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- quadvods, on 10/12/2007, -11/+52I would like to see you fit 2 processors into a laptop.
- MikeSD34, on 10/12/2007, -2/+38They've done it with video cards, though it really can't be good for battery life.
- jonbach, on 10/12/2007, -2/+35Dude, all they did was just repost *our* article! http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles.php?id=23
- cjweeks, on 10/12/2007, -3/+34All this talk of processors...it's hard drives and memory that are slowing us down for most people. The processors are always waiting on the hard drive....
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22@wastern
quadvods said two _processors_ into a laptop.
Obviously dual-core is doable as far as real-estate is concerned. Dual processor on the other hand . . . that would take up a lot of room and it would be necessarily spread-out on the board, requiring most likely a lot of additional venting and maybe more fans. It would not be a pretty site.
I was out of the hardware world for about 18 months and it took me a little bit of digging to really understand the difference between dual-core and dual-proc, so I can only imagine what troubles laymen must have with this stuff. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+23People, just get 2 dual core processors (with hyperthreading) and be done with it.
- nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23Neat article (seems like the guy was just itching for a reason to use all of his hardware) but it really doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. For all intents and purposes, Dual Core and Dual Processor are the same thing, minus small discrepencies like the Intel dual-core chips sharing a common bus (which is actually to Intel's advantage as the memory controller is located off-die, though later as the chips become more powerful it will move towards being a disadvantage, but will likely be offset by massive gobs of L2 cache).
Dual core systems have advantages beyond benchmarks, however. First of all, a common cooling system is much simpler to implement, as there are less voltage regulators in the way of your heatsinks (and with future Intel platforms, this will completely go away, http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2511 for details about on-package northbridges and voltage regulation). This leads to easier placement of fans, which leads to a cooler system. It also lessens the need for a deeper layered PCB, making it easier to locate the chips on the board, which is a good thing for board designers everywhere, and it means that boards will be cheaper to manufacture.
Furthermore, I feel the article did a piss poor job about mentioning how responsive dual core /dual processor systems are compared to single core systems; the biggest speed up most people will feel when moving to a dual core system is just how responsive the computer is. As the computer no longer has to switch tasks (it can simply start the next task on the next CPU, if the kernel sets processor affinity correctly), which makes new apps start much quicker, and makes apps that are already open snappier to access. - ZaNkY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16This is no real big contest. Supposed everything being equal, a Dual CPU solution requires that inter-CPU data travel quite a distance farther than a Dual Core solution.
I skipped right down to the Benchmarks, not surprised. - m3th0dm4n, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Oh when will those solid state hard drives come. Imagine the days of lifetime warranty hard drives...
- penwen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11or get 8 dual core processors and a huge ass fan
- WyllyWylly, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Was there any point to your post other than to brag about your system specs? I didn't hear anything about performance as it relates to the article, just a lot of "my d*ck is bigger than your d*ck"...
Glad it was worth it. Glad you can afford it. Next? - jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11@quakeIII
The option to have two optical drives in my desktop, you know for those 1:1 backups.
Or a smaller footprint because the G5 is huge. - TheWriteGuy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Summary:
1. Two processors are better than one!
2. Dual processors = two separate CPUs on the mainboard. Dual core = two processors within one CPU chip.
3. Dual core processors are just as fast/powerful now as two separate CPUs working together. Plus, dual core processors can cost less than two separate CPUs.
The end. - helikopter, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7...or you need to stop watching QVC... everyone knows that's the last place in the world to find a computer-literate individual.
- bolero421, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Yeah, and "640K ought to be enough for anybody."
And seriously, who needs to be able to hold multiple music albums on a single hard disk? Let's just go back to single-sided cassette tapes. - ElectricKetchup, on 10/12/2007, -0/+52 CPUs in a laptop has already been done.
here's an example:
http://www.tadpolecomputer.com/products/notebooks/bullfrogdp.asp - JaredRR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I have both... a dual Opteron desktop (1.4 ghz, 2 gigs of ram) and a Mac Book Pro (1.8 ghz, 2 gigs of ram) and the Opteron is faster. Not blow it out of the water faster, but faster. I think the difference is the hard drive speed. I planned on upgrading the laptop to a 7200 model but I don't want to lose the battery life or add the heat. :(
I gotta say though, the laptop is a lot quieter... :)
As a comparison, I have a Ruby on Rails database adapter test suite that takes 120 seconds on the Opteron and 150 seconds on the laptop. - deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Dual CPU AMD setups still have the advantage of dual memory controllers which should give them an advantage over a dual core system
- stconcannon, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9@ quadvods "I would like to see you fit 2 processors into a laptop."
