After reading many articles on the new Dual 2 Core, it's obvious that
this could be a major reason to uprade now if you really want the
greatest/fastest computer on the block. Unfortunately AMD Is announcing
a Quad chip too claiming it will be even faster.
Quad-core chips are primarily going to target the server market for
the first little bit. The differences in the nature of what servers
do vs. what desktops do tend mean that servers will benefit MUCH more
from quad-core chips than desktops. Similar to the way that SCSI
tends to be a lot faster on servers but SATA tends to be just as fast
or faster on desktops.
Personally my
Pentium 4 2.4 ghz with DSL Is plenty fast for everything I do and will
not upgrade at least till prices drop drastically till prices are
around $150.00 for MB And CPU.
That should be in about a years time, maybe a year and a half tops.
So who will buy these new chips or systems with this new technology?
Gamers ...serious gamers or people into serious video editing needs.
Anyone who needs a new computer would probably be considering it.
LOTS of people out there (such as myself) have slower systems than
your 2.4GHz P4 and are finding that they are growing a little long in
the tooth for some tasks. Others have more demanding work that could
benefit from the processor. Certainly video editing and gamers are
two examples that jump to mind, but they are hardly the only ones.
Really not much has changed now as compared to when Intel released the
386 ~20 years ago. Yeah, it was more expensive than the 286 and lots
of people could get by with the older chip, they were happy and didn't
see who would be buying this new super-duper 386 chip. Same was true
when the 486 came out, then the Pentium, the PII, PIII, P4 and now the
Core 2 Duo. And you know what? The same will be true when Intel and
AMD bring out their next big thing.
The biggest difference between now and when the 386 was released is
that the Core 2 Duo is *MUCH* cheaper for the increase in performance
it offers. A new 386 system, when accounting for inflation, would
probably have been around $5000 for about a 2-fold improvement in
performance. A new Core 2 Duo system would offer roughly a 2-fold
improvement in overall performance vs. your current P4 setup, and
it'll only set you back about $1000.