Intel's Dual Core Strategy Investigated

by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/22/2004 3:09 PM EST
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  • Dasoo - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link

    Has anyone heard anything about possible implications of the move to dual-core on memory? While I would guess that there would be little impact, I'm wondering if dual-core systems will use more memory or if dual-core will require performance characteristics.

    Thanks
  • Speedo - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link

    #55, "Right...unless you also happen to be running another application. For example "Windows" with 26 services..."

    Yea, but does these services, in a normal gaming computer installation, really take that much cpu time to really show an improvement in games?

    For example, taking a look at the taskmanager right now shows I have 99% (or more) cpu resources free.
  • dak - Monday, October 25, 2004 - link

    #31, "Hang on -- to all those that say dual threads are crap -- what exactly are you running -- AMD 64 maybe? they'res no software that can take advantage of the 64 bit, so its virtually the same thing no? "

    Sorry mate, I've got 2 amd64 boxes running 64 bit. It's called Linux you dolt. Windows ain't the only thing going on out there. And I can't wait for dual core, it'll be great for source based linux distros like gentoo....
  • knitecrow - Monday, October 25, 2004 - link

    The only people raving about dual-core equals double the performance would be Intel spin doctors and computer noobs.

    Having a multithreaded application is not a simple matter of a linear increase in programming time/skill/effort/debug/validation ... it’s a geometric increase.

    This makes multithreaded apps, inherently expensive with longer development cycle.

    Furthermore, poorly written multithread apps can run far worse than single threads.

    The windows OS is quite dumb when it comes to multithreading; while it may suffice for 2P and 4P... it becomes less appealing when you scale to 8P and outright useless after that. No wonder UNIX remains top choice for multiprocessor supercomputers.

    Please consider REALITY before raving about dual processor.

  • Audiophile1980 - Sunday, October 24, 2004 - link

    [q]In a single threaded application, no they will not be any faster. In a game for example, two 3.2GHz cores will not be faster than a single 3.2GHz core.
    [/q]

    Right...unless you also happen to be running another application. For example "Windows" with 26 services...
  • eachus - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    "When AMD mentions that their K8 architecture was designed for multicore operation from the start, they weren't lying. Each Socket-939 or Socket-940 K8 chip, whether it's an Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX or Opteron, features three Hyper Transport links (whether they are all operational is another question). In order to create a dual core version of a K8 based chip, you simply remove a single pair of Hyper Transport PHYs, one from each chip, and fuse the two Hyper Transport links together - thus creating a direct path of communication between the two cores, capable of transmitting data at up to 8GB/s (at 1GHz) between the two chips."

    That is not how AMD does it. Hammer chips have a cross-bar switch with connections to memory, Hypertransport links, and up to TWO CPU cores with cache. Dual core chips have one copy of the crossbar and memory controller, and both CPU cores connect to it. All done. The crossbar works at core-clock not memory speeds. The only case where the cross-bar could be a bottleneck is if both CPU cores have >50% cache hit rates on the other core's cache.
  • eachus - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

  • stephenbrooks - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    #27:

    --[There are several reasons why games aren't written multithreaded: 1. multithreaded apps have more overhead so they run slower on single CPU systems.]--

    I never said they'd use multiple threads when running on single CPU systems. There's a very simple call in Windows you can do to determine how many processors there are, and you can decide how many threads you produce based on that. For instance if you have to detect collisions with 400 objects, you could do 100 in each of 4 threads, or 200 in 2 or 400 in the original thread.

    --[2. most gaming systems are single CPU.]--

    Yes, _right now_. If we end up having 4 or 8-core chips by 2010, single-threaded games are going to look rather silly.

    --[3. the threads need to communicate with each other to get the frames drawn. Since the threads have critical sections, running them on a single CPU will make the critical sections que up causing major lag and drop in framerate.]--

    The game would scale down to 1 thread on a 1 CPU (non-HT) system.

    I think the main problem is that since there aren't so many multi-processor SMP systems out there, developers just think in terms of one thread all the time. It will take dual-cores etc. to become commonplace to change that.

    Finally, will everyone who assumes "different threads have to be doing qualitatively different things" please stop it? That's complete pants. Often you get the best (near-linear) scaling when you just have a lot of repetitive (non-mutually-relying) things to do and you can split them equally between a thread for each CPU.