Are you the same guy that sarcastically said "I'd like to see you try and fit 1GB on a hard disk? " 15 years ago?
Computers get better, and computers get smaller... - jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5They are stealing bandwidth for those images as well. They didn't even have the courtesy to ask they were too lazy to try and make it look like they wrote the article.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Well, then the solution is to go in and do a little mod_rewrite magic in your apache config. for these guys. :)
- ElectricKetchup, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5or get an 8-core CPU with 4 threads per core.....
(sun has had them for a while now) - UltraPope, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Meh. The article was originally written by a computer store. http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles.php?id=23
Quite cool that they test the equipment in at least some measurable manner. Most computer stores would use only magazines' test - this way they can say 'according to our comparative tests...'. - wastern, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@Seumas
I know the difference, but the speed difference is negligible. the dual core takes the place of the old 2 processor setups and brings the power to the laptop
why did the guy even say the thing in the first place, its pretty damn obvious that 2 physical processors won't work well in a laptop. that is the whole reason to have 2 cores. it makes for better form factor in desktops as well - dhakbar, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7rkuchiki:
People judge you by your spelling and grammar. Welcome to life, dumbass. - farrellj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This is not a very good comparison...Windows has always been optimized for single processors, and thus the whole dual CPU vs Dual Core is not a really good comparison for looking at the CPU architecture. If you used an operating system that is designed to run on two or more CPUs, I am fairly sure you will find that two discrete CPUs will be able to handle are larger load because of the buses...you have two full datapaths. Thus, when you have a situation where two processes need data, running on their respective CPU, you will have a bus conflict on a dual core system, but no such problem on a dual discreet cpu system.
Of course, this probably doesn't matter to someone running MS Office on their laptop or desktop...but when you are supporting 200 users, it makes a world of difference!
ttyl
Farrell - thefall, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5i'm still confussed
- rodan32, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Their way around it is having a big fat cache on the chips, and it werks very very very well. There was a really good comparo over at AnandTech. Here's the link:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795 - TheReport, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"People, just get 2 dual core processors (with hyperthreading) and be done with it."
Or just get one extremely powerful processor and use liquid nitrogen to cool the bad boy - Terc, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8"I seen" Wow, not to join the grammar police, but come on, for some reason that one really got to me. Try "I saw" next time.
- Darth_tater, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5what u smokeing?
i have a p3 450 w/ 512 megs of ram running windows XP just fine...
xp can run on quite a lot of hardware (not as much as linux) as long as it is tuned (turn off visual afects, etc) - inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I'll probably get buried by Windows zealots for this, but I was under the impression that Windows' SMP capabilities were basically grafted on kludges and not very impressive as a result. Wouldn't an article like this be much more demonstrative on an OS that was designed to use SMP effectively? Why did they choose to do this on Windows?
- RubeusEsclair, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Now that thats settled, lets get 2 dual cores common in desktop and laptops.
yeah... - RockOfVictory, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Amen, Seumas. 111 days ago! http://digg.com/hardware/Dual_Processor_vs_Dual_Core
- asdf25, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well current Intel and AMD chips have the same FSB speed, so I don't know what you mean there... with Conroe the FSB is 1066 and RAM is DDR2-800, both apparantly very OC'able though.
But yeah, Conroe doesn't have to use the FSB for inter-core communication. - TheReport, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Computers get better, and computers get smaller..."
