digg

Join DiggAbout

Donkeys and Elephants and Delegates,oh my!
Check out the most popular Elections 2008 content on Digg.

Dual Processor vs Dual Core

pugetsystems.com — Will multiple processors or a dual core processor be beneficial to you, and what are the differences between them? These are the questions this article will attempt to lay to rest.

Bury
show profanity settings
expand all
  • mhl12, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3great info on the basics for new people.
  • Xenstier, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2I like this very informal
    • KCorax, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1informative u mean ?
      --shurely shome mishtake-
  • boscorelle, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3very well written article
  • fujofly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9i can see clearly now the confusion is gone. i always wondered what the difference was.
  • babelfishi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Horrah for Multi-Threading!
  • laelfrog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8How about both? 2x Dual Core Opterons anyone?
    • Olle, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Obligatory Family Guy quote:

      "Diggity diggity diggity! Anyone have a towel?"
    • vertigoblue, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3"gigitty, gigitty, gigitty..."?
    • xshaisu, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Diggity, because this is digg.
    • useful_idiot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So what motherboards out there support two AMD CPUs? I currently have one X2 4400 and a regular athlon 3500. Would the motherboard have any problems with 3 CPUs (one dual-core and one single)?
  • jtjdt, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Dual Processor Powermac G5 both dual core, 4 cores, yah!
  • jogariga, on 10/12/2007, -18/+1Good article !

    http://www.mobilesquad.net
  • mikm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I'm suprised that dual core systems beat out dual processor systems for the most part.
    • Snarfy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm suprised the memory tests weren't better for dual processors. Dual core is actually better at IO than dual processor? Wouldn't dual processors have more physical lanes on the board, allowing for more bandwidith?
    • BitwiseMcgee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The dual processor board was using ECC memory (slower)
      plus, I don't think he said, but NUMA (non uniform memory access) comes into play. 2 cpus (chips, not cores) means that you have to worry about where in memory (which CPU controls which bank) what you are accessing lies.
  • deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Good article.. I am a long time SMP user and I got my first dual core chip today so I'm really curious to see how it performs compared to my dual opteron system.
    • Jyuu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You won't see a noticeable boost in single-threaded applications. However, if you multi-task, then yeah, you will benefit from it.
  • ArchAngel21x, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If you don't want to worry about licensing issues with Microsoft, get more cores instead of more processors.
  • aurrea, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I just purchased a 2.8 Pentium D and seems to work nice. I'm not a power user so I haven't really put it to the test though. Interesting to know that it functions like TWO SEPERATE 2.8ghz processors. For some reason I was under the assumption it was like two seperate processors running at 1/2. 1.4 ghz?
    • drilldown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dual core is 2 X 2.8. I went with dual core for antivirus/spyware scans, and gaming on the side while surfing. You can really see the difference when running a DVD on a secondary monitor and continue surfing the web on the primary monitor, though. Not always the best solution, very good for me.

  • VegaObscura3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Love the charts. Dual cores are better than dual processors for AMD. Nice straightforward info. Intel on the other hand seems to be in the "it depends" mindset. But f*ck intel anyway.
  • icurnvs, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Does it not matter that the RAM types are different? The dual core has PC2-5400 (2 sticks of 512) and the dual proc has a gig stick of PC3200 in it. Couldn't this skew the numbers a bit?
    • r3zonance, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes it does skew the numbers, because i think to get the increased performance for the dual-core the memory has to be added in matched pairs. So, just a bit of a slant. If it used the IDENTICAL 1gig stick then the throughput would be the normal PC3200 speed.
    • BitwiseMcgee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ignore the memory benches here, the 2 cpu setup is using ECC, so it's hard to say where the benefit lies.
  • pinetree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Interesting article. It would have been nice if they had compared power consumption (idle and under load).
    • joefish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yes, that would be nice to see. Still, if you have 2 CPUs, you'd need 2 heatsink/fan sets. With dual core you still only need 1. I don't know how much power a fan takes, but it would make a small difference (not to mention the potential noise difference).
  • joxrox22, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Great for new, noobs, and some of us still drooling over 200 MMX chips. Sit down dad and here's a towel.
  • bradzilla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Counter intuitive, that is a dual-core being better than dual cpu's, but there you have it. Nice article, thanks for finding it.
  • linuxpunk81, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have a 2 dual core processors of the G5 varity I notice he didnt mention those.
    • kb9vgr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2duh he didn't mention those cause hes comparing oranges to oranges not apples to oranges(boxes capable of running m$ Made OS`es)
  • FireStrife, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There is also another factor which is delay to transfer data between cores. By having two cores right by each other on the same chip they can share data faster and load task to each other much more better than having two seperate processors and having to send data back and forth with latency a factor.
  • anagami, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1dupe http://digg.com/hardware/Dual_Processor_vs_Dual_Core lol, dual article by the same digger

    "Dual Processor Powermac G5 both dual core, 4 cores, yah!"