    It's certainly true that _when no apps are multiprocessor-aware_ the different threads you have will be doing different things, but when the programmers know about how many CPUs there are, it's a whole different ball game.
  • douglar - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    From aces hardware--

    "According to AMD documentation, both cores in a dual-core chip are connected to one shared SRQ (System Request Queue). The SRQ has ports for CPU0 and CPU1. The links between the two cores and the SRQ runs at core frequency with 64-bit data paths. The SRQ is connected to the XBar (crossbar) which handles signal routing between the SRQ, MCT (Memory controller) and up to three HyperTransport Links. The SRQ is also connected to a APIC (Advanced Priority Interrupt Controller) that services both cores (dual Int ports).

    The important thing here is that the cores are connected before the crossbar, not after it, as Anand suggests. Hence the cores in a dual-core chip will share all the HyperTransport links and the memory controller.

    See slide 26 of Fred Weber's MPF Presentation, 2001:

    http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/Downl... "

  • Briggsy - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    The following is complete and utter bullcrap (from page 2): "Each Socket-939 or Socket-940 K8 chip, whether it's an Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX or Opteron, features three Hyper Transport links (whether they are all operational is another question). In order to create a dual core version of a K8 based chip, you simply remove a single pair of Hyper Transport PHYs, one from each chip, and fuse the two Hyper Transport links together - thus creating a direct path of communication between the two cores, capable of transmitting data at up to 8GB/s (at 1GHz) between the two chips."

    NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

    This has been described in detail by AMD since 2001. AMD DO NOT 'fuse' together two Hypertransport links to make a dual core processor.

    AMD's processor incorporates an integrated Northbridge, which is a crossbar that attaches to the memory controller, hypertransport controllers, and the processor interface, called the SysReq. The SysReq can connect to TWO cores, and this was designed as a capability from the very beginning. AMD's dual core simply adds another CPU core and attaches it to the currently unused port on the SysReq.

    If you get a simple, well explained, detail like that wrong, I can only assume the rest of the article isn't very reliable either.
  • ChronoReverse - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    @48

    And Windows reports 10 threads for the UT2K4 demo. I still know that it's not really designed to take full (by full I mean special) advantage of multithreading.
  • Chuckles - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    #37
    According to 'top' on Mac and Task Manager on Win XP:
    Escape Velocity: Nova - 7 threads
    Robin Hood: Legends of Sherwood (Demo) - 5 threads
    Airburst Extreme (Demo) - 8 threads
    Homeworld 2 (Mac Demo @ 1st mission, 2nd save) - 8 threads
    Homeworld 2 (PC Demo @ 1st mission, 2nd save) - 8 threads

    All seem to be reporting multiple threads.
  • Sunbird - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    I have a question that just popped into my mind,

    Will the dual core processors from AMD and Intel technically be two 64bit cores?

    If it is, man, you get dual core and 64bit all in one, seems it will be pretty cool (but not those dual core prescotts :P ) when you have both of those steaming away with software written for them.
  • AdamK47 3DS - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    I envision more marketing behind the dual core CPUs than performance numbers to sell these. Most people (as is proven by the responses here) will think their getting double the performance simply because they are "dual cores". Dual cores require multithreading capabilities to truly take advantage of them in a single app. If you're a gamer there aren't very many games out there that are multithreaded. Even most games coming out in the next couple years won't be multithreaded. Multithreading can be cumbersome to programmers.
  • AdamK47 3DS - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

  • Reflex - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    Just to make one thing clear: I like dual core, I think it is a good move, I can't wait to get mine...

