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Warning: Always look at the date when you read a hardware article. This article may be out
of date, as it was written on 3/25/06.
Introduction
A major question for some people getting ready to buy a high-end system is
whether they want or need to have two processors available to them. For
anyone doing video editing, multi-threaded applications, or a lot of multitasking
the answer is a very clear 'yes'. Then the question becomes whether two
separate processors (as in a dual Xeon or Opteron system) is the way to go, or
whether a single dual-core CPU (like a Pentium D or Athlon64 X2) will do just as
well. Dual CPU vs dual core -- which is better?!
As the tasks that computers can perform get more complicated, and as people
desire to do more at once, computer manufacturers are trying hard to increase
speed in order to keep up with demand. Having a faster CPU has been the
traditional way to keep up, since a faster CPU can do a task then quickly switch
and work on the next. However, due to size, complexity and heat issues it has
become increasingly difficult to make CPUs faster. In order to continue to
improve performance, another solution had to be found.
There are more subtle differences between brands (how they combined two
cores onto one chip, and the speeds they run each core at) that can affect how
much of a boost in performance you can get from having a dual core CPU.
Additionally, different types of programs get differing benefits from having a
dual core chip.
Thread Scheduling
Because of the different ways AMD and Intel came into the dual-core market,
each platform deals with the increased communication needs of their new
processors differently. AMD claims that they have been planning the move to
dual-core for several years now, since the first Athlon64s and Opterons were
released. The benefit of this can be seen in the way that the two cores on their
processors communicate directly -- the structure was already in place for the
dual cores to work together. Intel, on the other hand, simply put two of their
Pentium cores on the same chip, and if they need to communicate with each
other it has to be done through the motherboard chipset. This is not as elegant
a solution, but it does its job well and allowed Intel to get dual-core designs to
the market quickly. In the future Intel plans to move to a more unified design,
and only time can tell what that will look like.
As you can see, graphics performance is very similar, with 3dMark05 scores
only 1 point apart and less than 4% variation in the 3dMark'03 scores. Looking
closer, we can also see that the important specific metrics in PCMark04 are
very similar as well -- the biggest difference is seen in the additional overhead
of ECC impacting the memory performance. All around, I would say that
with the AMD platform there is little noticeable difference between
dual-core and dual processors. Which is great news, because no matter
which setup you choose you get the same power!
For those with plenty of money to burn, it is also common for us to build a AMD
Opteron system with a dual CPU motherboard, and using a dual core CPU in
each socket. That gives a grand total of four functional CPU cores! This setup is
especially desirable if you need to have multiple heavy duty applications open
(CAD, video editing, and modeling come to mind) - just make sure you
complement those processors with plenty of memory.
Here again we see fairly close performance in graphics, with the Xeon system
in a very slight lead. In more performance-oriented tests, however, we see the
Pentium system tending to pull ahead by a fair margin. This is most likely due
to its significant memory speed advantage, but again this is a very valid and
important result. The RAM that was used in the Pentium D system is standard
for that platform, but even if we wanted to, we could not build a Xeon setup
with the same speed of memory. So while the processors may be very
comparable in performance the overall win definitely goes to the
Pentium D dual-core platform.
Conclusion
As you can see, the move to dual-core is definitely a win for consumers. Since
they are more affordable than dual processor computers, but offer the same or
better performance, they are becoming the standard for modern computer
systems.