Two things appear to be true when I read this thread and its opinions on dual core/SMP systems. Computers are faster than people think and software does less than people realize.
A lot of people like to say that dual core processors are good when you are running multiple applications at the same time. There's more to it than that. They're useful when you are running multiple
processor intensive applications at once and, even then, they both need to be active.
For instance:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by japhyryder
That is true, being that I am in graphic arts I do tend to run 4-5 programs at once. So it is a good size improvement for me. (Runs faster then my desktop 3ghz at rendering eps's) Now I don't get a improvement on games
The Duo is not a gaming system, my thought was because he was programing, and from back in the day, running multiple apps while programing was almost a requirement. That is why I think a Duo would be better for him but not the casual gamer.
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A typical programmer will have, running at once, an
IDE, an
RCS, some kind of reference library like the MSDN or a web browser, a music player of some sort, maybe an e-mail client and/or some other communication program, and probably a web browser to distract them or occupy their time while compiling their executable. Now, you might think, because of the dual core mantra, that a dual core processor would be awesoem for the typical programmer who seems to run an awful lot of applications at once but the reality is that all these programs do very little...
The vast majority of software sits around doing nothing but waiting for user input, including all the ones listed above. You can tell by pulling up
Task Manager and viewing the processor load. It is typically very low, like around zero. Even when you are doing something, like typing in your e-mail client or your IDE, those programs simply read your key press, process it a bit, create some kind of output in response, then wait for what would appear to it as an eternity, if it were anthropomorphized, for the next key you type in. Because one core could easily do all this while still spending most of its time waiting around doing nothing, the second core will spend all of its time doing nothing and you'd have invested in it for nothing.
Even if you were doing something processor intensive, like actually compiling something from your IDE (and even then, that's usually IO bound), because all the other applications still do so little, one processor is enough to handle all your needs without you even noticing that you had any extra processing power from a second core. It still will have made no difference.
Really, one usually needs to go far out of their way to make use of that second core, like compiling something from their IDE while rendering something in their
NLE. This isn't very common...