    Sun: 8 cores in one single chip

    btw, the PowerMac is still a great machine but in core counts it has being beating.
  • colonelpanic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I feel the article is bias towards the intel side, because the Athlon X2 clearly beat out the intel chip, unless I read it worng, which I may very well have due to tirdness and no caffeine. The article however was still very informative. +digg
    • clldavid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I don't think it's biased towards the Intel side. In fact, they praise the AMD side and said that the AMD side is better. It's just that Intel tried to cover up with other technology.
  • philipkd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0So question, if they advertise a 2.0 Ghz Core Duo Processor, does that mean each core is 2.0 or the whole thing is?
    • mythril, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ghz is a clock rating, not a speed rating. ( 1 + 1 = 1 when dealing with clocked mechanisms )
    • drn666, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This means, in the case of the Core Duo, Athlon FX X2, G5 and XBox 360 Xenon processors, that you have two (or three, in the case of the 360) symmetric cores at Xghz each.. 2ghz in your example, 3.2 for the 360 processor.

      The PS3 is the oddball really - it has 1 core and 6 'SPE' units... not full, generalized processors but specialized, vector processors for graphics and floating point calculations. It's because of this processor design that the PS3 will probably boast more visually impressive games 'in a few years', while in the near term, the 360 will continue to be the top of the heap. The 360 is just easier to develop for.
  • Tommstein, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1I was skimming around until I got to this: "There is a part of the Windows operating system called the 'scheduler'...." Yeah, an operating system scheduler is really a special Windows concept. At that point, the idiot author and his mad computer science skills had zero credibility left, so that was the end of my visit.
    • Tommstein, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I take it that his technical ineptness is shared by all the retards that modded the comment down. That is to be expected on an Apple fan site.
    • inflagranti, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Maybe you got modded down 'cause you are the idiot? That sentence nowhere implies, that scheduling is a Windows only concept. It just states, that there is a thing called scheduler in the system. But after your comment, you and your mad computer science skills have zero credibility left.
  • HeroicLife, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What about Hyper Threading? I have a dual proc 3.2Ghz Xeon with HT. Would that give it an edge?
    • drn666, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes, but not really...

      HyperThreading is a method by which the processor "represents" a second CPU or second core to the OS. The operating system then schedules tasks to this virtual 'second processor' just like a second core. The difference is that the processor then tries to schedule those 'second cpu' instructions onto the same, single cpu in an optimized manner... but still sequentially.

      By comparison, with a dual-core solution, the cores can actually execute the instructions in parellel.

      All of this said, HyperThreading can be a security risk and I think Intel has officially done away with it as a design concept. None of their new dual core processors include HT, afaik.
  • Celsius032, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It says that one Computer used ECC memory, Last I heard ECC slows your system considerably
    • schifter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0ECC memory introduces one extra wait state. That's,unfortunately, a hit you take when using most dual processor systems. The dual Opteron board supports NUMA, but the tester doesn't mention whether he installed a version of Windows that supports it. Since he didn't mention, I assume he used 32-bit Windows, which doesn't support NUMA. Using NUMA would've dramatically increased the dual Opteron's memory bandwidth.
  • digitol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Excellent. Thanks for this. SOI technology rox
  • intelliot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0aren't there two types of dual core also?
    I remember reading about dual core versus dual ____ (what goes in the blank? not processor - something similar to "core", begins with a C, I believe)
  • apjoseph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The author of this article tries to address some very important albeit technical issues and does a fairly good job at it. The problem the article has too much of a simplistic approach to it. The introduction make you believe that this article is going to be in-depth and answer a lot of questions – some that I really wanted to know about too. Reading through though, I realise just how blasé the post is. I think the author wants to make a good go at addressing the points, but sadly only offers bench mark tests rather than go into details of how they work and what the processors are; as indicated in the introduction. Moreover I think author is unsure who the audience are. The writing is very poorly put together – grammar and spelling needs to be addressed. The biggest concern is the author starts to make a point and then it seems as though somehow looses interests and uses very simplistic terms to address the issues.

    Non-the-less a good ‘basic’ outlook on the comparison. Points to improve could be : more explanation on what they the key differences between the processor – not just that one has two cores and one has two physical processors. The point on the ‘scheduler’ needs more refining too.

    Never-the-less a digg!
  • tomarocco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've had an Abit BP6 board running two Celeron 433's for years now. What amazes me is how responsive this system is, compared to single-CPU configurations with much more processing speed. I like the concept, though my money will stay in my wallet until the prices come down. Even on marginal hardware, a second processor makes a hella difference. Background tasks don't freeze your GUI, etc.
  •  

    Login or register to add a comment

    Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.


© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain.
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.