Processor Innovations!

[phantom555]

I read in a pc magazine that a lot many new processors have been made available for desktop computers. Since mine is a prescott intel 3.06 GHz of year 2006 which is said to have one processor and another a virtual processor! So there are two processors of 3.06GHz working in co-accordance. Then i read about slow old dual-core processor of 2.53GHz and many core 2 duo processors mainly of 2.83GHz. Are they contain two processors or one of them is a virtual processor?
Then core 2 duo has a better processor of 3.33GHz for 775 motherboards. Does a higher L2 cache of 8,12 and RAM fsb of 1333 gives better performance?
The recent processors are i3, i5 and i7 which speeds of 2.66 GHz. They are Quad processors having four processors. Does processor innovation means that the prescott already had four processors in it, and scientists just made it share the workload by making four processors to work in the same chip?
I checked at a pc superstore new desktops, the i-series looks better. While core 2 duo works like AMD!

 

[MindoverMaster]

The Ghz alone does not tell you how fast a CPU is. There are more factors that go into how good it preforms. I'm not the person to explain this, though.

 

[GrahamFX]

dual core

Think of the cores as being workers. You may have a single core 3.0 but a dual core 2.7. The dual core maybe smaller but think of it as being two 2.7 processors instead of just the one. So in fact you have two workers that can handle more work load than the 3.0 single or one worker.

 

[Lexluethar]

I'm not going to hit all your questions, but here are some of them:

A dual core 2.0 is faster than a single core 3.0. As Graham said, mathematically you can do more calculations with two cores running then just one. This is the wave of the future as more and more programs are written to take advantage of multiple cores. So you can have your OS running on one core and a game running on another.

Dual cores are two processors - not physically two processors on the motherboard, just two processors withing the same dye (CPU chip). These act as two standard processors opposed to your virtual processor which is not physically more processor, just means it has calculations built in to try and multiprocess.

As MoM said, there are far too many things that go into the overall speed of a processor. Yes L1, L2 and L3 cache all help speed because this is a storage place right on the processor in which the processor can store commonly used processes instead of having to go all of the way out to your RAM to get that information (yes its physically only 5 inches away but every millimeter counts).

Your Intel Prescott does NOT have four cores in it - it is a P4 processor with hyperthreading (the virtual processor you spoke of). It is just one single core running at 3 ghz speed.

 

[phantom555]

I read supercomputers having more than a thousand cores, for which software making supercomputers are used?
Also i wanted to know if i wanted to buy AMD as my next future desktop...
Then AMDs mainly have AM2+ sockets motherboard chips speed ranging from 2.7 to 3.0GHz at 4000fsb. So which motherboard would you suggest me to buy for AMD chipset overclocking....Gigabyte or Asus?

 

[MindoverMaster]

Either will do for you. It all comes down to the features you want on the board.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I'm not going to hit all your questions, but here are some of them:

A dual core 2.0 is faster than a single core 3.0. As Graham said, mathematically you can do more calculations with two cores running then just one. This is the wave of the future as more and more programs are written to take advantage of multiple cores. So you can have your OS running on one core and a game running on another.

Dual cores are two processors - not physically two processors on the motherboard, just two processors withing the same dye (CPU chip). These act as two standard processors opposed to your virtual processor which is not physically more processor, just means it has calculations built in to try and multiprocess.

As MoM said, there are far too many things that go into the overall speed of a processor. Yes L1, L2 and L3 cache all help speed because this is a storage place right on the processor in which the processor can store commonly used processes instead of having to go all of the way out to your RAM to get that information (yes its physically only 5 inches away but every millimeter counts).

Your Intel Prescott does NOT have four cores in it - it is a P4 processor with hyperthreading (the virtual processor you spoke of). It is just one single core running at 3 ghz speed.

Core count doesn't tell you any more about performance that clock speed does. For example a single core Athlon 64 would easily outperform a dual core Cortex A9 processor even if they both had the same clock speed.

 

[phantom555]

In USA there might be some motherboards containing two CPU sockets!!??

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Yes, but those are for servers, they are not standard motherboards, and are not cheap.