Dual Core - It's "better"!

Oi!




Sigh...

It's the same old story - the same old bullshit. Intel and AMD along with their cohorts (HP, Gateway, Dell and every other system manufacturer on the planet) are once again pummeling us with their latest advancement in technology. DUAL CORE! Oh my god! DUAL CORE! THE POWER TO DO MORE! OH MY GOD! IT'S THE SECOND COMING!

Look people, it's vapor ware. Okay, that's not true - there are SOME advantages to this new technology - commendable improvements that the hard working engineers and technicians creating them should be applauded for and they should feel good about it. It's just what the marketing clowns do to it that gets me all frustrated.

Lots of people come to me asking for advice on buying a new PC. I help a lot of non-IT folks at work get quotes for new systems for their departments or their home, not to mention the requests I get from friends and family. Here's what I have to say about Dual Core - because it always comes up.

MOST applications that the average desktop user run were not designed to be multi-threaded. There are SOME applications out there that do, and next generation applications will probably try to leverage the expanding hardware base of dual core processors. MOST of the applications YOU run on a day to day basis will not see ANY improvement by making the jump to dual core technology.

MOST dual core processors run at a slower speed than their single core brothers and sisters. This is because of heat. Two 2.4GHz processors make more, or about as much heat as a single 3GHz processor. MOST of the applications you usually run will perform WORSE as its single thread runs through a single, slower processor on your dual core chip than it would on a faster single chip.

MOST of the differences in performance that there ARE in moving your working environment to Dual Core will NOT be noticeable during day to day tasks. In fact MOST of these differences can only be detected in a lab environment running detailed side by side comparisons and will not do a damn thing to improve the performance of your user experience. Your ISP's slow ass mail server will not deliver your mail any faster to your desktop no matter how much cheetah blood you rub on it!

MOST users don't really "Multi Task" - they may have more than one application open on their desktop at any one time, however these applications are typically not grinding away on vast quantities of data while they are in the background. By the time you hit Alt-Tab to switch from Excel to Firefox Excel itself is already dormant having completed whatever earth shattering task you've set it to do (like add up a column of numbers and display an answer). So, having a "multi tasking" environment is kind of a waste of money.

IF you are a POWER user - like say you do a lot of video editing or encoding/decoding, or say you're doing lots of statistical calculations for your PHD Thesis or you've lined up like the fanboy you are to buy the latest installment of "Blood & Gore 3 - The Sequel With No Association With The Orignal Plot" then yes, your investment in dual core is probably justified.

For this small subset of users I recommend you maybe save a couple hundred bucks, don't jump to dual core and maybe try to get out of the house some more and make some real face to face friendships. Spending the money on Dual-Core isn't going to make you spend any less time at the computer no matter WHAT you do with it. Your big data crunching jobs may finish a few seconds or even minutes sooner, but I KNOW you, you'll just load up another one anyway.

Why are they even pushing dual core on us so hard? Well, a lot of people, myself included, think that we're starting to hit some barriers in processor speeds. Mainly to do with heat and how to keep something cool enough to not damage the standard components of a PC clustered around it. Dual Core is a way for the chip makers to continue pushing the capacity of their product to new levels. YOU GO GIRL! I'm all for it. That's their job.

Dual Core allows the chip makers to streamline cache and pipeline to make it less expensive and even faster to provide dual processor technology to the market while still expanding the computational power of their product. More flops, if you will.

The software makers out there have been slow to adopt multi-threading capability. Most desktop systems have traditionally had a single processor. If their target audience is the desktop market they've written applications to take advantage of that configuration, trying to make their application run as well as possible on the most common hardware platforms.

The cost of a multi-processor system has usually been higher, especially in the desktop market. Special motherboards, the second processor itself - basically there is less selection and less traffic in that market meaning it's harder to get good value out of a system, especially with most software not written to even acknowledge the existence of the second processor.

So, here we are. Intel and AMD are hard pressed to drive the computing capacity of the single processor beyond its current limits. I'm sure they have some tricks up their sleeves and they are working intently on making progress, and they will. Multi-Processor systems are becoming a larger and larger market share as more and more servers get deployed around the world. The manufacturers are trying to drive the desktop and the server market together with dual core.

They can drive down the cost of making dual core processors and offer a broader selection of products and peripherals to their data center clients while still driving up the capacity of our desktop computers. A good plan if you ask me, really! Seeing as I live on both sides of the fence as a server and desktop consumer.

Server side does see a lot of improvements. Your server handling hundreds or thousands of requests every minute with multi-threaded applications like email servers and databases DO see a great improvement with multiple processors. Dual Core makes for a more efficient and faster multi-processor environment. It's good stuff.

What the marketing push is REALLY all about is getting you, the end user - to believe that dual core is better, and it is, in some ways. They are hoping the consumers adoption of the technology will lead the software and peripheral developers out there to start catering to that community as well, meaning your desktop applications will start TRYING to take advantage of the technology because we are telling them that's what we want because it's what we're buying.

YES! It's the way to go! Yes, it's the FUTURE! OH MY GOD! IT'S DUAL CORE!

But here's the truth. Your new PC will be replaced in 2-3 years. Those dual core processors will be cheaper and faster in 2-3 years. The single core processors are already getting cheaper. Your system isn't going to run any better with it. The most BANG for your buck right now when purchasing a processor is the Intel P4. Peripherals and software designed for it are abundant and a good value.

Let some other media hyped pavlovian consumer, or the completely clueless consumer push this wave. They will do it, they always have. Your dollar is best applied to meeting your needs most efficiently right now. If you really want a FAST computer, an efficient machine that does everything you want it to do - well, first unload weather bug and those other 20 little applications you've been suckered into installing. Defrag your hard drive, buy a faster internet connection, maybe buy a server to handle some ongoing tasks and get them off your desktop. Buy some more RAM - a faster hard drive a bigger monitor. Something, anything! You may feel better knowing you have the latest and greatest dual core processor but 95% of you won't see a damn bit of difference in performance and that money COULD drive other visible and useful improvements.

So...now you know. If you're anything like me, you still want one, or two, or whatever...