    However, you will not see 100% improvement on a dual core system, not even close, even with multi-threaded apps. At best you will see 80% in *some* situations, in most circumstances its more like 40-50%. The thing to remember here is that those dual cores are sharing the rest of the system with each other, so a straight 100% improvement is impossible due to the fight for system memory and resources. This is exacerbated on shared bus designs like the P4, but even in the case of the Athlon64 there are some shared resources..
  • xsilver - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    #42 I think you answered your own question
    "Within a year or two, you will be buying (essentially) 6 to 8 GHz CPUs, instead of 3 to 4 GHz CPUs."
    Essentially this 6ghz cpu is no better than the 3ghz cpu on one program -- its all fine and dandy to be able to run 2 programs just as fast with no performance hit but when advertisers say it runs X fast, that X would not have changed; only you can run X and Y at the same time.... Its not double performance, its more like HT overdrived.... you mention MMX, sse etc. they are good features cause they add no cost/ heat into the equation whereas dual cores may double the processor on both counts here...
    The INTEL spin doctors though will spin it so it sounds good until software can use the multithread properly...
  • theprofessor - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    I don't know why everyone seems so against dual core CPUs. I have been waiting years for this (as I was for 64-bit CPUs). Most people will see an increase in performance using a dual core CPU. I don't care if the program is single threaded or not. Most people run more than one program at a time. All modern Operating Systems (including XP) will allocate time on both cores for different processes. So, while you’re playing your single threaded game on one core, you can run your encoding software, anti-virus software, im software, e-mail software, download software, whatever software on the other core, with no hit to performance. If you don’t play games, include whatever single threaded software you like. There will be a decent boost to performance no matter what you are doing.

    Dual core is the best upgrade a processor can get. Why? Because with MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3D Now!, and, especially, 64-bit, there needs to be re-programming and/or re-compiling involved to notice any difference at all. With dual core you will notice a difference in almost all modern computing paradigms the day the chip is released. And as the technology becomes more mature and prevalent, you will notice even more performance as developers re-program/re-compile there software.

    Computer enthusiasts should be looking at this as a doubling of computing performance. Within a year or two, you will be buying (essentially) 6 to 8 GHz CPUs, instead of 3 to 4 GHz CPUs. As far as pure performance increase, I think this could be the greatest technology ever introduced to a processor line. No other technology (listed above – MMX, etc.) has been able to give almost 100% performance increase (theoretically) across the board in all applications.

    If nothing else, think of it this way. With the ramp in CPU frequency drastically slowing over the last two years, going forward it will now be at least double what it would have been. (i.e. If AMD and Intel can currently only handle 200 – 400 MHz frequency increase in a year, with dual core that becomes 400 – 800 MHz.)

    It’s a win almost every way you look at it. So please, try not to be so critical of this great technology.

    Thank you
  • Reflex - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    #37: If that were true then every ported PC game would take years to rewrite and bring to the Mac since they are not designed multi-threaded in the first place(and most Mac games are PC ports).

    Don't confuse the fact that you can multi-task while playing a game with the idea that the game itself is multi-threaded. They are not the one and the same, and you can multi-task while playing a game on Windows as well...
  • thermalpaste - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    Intel could have launched the dual core using the P6 architecture as in the pentium-M processor. If they still love high clock speeds, maybe they can deepen the pipelines a bit for the p6. With prescotts touching 65 degrees plus, the dual cored pentium-4s may need car radiators in order to overclock;). Its obvious that the dual cores only come into play for multi-threaded apps, so perhaps intel can shift back to p6 when majority of apps support multi-threading.
  • ViRGE - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    #35, all the compilers in the world won't help Intel here with multicore. Threading isn't just an optimization, it's something that has to be explicitly declared and controlled in code in order to make sure that the threads don't work against each other, or assume that the other is/has done something it hasn't. Intel may be able to work in some thread-swapping tricks to speed things up, but for multicore designs to shine, it's up to the developers to do it; Intel can't control that.
  • Anemone - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    Actually Intel has confirmed again and again that dual core is coming in Q3 05. Those are netburst cpu's so that's some approximation of dual P4. Those will plug into current LGA775, and run at 2.8, 3.0 and 3.2, with 64 bit ability.

  • Chuckles - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    I'm surprised that games haven't been multi-threaded on the PC side. The games for Mac are...
  • michaelpatrick33 - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link

    #35 Intel itself has that the dual core P4's won't be out until Q1 2006. That is 2006. They are delaying the Celeron D 350 and the Pentium 4 670 until Q2 05 and they will be on a 800 FSB. The only dual core Intel is releasing in 2005 is the Itanium. They will release a dualcore P4 chipset in 2005 but have no dualcore P4's to go into it until 2006. These aren't rumors, these are the facts. Intel is only going to take a small hit financially but they are definitely behind AMD on some fronts at this time. This doesn't mean AMD won't shoot itself in the foot but Intel is facing some problems. There have been a number of 64bit beta programs that show tremendous gains in 64bit long mode due more to the 16gpr's than 64bit. The 64bit part of AMD x86-64 is more than just 64bit remember. So is Intel's. Windows XP64 will be out 1st half 05 (supposedly) and we will see 64bit programs along with it. Should be interesting
  • Anemone - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    No no no and no.

