dual core cpu's

[solidsteve]

ok i am kind of after knowing about these things

the thing i know about these is there 2 chips in one now i am not into the hardware that much that i could make sense of the technical side of it so here i am asking some one to explain the in's and out's of these in dunce tearms

so a total novice can understand

thanks

 

[b1gapl]

Dual core processors, have two cores in them. It is now the standard for CPUs, since more and more applications are supporting multi-core CPUs. The advantage over single core processors, is obviously multi-tasking.

 

[Nick]

you may not see a difference in games if you upgraded from a high end athlon or pentium 4 but as B1 said you would in running multiple applications

 

[solidsteve]

ok i am guessing there going to phase out single cores then

multi tasking, expand a bit on this (man i make it sound like a demand ) i rarely multi task my pc, either have 1 game or the intenet on

i also hear that chips lose some power i.e. there marked at a 3ghz chip and you get 2.4 out of it, if so how would it work with say the AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 6400+

and how would it work with general family use (internet, music, home work ect ect ect )

 

[veedubfreak]

1 "chip" 2 "cores" or 4 cores in quads. I actually had task manager open while playing bioshock over the weekend, and to my suprise, it does in fact use multiple cores. Running nothing but bioshock it kept all 4 cores at about 10-25% usage rather than spiking out just one core.

 

[b1gapl]

ok i am guessing there going to phase out single cores then

multi tasking, expand a bit on this (man i make it sound like a demand ) i rarely multi task my pc, either have 1 game or the intenet on

i also hear that chips lose some power i.e. there marked at a 3ghz chip and you get 2.4 out of it, if so how would it work with say the AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 6400+

and how would it work with general family use (internet, music, home work ect ect ect )

Multi-tasking is pretty much, self explanatory. Doing more than one task, at a time. If you rarely multi-task, thats ok, because dual cores are very affordable. You can get a dual core, for as low as $70, more or less.

Lose power? Maybe you're referring to the power saving feature. AKA speedstep. But I believe this is only in Intel processors. What it does, is throttle down the CPU speed or power, when not in full use. And when you use a program, thats CPU intensive, the CPU throttles back up, to full speed.

 

[solidsteve]

ok thanks

might be back with more questions later, thank you either way

 

[Nick]

cant wait

 

[commandercup]

Multi-tasking is pretty much, self explanatory. Doing more than one task, at a time. If you rarely multi-task, thats ok, because dual cores are very affordable. You can get a dual core, for as low as $70, more or less.

Lose power? Maybe you're referring to the power saving feature. AKA speedstep. But I believe this is only in Intel processors. What it does, is throttle down the CPU speed or power, when not in full use. And when you use a program, thats CPU intensive, the CPU throttles back up, to full speed.

AMD has a similar feature known as AMD Cool & Quiet which does exactly the same thing

 

[solidsteve]

AMD has a similar feature known as AMD Cool & Quiet which does exactly the same thing

ok

any one know any sites that test dual cores and has info about them