Natéag said:
A question about Athlon X2 :
Does it offer any improvement over non X2 versions,
under WindowsXP and no other software optimized
for X2 ?
I know the software will not use the two cores, but
will I be able to launch two or more programs, which each
using one of the cores ?
AMD, are very 'underclaiming', about the performance of the X2. The quoted
figure, corresponds to about a 30% improvement on a single core processor,
and this is less than most general application 'mixes' should get. In fact
on some applications, which are multi-threaded, you can get nearer to 180%
of the single core performance. you generally don't see 'double', because
there is a cost in the OS kernel, associated with supporting SMP, and the
performance of other system components limit the speed.
As an example, running a single DOS application in a XP command prompt
window, I see perfomance about 5% slower than a 3700+, while running a
4800+. This is because of these extra overheads in the kernel. However
running Photoshop, basic manipulation operations, push to over 175% of the
3700+ performance (effectively a 6400+!). Running a single disk/network
intensive operation, gives performance about 15% better than the 3700+,
with the I/O operations being handled by the second processor. Running two
applications, gives results ranging between the two extremes, depending on
whether the applications are limited by processor performance, memory, or
disk. The 4800 figure is a very 'reasonable' estimation of the sort of
processor performance level that most people should see, and many will see
levels well above this. One thing that is always very noticeable on SMP
machines is how much less prone to a complete 'hang' they are, when a
single process hogs the entire processor time.
It is sometimes suprising which packages will use multiple cores. I have
some very old Win32 applications, that are beautifully multi-threaded, yet
many expensive modern applications are basically single threaded...
Best Wishes