    I'll forgive the bias, but if this is your honest summary opinion of whare Intel is headed, or what problems will be its Achilles heal (memory bandwidth) I can only say that I think the coming year is going to be quite an education for you.

    Don't get that entirely wrong. AMD is most definitely doing things very well, but their plan to introduce dual core to servers first is based on technological limitations, the markets they feel they still need to make inroads on (strategic order), and where they will achieve the best margins. They will still have to share a bus, and still have to pass cache duplication over that same bus, so I'd be highly careful on just what you think their chips will do in dual core format. Good design is probable, but AMD can and has let us down more than once.

    Heck, so has Intel. Prescott? God, what WERE they thinking? It has improved, but 40 I mean 64 bit is still like mystery soup. I'm positive they just want to sell everyone new "64 bit" Prescotts in 2005, so they're robbing every customer now, imo. But don't think for one minute that they've taken this year as it stands without working behind the scenes. As for forcing dual core and then letting the market make software for it? Well let's see, MMX, SSE, SSE2, doesn't that seem like a trend? And would you say that SSE2 is useless, and unsupported? Intel builds the compilers that make their hardware run. They even make the compilers that make AMD hardware run. That's pretty key, and rather silly to ignore.

    I guess when I read this I hadn't expected you to look at every possible Intel rumour and take the "worst possible scenario" route to find your best guess answer. I was wrong.
  • cosmotic - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Why no word about Moterola or IBM? Granted they aren't PC chips, it would be nice to see a comparison.
  • AlphaFox - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    #19 - win 2000 doesnt know the difference between a dual processor system and a hyper threaded cpu. win XP and server 03 know that it is just a single CPU with diper threading enabled, thus you can run a dual processor hyperthreaded system on XP pro.
  • ViRGE - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    #31, it's similar to, but not the same as the 64bit transition. At the very least, if you want to get some use out of the 64bit extras, you simply need to recompile your program, and you can work out further optimizations without too much effort. Converting programs to usefully use multicore tech though is going to be far more difficult, since it requires a concept(multithreading) that isn't known very well by most programmers, implemented even less, and no one is really sure what a good way is to multithread some types of applications(i.e. games).
  • xsilver - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Hang on -- to all those that say dual threads are crap -- what exactly are you running -- AMD 64 maybe? they'res no software that can take advantage of the 64 bit, so its virtually the same thing no?

    and to those that say the heat requirements will stay the same because of increased die size, in total isn't the while cpu still socket 775..... that's still pretty small and probably too much for air cooling to handle. Some sites report a 30 degree increase at load for 100W of power (on a thermalright heatpipe i think) 200w will be way too high in temp increase?
  • michaelpatrick33 - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Intel has said their desktop dual coares won't come out until Q1 2006 and that the only dual cores coming out in 2005 was their Itanium.
    http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/200410200...
  • GhandiInstinct - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    So why not test this technology and leave it in the labs instead of wasting consumers times. Obviously it's a waste of money if we don't have any software utilizing it. So, oh wow! KUDOS to the company to release it first, but remember the Prescott? First 90nm.... crossing the finish line first doesn't mean you earn that place.
  • dak - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Good points :) Glad we don't use single cpu's at work lol
  • Brian23 - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    #25 There are several reasons why games aren't written multithreaded:

    1. multithreaded apps have more overhead so they run slower on single CPU systems.
    2. most gaming systems are single CPU.
    3. the threads need to communicate with each other to get the frames drawn. Since the threads have critical sections, running them on a single CPU will make the critical sections que up causing major lag and drop in framerate.

    Once multi CPU systems are the norm, I'm sure there will be games released for multi CPU systems.
  • dak - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Hmm, I never really saw the big deal about thread creation. Who really cares if it takes a freaking tenth of a second to spawn a thread, if you're only doing 20 or so threads at the startup of a game? I can't think of the last time I used a temporary thread. I usually spawn 'em at startup for a pre-defined role. Can't be the overhead of thread creation, they could split one off for texture loading in the background, and obviously the network clients. Personally I think it would be harder to NOT thread games, but I guess I'm too used to threading...
  • stephenbrooks - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Windows thread creation has a bigger overhead than Linux threading, but you can still shuffle them about quite a bit and still get benefits. I'd imagine if they could keep it at one fork per tick or frame, it'd be pretty good.

