"Neil Jones" wrote in message
...
Hello,

I am seeing a lot of marketing of Dual Core systems. As you have
guessed, I am not a hardware geek. What is the big advantage of dual
core systems? I know it is like having 2 processors. Will each core
perform at the high GigaHertz speeds that the marketers used in the past?

I plan to buy a new PC sometime early next year. Does the current
software technology take advantage of the dual core hardware? Is there
significant performance speed on the system?

Thank you in advance for any information.

Regards,
NJ

Each core runs at the speed they were designed, 2GHz, 2.2GHz etc...
If an application is not written to take advantage of dual core tech then
a P4-3.2GHz will run that application faster than a dual core 2.4GHz
given equal archs. However if the application is written to be dual
core friendly then the 2.4GHz will beat the 3.2GHz single core machine.
Gamers are typically the ones who adopt speed tech faster than the
general public. Traditionaly games were single threaded but they are
being converted over to take advantage of multi core systems. Getting
more speed out of a single cpu by going multi core is easier at the
moment for cpu makers because of the speed wall they have just hit.
Eventually that speed wall will be overcome but until then putting more
and more cores in a cpu is an easier way to make them faster and faster.
There is another problem of scaling. Some system designs scale better
than others. When you add more and more cpu's/cores to a system
they all have to communicate together to get stuff done. That
communication takes time and resources which slows the system down.
A one cpu system works at X but a two cpu(core) system does not
work at 2X, it is more like 1.8X. You loose a little in the communication.
So a system with 80 cores in one cpu is not 80 times faster than a single
core cpu. "They" say that we will have 80 core systems in just a few years.
The Linux world has been multicore friendly for some time. The
Windows world is just catching up. Some apps like rendering and ai and
matrix math take full advantage of multicore while others like transaction
processing systems not so much. Mainframes have being multicpu/multi
core for decades. PeeCees are just catching up.

Now your next question will/should be what is virtualization? That's
another discussion.

If you don't want to be obsoleted for a while the current system to purchase
would be a dual cpu, dual core. hyperthreading, 64 bit system with
virtualization. So far one can get that in x86-64, Itanium, Sparc and
Power.
x86-64 seams to be winning for the moment because of price.

later,
charles.....