dual core CPUs - what apps?

[ndex]

For the love of God, stop talking out your asses.

If you want information about multi-core technology, go to the manufacturers websites. Better yet, engage the "site:edu" google hack and see what actual educated people might be saying. If all else fails, try the IEEE (those geeky guys) because I'll bet you dollars to dog collars that they have some credentials to back up the blather coming out of their backsides.

Multiple cores means there are N cores per socket. With HT multi-core you could have one or more threads per core. You have to read the processor specifications carefully. In some cases advanced processor features are not turned on by default and you have to configure them in the BIOS. Read the documentation.

Multi-core is, in essence, SMP in a single socket. It's represents a significant cost per processor savings which means that AMD may actually suck goat balls (as it has in my experience) with respect to power consumption, stability, quality and reliability.

I'm going back to sleep. Call me in the spring when it's time to regulate.

[Ridirich]

Like I said before, I prefer AMD to Intel. Cyrex is just one of 15 other processor companies I can think of off the top of my head, including "Sony", "IBM" and others.

The fact is, that AMD and Intel are the two main CPU manufacturers in the US.

I have looked at the Opteron and I do like the chip, but the IT2 seems a better overall chip for server performance. If you compare the stackability of the chips...an Opteron board can hold more CPU on one board than an IT2 board can...but still, in the overall performance, I would go with the IT2.

[Deviant Ollam]

i found this page of one of the articles linked to by theprez to be particularly informative when it comes to the ways that a SMP setup slightly differs from Dual-Core technology...

Dual Single-Core vs. Single Dual-Core?

AMD's Opteron chip is capable of SMP due to its multiple hypertransport links, so which is faster; a single dual-core chip or two single-core chips? On paper, dual Opterons should be faster than a single dual-core Opteron at equivalent clock speed for one major reason: Due to the built-in memory controller, each Opteron has exclusive access to its own set of system memory.

The dual-core designs have to share the memory controller, leading to competition for resources that will inevitably drag down comparative performance.

Intel SMP systems do not gain this advantage over dual-core siblings since they already share a single memory controller over the front-side bus of the motherboard. It's difficult to tell whether either design has any performance advantage in Intel's implementation.

The data has a shorter path to travel with the dual-core chips, but not so much as to make a radical difference. Certainly Intel dual-core chips should have a pricing advantage over SMP solutions, especially when you factor in the price premium that dual-socket motherboards demand.

(emphases mine)

all in all, a terrific breakdown of the pros and cons of each, at least on paper. as with all things, i'd imagine ymmv. since i don't plan on blowing money on a processor like that anytime soon, this whole matter is academic for me. it was only very recently that i pulled out my old Abit motherboard with an 850 MHz P-III and moved to a ~2 GHz chip. and even that is way overkill, except for when i'm encoding video.

i have, however, been running dual processors in my file server for years now. of course, for a long time they were dual 333 Celerons, but they got the job done.

[Ridirich]

Nice server man.

[Deviant Ollam]

Nice server man.

thanks, man. heh, it is one of my uglier yet effective hack jobs... particularly the jagged hole carved out of the sheet metal for the addition of the second power supply back when i built the original array.

it's funny... you ever think of our community like goldfish when it comes to data storage? (goldfish don't have a natural size at maturity, but rather -- or so i'm told -- they grow to meet the space available in their environment. consider goldfish in a fishtank versus in a large pond on someone's backyard property)

it seems that whenever i or any of my friends gets a new, larger storage system it at first seems like this magnificent amount of space... a volume that would last forever at the user's current rates of disk consumption. then, one starts downloading vids or ripping DVDs at an even more insane rate. i'm stuck in that pattern now. the TB array is terrific... but i've for some reason started to convert almost my whole movie collection to XviD, and i never even try to keep track of CDs i have after cons, etc... they all just get dumped to the public directory and sorted there. every driver, application, and other tech-related disc that i've ever had sitting in large stacks of spindles and cake boxes on my desks have also now been copied and archived. all this makes finding everything infinitely easier, but it's eating into that space like crazy...