Benefit of Dual Core in XP?...

R

Rad777

Limp Gawd
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Jun 7, 2004
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I was just wondering if I would notice a difference in windows XP? Like could I set one CORE to do Services/background app and the other CORE to do real time programs (currently using)?....

I've never worked with Dual procs before, so I don't know what it'll feel like... in comparison to single core.... Will I honestly know/feel the difference? Thanks ^_^

Rad777
 
winXP is multithreaded by default, so you won't need to do much, although there are a few apps with bugs where you have to manually set the core affinity to smooth out performance.

as for whether you'll notice a difference between a dual core and a single core, i'd say absolutely. you can do much more heavy multitasking without any slowdown, and once you use dual core for a while, going back to a single core machine is painfully slow.
 
Yes, you will definately see the benefits. Everything simply runs smoother with no delay, and the things you never used to be able to do at the sametime, are easily done with dual core/HT/etc.
 
ScotteusMaximus said:
winXP is multithreaded by default, so you won't need to do much, although there are a few apps with bugs where you have to manually set the core affinity to smooth out performance.

as for whether you'll notice a difference between a dual core and a single core, i'd say absolutely. you can do much more heavy multitasking without any slowdown, and once you use dual core for a while, going back to a single core machine is painfully slow.
Click to expand...

is it comparable to a 'night and day' difference?
 
Mayhs said:
is it comparable to a 'night and day' difference?
Click to expand...

It depends what you are doing. If you don't do heavy multitasking, you won't notice. If you have 17 applications open at once, then yeah, it's night and day
 
Mayhs said:
is it comparable to a 'night and day' difference?
Click to expand...

It's not "night and day", but it is definitely noticeable.

I was one of those nuts who went dual Athlon (MPs on Socket A) back when, upgraded to a single Barton and regretted it. There is a smoothness to XP with duals; the menus snap up and down, programs run more cleanly, you're not waiting on the system to do something. Web browsing and email doesn't seem like rough tasking, but have six POP3 accounts being checked while Winamp is running, Opera has ten tabs open and oh yes, Folding@Home is chewing on a particularly large project. The Barton would stutter, with delays in menus opening, programs slow to start. The MP rig didn't give a damn, it Just Worked.

I moved on to the AMD64 platform with the first 3000+ core, and while things ran faster, the hesitations were still there. When I managed to locate the new Toledo 4400+ dual core, I jumped at it. Today, my rig is something I consider a "cold, dead hands" deal: that's the only way you'll get it away from me... :D
 
From first-hand experience in the past week, I can strongly say there's a very noticeable multi-tasking benefit from dual-core chips.

I moved from a 3000+ Venice A64 to an Opteron 165 - and have been using the Opty for just about a week now. I can now alt-tab out of Eve Online, keep Firefox open with 10 tabs, have Winamp or WMP running, FTP client, Trillian, NOD32, etc - and I've yet to start to tax the machine. The multi-threading in XP really deals well with a dual core chip - and although you can't set default affinity (yet) it's intelligent enough that you really don't need to.

I can't wait to try having CCE chugging away on one core and play a game on another - just to really tax the bejeezers out of this thing!
 
seems good...but i didnt really see a huge speed difference from going to a amd sempron 1800 to a 3500+@ 2.7ghz :p hopefully the jump to dual core will be alot more noticable...atm i only do light multi-tasking but ill be doing more as time goes on and hopefully dual core gives a boost :)
 
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