Dual Core vs Hyper Threading

I am in the middle of a personal experiment and wanted to know what others may have experienced...

I am comparing three machines I currently own and here are my results...

Machine 1. Acer Laptop with Intel Core 2 Duo, at 1.6ghz (2060) 2 gigs Ram
Running Vista Permium

Machine 2. HP Pavilion a1129n with AMD Athlon 64 at 2.2 ghz 1.5 gigs Ram
Running XP Pro

Machine 3. Dell Dimension 4700 with Pentium 4 Hyper Threading at 3.4ghz 1.5 gigs Ram
Running Vista Ultimate

Originally a few weeks ago when I purchased the Acer, I was impressed with the speed of the Core 2, then I bought the Dell second hand.. It originally had XP Home on it, but I was so impressed with the speed I decided to buy and put Vista Ultimate on it and see what happened..

WOW!!!!

This is the first H.T. processor I have experience with and I am very amazed.. It is FAST FAST FAST and very good at multi-tasking....

It runs my Star Wars Ultimate Universe with no jumping or delays... After I follow MrMonsoons advice and get my new video card installed it should be awesome..

Don't get me wrong, the Core-2 is incredible for a laptop, but no match for the Intell...

Now...

Do you think this is because it is comparing a Laptop to a Desktop, or is the Intll H.T. just faster than the Core 2?

The real reason I am asking is that after Christmas I am going to buy a new computer... I am torn between the Dell XPS with the Quad Core and the New Dimension with the super fast Pentium... The Dimension is a lot cheaper but the XPS is higher rated....

Any thoughts?

Semper

I have the Dell XPS 410, with Dual Core and man it's pretty nice. The Speed and availability to multitask is awesome.

I can't imagine the quad.......

Im on an alienware Auora , Intel dual core 2.6Ghz , 2 Gigs of Ram
And man does this system run like a dream

I had an HT CPU before and it was ok for a while but time is its worst enemy , it becomes slower and slower, to the piont it might not aswell be HT after 'bout 2 years

[edit on 24-12-2007 by Disgustipated]

Hyper threading was a way of making the processor work more or less like it was a double core processor, but it really wasn't.

A real dual core processor with the same technology would be faster than an equivalent hyper threading processor because it would have two real CPU cores working independently instead of only one CPU core trying to make the work of two cores.

I don't know how that game functions, but one thing in which the desktops are faster than the laptops is disk access, it may make the game faster (if it reads lots of data from the disk during the game) and the system will be more responsive because of the shorter times accessing the disk.

A site that may help you (or maybe not) choose a new computer is Tom's Hardware, a site that I have been using for the last 10 years.


PS: the Dual Core is also a Intel processor

reply to post by semperfortis



Your results don't seem to make much sence to me-related to processors, let me explain:

The oldest design would be the p4 HT. Now, as Art said, there is only one processing core in there. Now, this was starting to be the time where a single stream of data was not enough to keep the processor busy all the time. What they did whas to create a "virtual" second core. Now infor could be feed to both cores at once-in reality it is feeding info to both halfs of the processor.
Now, with vista, I would recommend more like 3 gigs of ram...really!!!

The hp machine has a (Athlon 64 3400) processor. As you noted, it is running @2.2 gig's speed. Now this is a single core, non hyperthreading processor. (hyperthreading was/is an Intel process/name)
Now, having xp installed, there is a much lighter load on the equipment-20-40% less. 1.5 gigs of ram is very good, 2 gig's would be a bit better.

As you guessed,Laptop hardware is very different than desktop hardware. The biggest 2 reasons are heat-the electronics are very tightly packed and only 1 small fan. The second is that laptops compromise ultimate performace for battery life. The laptop is going to be he weakest "gaming" rig. Other than that, once booted, it should run and do all you need/want.
BTW, realize that the processors in your laptop run @1.6gig and the desktops run @ 2.2 and 3.4gig.

There's no doubt that dual core is superior to hyperthreading. My previous desktop was hyperthreaded but the newer dual core is just so much nicer.

One thing you shouldn't get confused about. A dual core won't give you much improvement over a standard processor unless you're running multiple apps. That's where the real pay-off comes in. I don't mean that you have two web pages open. I'm talking about two different applications that are both hungry for processing time. You'll find that with a dual core you can have an app running all-out and still switch to another app without much lag.

As mentioned, desktop/laptop comparisons are generally un-fair.

I use this at work when ever the question is raized. It shows in easy terms the diffrence between HT and DC.

www.intel.com...

The laptop processor C2Duo 1.6GHz processor (Machine 1) is maybe slightly better than the pentium 4 3.4GHz (Machine 3).

[edit on 26-12-2007 by Infinityvers]

[edit on 26-12-2007 by Infinityvers]

Thanks all...

I really appreciate the help...

Makes a world of difference when choosing a new machine as you can imagine....

Semper

Now remember Semper, like everything there is a price to be paid for all this help.

The cost is this, you are now required to help 3, yes, 3, different people, in area's that you excel, and the person needs help.

For example, as an ex police, if someone needed instruction on how to clean their weapon..............

May I further incurage you to use the same mentality inhelping others, that is, their price for getting help from you is they must help 3 others in area's that THEY are expert.

After a short time, a real trend can start to occur...................

Originally posted by mrmonsoon


After a short time, a real trend can start to occur...................

Yep. Gotta pay it forward Semp. 'Course I didn't have to tell You that.

I promise to keep up my end of the deal my friends....

What a wonderful world this would be if that was the norm huh?

Semper