Ok, I'm a bit confused by the 2 options I've been given, because apparently the Core 2 Duo processor is faster than the Core 2 Quad processor. The speed is faster and Dell said so also. But is this true?

The first option is this: Intel® Core™2 Q6600 Quad-Core (8MB L2 cache,2.4GHz,1066FSB)
Now unfortunately, this option is not available anymore unless I purchase an XPS system, which is much too powerful and expensive. The option given this week to the Inspiron systems are:
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E8200 (6MB L2 Cache,2.66GHz,1333FSB)

Now by looking at the clock speed, 2.66 GHz is more than 2.4GHz, and as explained by xboxrulz, more system bus means faster response times. So 1333 FSB is more than 1066 FSB, that means it is faster, correct?

The thing is, I've always thought that Quad Core processors are faster than Core 2 Duo, and it seems to be this way when watching the Intel commercial provided by Dell.

So which one is the better one?

Short answer - Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E8200 is a better choice.

Long answer - Let me talk a bit of story from my experience. 2 Weeks back, I upgrade my PC from the single core Sempron 2600+ to Intel Core 2 Duo E4200. Well, it's not the top notch machine, but it does help to improve my productivity. After formatting and installing WinXP SP2, plus all my development tools, I fire up the Visual Studio 2003. The first thing I notice was, it's not much faster. Then I started to do some work, well, it just get smoother than before, but it's not what I'm expecting, blazing fast. The Core 2 Duo is suppose to be at least twice as fast. Then I go and load my firefox, call back my old session where I left off, with at least 20 tabs open. It's the same, not that much faster as well. I started thinking, maybe the bottleneck is at the hard disk drive even though I got a new 500GB to go with the new system. Later when I really get to work, running firefox, visual studio, then eclipse, all running at the same time. Then I slowly notice something, when all run together, they are as fast as when they run alone. Then I start to realize the performance point of view of having 2 core. You can do more job at the same time. With that much program running, I can still play with Need For Speed Underground smoothly.

Much later then, I started to play attention to the cpu utilization. Most of the time, it only uses 1 core. When I do some video encoding, I will notice that 1 core is fully used up. The other core is still serving all my running program well. So, the rules of thumb, 2 Core is more than enough. I consider myself a heavy user, even then 2 core has already made me happy. Unless you do mathematical simulation or lots of video encoding, maybe 4 core is worth it. Else, stick with 2 Core, and since your choice of 2 core is having a faster FSB, go with it. Save the money and buy more ram.

It really depends on what you're using on your system. Yes, as I explained before, FSB does have a great impact with system performance and so does clockspeed and how much cache it has. It also has to do with how many pipelines there are in the architecture. From the Pentium 4 mess, the more the processor has, it doesn't mean the better it is.

As for a quad processor, it's not really that necessary unless the software you're using is already multithreaded. Software such as Visual Studio and Firefox are not natively multithreaded. Thus, it will require the operating system to split the thread. This type of multithreading does not improve the speed nor efficiency by a lot. However, if you have software like Sony Vegas, AutoCAD and games like Crysis and Call of Duty 4, you're going to use the full potential of the quad-core since they are natively multithreaded and trust me, on Call of Duty 4 and Crysis, if you have the money, get a quad core. The game runs a lot better since it can spread its task through 4 logical processors instead of two.

Regardless, if most of your applications are single-treaded, go dual core. Else, I highly suggest going quad-core.

As for me, I'm eying for an AMD Phenom X4 9550 (3600HT; HT is basically the modern version of FSB) this summer, hopefully the price drops again.

xboxrulz

Well the Core 2 Quad option was available last week, and now the Core 2 Duo option is available this week for the Inspiron systems. How do I know if my applications are single-threaded or not?

Most of the application are single-threaded. Multi-threaded application are normally those specialized software, like those for math simulation e.g. Mathlab, adobe photoshop, video encoder and so on. Like xboxrulz mentioned, AutoCAD and some of the games. Generally, very little are multi-threaded. Even if they are, they will perform well in 2 core system, as it's the mainstream system now. No company will produce software that only runs well in system where much less people is using.

You can check out the system requirement for each software that you use most of the time, and see if it mention quad-core ready, or multi-core ready, something like that. The other way is to run it and see how it utilized your core in real life.

i sometimes run upto 27-32 programs at a time including reason 4 fruity loops itunes auto cad and corel paintshop pro x2 and i gt the dual core and as you can see my programs are not easily managed so stick to a dual core

FirefoxRocks, are you referring to TV, Print, or online Advertisements? Also, I've received countless catalogs from all the major pc/laptop vendors. The stats really don't catch my attention compared to the cosmetics/weight vs. processing power when it comes to laptops. But be careful, when you read the the print/online, they, and I mean all companies make grammar errors just so they can make print - it happens all the time. They even have a little disclaimer that exempts them from such errors. But the other responds to your post are worth considering.

I'd like to know what your typical computing day is. What applications do you have running. Then like the other guy/gurl said about multi threading. Are they multi-thread or their other software products out there that accomplish your tasks which are multi-thread. If you would like to see performance increase then give those titles a try.

I have two systems I do my testing on:
I) Celeron Core D @ 3.33 GHz
1 GB
ATA/133

and

II) E6600 Core2 Duo @ 2.4 GHz
2 GB
SATA 2

Personal Testing:
MAME is better in a Core2Duo environment
Photo Editing is better, more responsive at high resolution JPEG/RAWs
ACAD is better, more responsive
Virtual PC, now my virtual PCs are faster when I have more running simultaneously
Rational = more productive /more entertained

This post has been edited by levimage: Apr 28 2008, 11:21 PM

I usually run Windows Live Messenger, Windows Media Player, Mozilla Firefox, Notepad++, Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer, OpenOffice.org (sometimes Microsoft Office) and my regular security applications (AVG antivirus and ZoneAlarm firewall). As for gaming, I play the default Windows games, which I am planning to try on the new Vista system.

Also, I am getting a TV tuner with the new computer, so there might be TV recording. And I'm undecided about purchasing Guitar Hero to go with the new computer, which I might do. I have upgraded my video card for these things.

And most of all, I may want to install Ubuntu or another distribution of Linux onto it and use Linux applications.

That's my regular computing stuff. I'm looking at the online web advertisements by Dell and Intel. The print ones seem to say the same thing.

Sounds like a dual core processor is sufficient for you. For me, I run games like Crysis and run virtual machines (and they are sluggish (VM) on dual cores, faster than single cores, I must say though; warning: don't run Crysis on single cores, you will suffer the consequences lol).

Usually I don't follow their advertisements because they were created by marketing people for the purpose of ... you guessed it ... marketing the product! You should read real life testing reports on the Internet like Tomshardware or Reghardware.

xboxrulz

For a non-gamer, what's the difference between dual processor and quad-core?