PtP
28-01-2005, 06:40 AM
Both AMD and Intel decided to pull another trick out of their hats now that the clockspeed game has hit a snag. Neither AMD nor Intel seem to be able to push processor clockspeeds much further without significant investments that probably don’t make it worthwhile to go that route. With the cancellation of the 4GHz Pentium 4 and the Athlon 64 being the reigning champ in all but a few specific benchmarks the question now is who will be first out of the gate with a dual core CPU. But does it really matter? Would a dual core CPU running at 3GHz make much of an impact, equal 6GHz as the marketing departments will undoubtedly pitch it? Well, I doubt it, as there’s a few things that need to be firmly in place before anyone can reap the benefits of dual core CPUs, much like 64-bit computing AMD has been touting for the past three years.
In essence it comes down to the simple fact that most applications that we use today are not multithreaded, hence they can’t make efficient use of a dual core CPU, so the second core will simply be sitting there doing nothing most of the time, with the first core handling all of the load. You’d think that with Intel’s HyperThreading being a feature on Pentium 4 processors for quite a few years now more applications would’ve matured to take advantage of dual core processing. Unfortunately only a few applications are multithreaded and these applications aren’t the ones you’ll likely see installed, or used by, an average user. So you won’t see a speedup when running applications you use today, but rather you’re looking to upgrade in order to make efficient use of dual core CPUs, how convenient. At least the software developers will be happy as they’re able to sell a whole slew of new ‘dual core compatible’ applications again.
These applications however aren’t available today, even with the large established base of Pentium 4 HyperThreading processors, so it is very likely that when you buy a dual core CPU system you can’t make efficient use of it until the software developers catch up. Much like AMD’s 64-bit instructions on the Athlon-64 it isn’t until Microsoft gets their foot out of their ass and finally introduces the long overdue 64-bit version of Windows before we can make use of these. Expect a similar situation with dual core CPUs, but once all of these things come together, multithreading and 64-bit computing on both Intel and AMD platforms we should see some healthy improvements again. Will dual core CPUs and 64-bit computing finally rid us from the tedious processor clockspeed bumps we’ve seen over the past few years, let’s hope so. Just don’t start saving just yet, we’re still waiting for that 64-bit OS Microsoft promised us remember.
In essence it comes down to the simple fact that most applications that we use today are not multithreaded, hence they can’t make efficient use of a dual core CPU, so the second core will simply be sitting there doing nothing most of the time, with the first core handling all of the load. You’d think that with Intel’s HyperThreading being a feature on Pentium 4 processors for quite a few years now more applications would’ve matured to take advantage of dual core processing. Unfortunately only a few applications are multithreaded and these applications aren’t the ones you’ll likely see installed, or used by, an average user. So you won’t see a speedup when running applications you use today, but rather you’re looking to upgrade in order to make efficient use of dual core CPUs, how convenient. At least the software developers will be happy as they’re able to sell a whole slew of new ‘dual core compatible’ applications again.
These applications however aren’t available today, even with the large established base of Pentium 4 HyperThreading processors, so it is very likely that when you buy a dual core CPU system you can’t make efficient use of it until the software developers catch up. Much like AMD’s 64-bit instructions on the Athlon-64 it isn’t until Microsoft gets their foot out of their ass and finally introduces the long overdue 64-bit version of Windows before we can make use of these. Expect a similar situation with dual core CPUs, but once all of these things come together, multithreading and 64-bit computing on both Intel and AMD platforms we should see some healthy improvements again. Will dual core CPUs and 64-bit computing finally rid us from the tedious processor clockspeed bumps we’ve seen over the past few years, let’s hope so. Just don’t start saving just yet, we’re still waiting for that 64-bit OS Microsoft promised us remember.