Dual Core CPU's

[Mailman]

Anyone got one of these puppies?

I have ordered an Intel D805 simply because tomshardware has written the mother of all over clocking reports...and well...I can get this cpu for next to nothing (actually £55).

BUT now that Ive got the cpu on the way (and a new motherboard that also takes AGP and my old memory) will I actually notice any performance improvement (once over clocked to around 3.6ghz)?

Do dual core cpu's really make any difference? Or have I bought in to a fantasy

Later in the year/early next year Ill get a duo core CPU and higher spec memory (maybe for christmas ) as prices for the 6600 and higher should have dropped to around or even below £100.

Regards

Mailman

[Ardesco]

Depends what OS you use really. I belive dual core are trated as dual CPU for all intents and purposes. In Linux you can get double the performance as you can select which CPU to run processes on but in windows I belive you get something along the lines of up to 50% increase depending on the windows version and the application you are running.

[DimPrawn]

You can select which CPU a process uses in windows using Task Manager.

Bloody Linux loving misinformation.

I have an overclocked D805. I have overclocked everthing

Toms Hardware are bulltulipting and get a big back hander from Intel.

You will see good performance for your buck, but not anything near the overclock on Toms Hardware.

For the money, you can't go wrong.

[Mailman]

Yeah Im running XP with all the latest bloatware installed.

So that means I can dedicate a core to running farken mcafee AV and the other for everything else!

As for overclocking, the MB I got (£30) isnt great for OC according to a few websites BUT it will still let me increase the FSB so I can crank the cpu to around 3.6ghz. Not a bad upgrade for about £80.

Regards

Mailman

[Ardesco]

The point I was making is that unless the application is specifically designed to use 2 cpus windows will not be able to utilise both cpus (or cores in this case) for any application that you are running. So individual applications will not run faster, but you will be able to run more applications in tandem without experiancing slow downs. If you get a Linux distro with dual CPU support however it willl fully utilise both CPU's givine you double the performance.

Looking at what i wrote i didn't explain it well because I talked about being able to say which CPU you use in Linux, oh well I would still say you;ll get mose performance from a *nix OS than from windows for multiple CPU's/Dual Cores

[DimPrawn]

Yeah Im running XP with all the latest bloatware installed.

So that means I can dedicate a core to running farken mcafee AV and the other for everything else!

As for overclocking, the MB I got (£30) isnt great for OC according to a few websites BUT it will still let me increase the FSB so I can crank the cpu to around 3.6ghz. Not a bad upgrade for about £80.

Regards

Mailman

I hope you got OC'ers memory rather than budget RAM, otherwise your system will lockup every 5 minutes.

If you can get to 3.6 ghz and it's stable that's quite some achievement on a £30 MB

Good luck and have fun.

[CaribbeanPirate]

... unless the application is specifically designed to use 2 cpus windows will not be able to utilise both cpus (or cores in this case) for any application that you are running. So individual applications will not run faster, but you will be able to run more applications in tandem without experiancing slow downs.

The cabin boy has been having a go to let him build one of these dual CPU or dual core boxes for ages. (We build our own kit to keep costs down.) But I keep putting him off because I can't be arsed to write stuff to make use of it. He says that under windows, it will sort things out it's self. I think that is a load of bollo. What is the state of play with windows 2000/2003 server? I'm a bit out of touch with such things.

[DimPrawn]

Look windows XP & 2003 natively support dual core CPU's (both AMD and Intel), but you will need to install the OS after you stick in the dual core CPU (not just upgrade the CPU on an existing installation).

Do not confuse the earlier total tulipe Intel Hyperthreading (spit) with dual core. Dual core is exactly that, 2 cpus in one package.

2 CPUs means twice the throughput when running multiple processes at the same time (e.g play a game and run virus scan at the same time) or running SQL Server and IIS on the same box etc.

It works on Windows perfectly. I know I have several dual core boxes. They absolutely fly.

[Mailman]

Look windows XP & 2003 natively support dual core CPU's (both AMD and Intel), but you will need to install the OS after you stick in the dual core CPU (not just upgrade the CPU on an existing installation).

bugga, I was just hoping to smack the new cpu and motherboard in and be done with it! I guess Ill just spend this weekend backing EVERYTHING up (unlike last time when I backed everything up but our wedding photos! ) and reinstalling the whole shooting match from scratch.

Thank god I kept all my pirate cd's!

Actually, maybe Ill go down to PC World and pick up a small SATA HDD and use that as my boot drive and install my "work" applications on to that. Then I dont have to worry about fecking around with my other HDD and worrying about losing all the data on that if I screw things up!

I hope you got OC'ers memory rather than budget RAM, otherwise your system will lockup every 5 minutes.

Ill see what I can get out of my current memory. If I can get close to 3.6ghz with everything I have now then all is fine. If I cant no problems, Ill just scale back to a setting thats stable and just go from there.

Im sorta looking at this as being an interim change until the quad core cpu's come out next month

Regards

Mailman

[DimPrawn]

The quad cores are never going to be cheap or destined for the desktop motherboards due to the fact that only the server (Windows) OS'es support more than 2 CPU's.

Therefore any quad core CPU will be expensive, use a server motherboard socket and require a server OS.