shop if you swith to a dual-core proc.

You should try some **benchmarking** on the single/dual-core and post your results here for us to drool over . . .
 

Eviltwin17

Distinguished
Feb 21, 2006
520
0
18,990
it all depends on the software you are using. If a program supports multiicore then the x2 4000 will perform better, if it doesnt then whichever processor with the higher clockspeed will perform better(as long as its similar architecture). Dual core is not a way to con people out of their money, its a way to keep clockspeeds down and to focus on efficiency rather than how high of a clockspeed you can get your single core processor to go to. Multithreading has been around for a while and helps system responsiveness when multitasking or using multithreaded applications. As far as gaming is concerned most newer games support multi-core.

On top of all that, you can get dual core for pretty cheap nowadays, some dual core processors are already under $100