Core 2 Duo Processor

I'm running XP Pro and am wondering if its truly able to support the
Core funcionality of this processor. Is it XP or do the programs also
need to support the Core 2 Duo processor? I'm going from a 550mhz
processor 5 years old so was expecting a lot more speed from the core
2 duo.

Thanks,
Pete

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 11:49:14 -0800 (PST), Peter
wrote:

I'm running XP Pro and am wondering if its truly able to support the
Core funcionality of this processor. Is it XP or do the programs also
need to support the Core 2 Duo processor? I'm going from a 550mhz
processor 5 years old so was expecting a lot more speed from the core
2 duo.

Thanks,
Pete

I know what you're saying. A friend was given an old laptop several
months ago. I forgot the specs, but it was very "obsolete", something
even less than a PIII w 128M RAM, that kind of thing but it was very
zippy opening apps like Word and Excel 97.

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:38:50 -0500, "Tom Lake"
wrote:

"Peter" wrote in message
...
I'm running XP Pro and am wondering if its truly able to support the
Core funcionality of this processor. Is it XP or do the programs also
need to support the Core 2 Duo processor? I'm going from a 550mhz
processor 5 years old so was expecting a lot more speed from the core
2 duo.

XP Pro does support the Core 2 Duo but your bottleneck may be somewhere
else. If you have insufficient RAM or slow hard drives, the CPU can't compensate
for inadequate hardware.

Tom Lake

Tom brings up an important point. When I buy a laptop, I always go
for the faster drive (7200 rpm).

I don't think the faster drive uses much more electricity because I
get excellent battery life.

On the desktop side of things I don't know if there is a cost
effective faster drive that could be used as the C drive. Hmm... just
thought of this -- on XP, I wonder if a high speed flash drive could
contain the swap file.....

On Vista, I think Ready Boost is a gimmick.

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:18:06 -0600, Journey wrote:

Hmm... just
thought of this -- on XP, I wonder if a high speed flash drive could
contain the swap file.....

Forget what I said about a flash drive being used for a swap file. If
that could be done and had any benefit obviously we'd already know
about it.

Hi!

I'm running XP Pro and am wondering if its truly able to support
the Core funcionality of this processor.

XP (even with SP2) predates the introduction of the Core2 Duo
processor and therefore doesn't make use of everything the Core2 chip
is capable of doing. Which isn't necessarily bad or a shortcoming...it
is just the way things are.

Core2 Duo chips are capable of running a 64-bit OS, such as Windows XP
x64 edition. (I don't recommend you do this--it can be quite
frustrating!)

I'm going from a 550mhz processor 5 years old so was
expecting a lot more speed from the core 2 duo.

There are some applications that will only ever go so fast. Word
processing and spreadsheeting programs really don't get a lot faster
as time goes by for most users. Web browsing can still be done quite
comfortably on a decently equipped Pentium II or III machine.

You also have to think about the supporting components outside of the
processor. It is possible to "starve" a processor for data if the disk
and memory subsystems in the computer cannot keep up. This will hamper
the processor's ability to perform at its best. As an example, a well
configured Pentium III with plenty of RAM and a fast disk subsystem
will outperform a newer system that is short on RAM with a slow disk.
Another example--if you're going to edit video on a computer, you
wouldn't equip it with a Core2 Duo processor, 256MB RAM and a 4200 RPM
hard disk. The processor would be too fast for the supporting
components and would always be waiting on them, wasting its higher
operating speed.

William

Hi!

Forget what I said about a flash drive being used for a
swap file. If that could be done and had any benefit
obviously we'd already know about it.

The key problem is that flash memory isn't really all that fast. It is
getting faster every day, however.

I haven't tried ReadyBoost (not using Vista on production hardware,
don't own a memory key capable of it, don't really care, etc...) but
I'd have to think the limiting factor there would be USB bandwidth as
opposed to flash memory speed.

William