Its only time before Computers get so small that they become invisible and so better that we never have to upgrade ever again. The whole goal of the CPU industry shouldnt be about increasing speed and reducing size. but innovating technology to make our daily tasks as easy and convenient as possible. - sporktek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It may not be true that dual cores are greater than or equal to dual processors. About two months ago I was doing a spec on a machine that was to be a RIP (Raster Image Processor) for my company to drive our wide format printer. Previously we had a 3ghz P4 with 1GB of ram that wasn't cutting it. I had a hefty budget so I was toying with the idea of going dual-dual core procs. That is, building a system with, say, two 3.2 Ghz dual core Xeon processors, for a total of four distinct processing units. While I was on the phone with my parts supplier he casually asked me if I had 64 bit drivers for all my stuff. I thought about it and decided to give Onyx a call to make sure they supported 64 bit Windows and provided the nescesary drivers. Second person I taled to when I called was a guy in their software engineering department. I asked if they provided 64 bit printer drivers and the answer was a resounding "no". Onyx did not yet support 64 bit windows. While I had him on the phone I went ahead and asked him about my projected hardware config. I laid out the plan: dual dual-core chips. He told me not to bother with the dual core procesors and instead opt for two uni-core chips as their own testing had shown that dual processor machines run Onyx much faster than a single processor chip, and that dual cores only ran Onyx marginally faster than a single processor. It was likely that I wouldn't see any significant performance increase by going with two dual core processors over just two single core processors.
Now, I haven't verified this, as I would have had to have purchased two setups and compared them. In the end I decided to go with a higher clock speed on both CPUs in the uni-processor configuration (and run Windows XP 32). Of course, as well, this is dealing with one single software product - Onyx, and it may not apply to, well, anything else, but if you can beleive their engineer, which I figure you can, then there is *something* different about running two cores vs two processors, something besides the slightly faster communication between the cores, that is. - Kazrog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Agreed, a roundup including Mac OS X and Linux would be really cool to see.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Just a question for a somewhat noob. Has Intel ironed out the issues mentioned in the article on their newest release, Conroe? Such as the non-direct communication between the cores, and the lack of fsb speed?
- Agret, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5THIS ARTICLE WAS STOLEN!!
Check it out...
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=It+has+always+been+a+frequent+question+--+%22Will+I+benefit+from+multiple+processors%3F%22+With+the+growing+popularity+of+dual+core+processors%2C+the+topic+is+more+important+than+ever!+Will+multiple+processors+or+a+dual+core+processor+be+beneficial+to+you%2C+and+what+are+the+differences+between+them%3F+These+are+the+questions+this+article+will+attempt+to+lay+to+rest.&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official - muller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I don't think you can really fairly compare the Mac Book to the Opteron desktop as a measure of whether dual core or dual processors is faster... there's other limiting factors in laptops, like the limited bus. It slows things down a bit. If you wanted a better test, you should take a look at a full Intel mac tower when you can get your hands on one and see how that compares to your Opteron.
- Kazrog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Nice summary with some good benchmarks. The results were what I expected to see.
I'd be curious to see an in-depth look at how Mac OS X handles multiple CPUs/Cores vs. Windows XP. Based on what I've seen in the audio/video world, it appears that Mac OS X has far better multithreading capabilities, but I'd love to see some specific data. - gpinto, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Kudos for you guys! I found this article really awesome!
Many props: http://www.pugetsystems.com - imyayo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have to agree with regarding the responsiveness. The X2 4400 system I built felt significantly better responsive wise than a 3.2Ghz P4 system I've played with.
- hypercube33, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dual Processors > Dual Core
Why? In decent setups each Processor will have its own memory bus, if not more. Dual core takes the same, sadly incompetent, slow bus and effectively cuts it in half. I'd rather have a full bus and a CPU that can actually handle multitasking. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1All they'll tell you is that it can surf the net super fast. Which is what most people who watch that show do.
- natmaster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Dual Core....two cores right next to each other....faster communication and in the case of the Core 2, shared cache. Dual Processors....two cores separated by large (relatively) slow connection and sharing only system memory.
Hrm...I wonder which one is faster... - rkuchiki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You mean "welcome to digg, dumbass"
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wow. Way to bury all the comments which suggest that CPU speed still does matter. What the hell are all of you thinking?
Yes, faster hard disks would help as they are THE bottleneck in many cases. Nobody is suggesting that is not the case. That's precisly why caching as a technique exists: to prevent redundant reads because all disk reads are slow. But you can't deny that there are tasks where CPU performance is king, because lots of calculations are done but minimal I/O bandwidth is used.
I have a hard time understanding what exactly the motive for burying comments that acknowledge this is. It is in fact the parent, with his assertion that the CPU is /always/ waiting on the hard disk, that is incorrect. - ModernGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree
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