    No reason I can think of why video games aren't being designed for multi-processors. Apart from the fact someone should take their shiny FX-55s away and give them quad-2.0GHz things to work on instead - _then_ they'd take advantage of it.
  • dak - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Strange, I'm kinda surprised that video games are single threaded. We write flight sims at work (*nix only), and we thread/fork all over the place. Flight sims are really just really big video games :)
    I would think with AI, physics engines, network clients for multiplayer, and oh yeah, that rendering loop thingy, that they'd be all over threading. I don't know about winders programming really, is the scheduler too borked for that? I can't imagine it would be, and I'm not one to give anything to microsoft....
  • stephenbrooks - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    #19, I assume you mean XP Home. I'm running XP Pro on dual hyperthreaded Xeons and get 4 showing up in task manager.
  • stephenbrooks - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    I was looking around some presentations on Intel's site - it seems that we're in a dead zone before some fundamental changes are made to their transistors in the 2007-08 time frame (metal gate, tri-gate and high-K something-or-other), which might give real performance and clock speed improvements again (mention is made of reducing leakage 100x, for example). All the weird stuff happens in the 45nm and 32nm processes, with the 65nm one being another "boring" one like 90nm, hence the focus on dual-core for the next few years, I guess.
  • HardwareD00d - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Overclocking a dual core would be a waste because until software developers start to write games in a way that uses multiple cores, you're just going to have one OC'd core sitting there looking dumb (and probably putting out a shedload of heat).
  • HardwareD00d - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    er I mean #15 sorry
  • HardwareD00d - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    #16, The reason hyperthreading will be disabled with dual cores is because WindowsXP only support 2 processors right now. I'm not sure about Windows 2000, but Intel has said you should not enable HT with that OS.

    I heard that Intel is hoping that M$ makes a "patch" to XP so it will do 4 processors. AFAIK, Intel is waiting on that for the "official word" on HT in dual core.
  • thelanx - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    So these are underclocked 3.8 prescotts? That could be prove to be a great overclock with water cooling maybe, as it'll be virtually garuanteed 3.8 GHz or more, just gotta make sure you've got adequate cooling.
  • thelanx - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

  • GhandiInstinct - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    So for now it's just an advanced version of hyper-threading, instead of virtual cpus you have physical cpus, thanks Anand.
  • sprockkets - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    How are the 2 cpus connected with Intel? Why disable hyper-threading for having extra cores, oh well, guess it makes some sense. What then we could do is make 2 cores with a split amount of ALUs and FPUs.
  • Jeff7181 - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    #13... Water cooling won't be a necessity. Don't forget, with the increase in heat from dual cores there's also an increase in surface area for that heat to be dissipated through. I don't think you'll see a huge increase in CPU temperature at all. What WILL increase more is power requirements, and case temperate... as well as the temperature of the room the PC is in and probably the size of the heatsink.
  • xsilver - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Anand, how did you measure power consumption from your last batch of reviews? hardware or software? links? thanks

    Regarding dual cores, aren't these cpu's going to be horrendously expensive to produce if they are basically 2x prescotts?-- and if there is 200w power consumption, isn't that mandatory water cooling territory?
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Jeff7181

    True, but I was mostly referring to 800MHz FSB chips, the 533MHz parts will still be available then too.

    supertyler

    You pretty much answered your own question there, monitoring user inputs are generally not CPU intensive tasks at all - in fact you could say that those tasks are mostly user limited :) A huge benefit to dual core (or SMP in general) is that if you have one renegade application that eats up a ton of CPU power, you still have a separate CPU that can continue to work for you during the interim. It is a tangible performance improvement, but one of few for desktop uses.

    Marsumane

    It's tough to say what's going on with AMD until we actually see more roadmaps. For now, they haven't increased clock speed all that much either, remember we're still at 2.6GHz at a maximum with the fastest non-FX Athlon 64 running at 2.4GHz. As far as building more fabs goes, they cost about $2.5B a piece and take quite a bit of time to build, I don't think that's exactly the quickest fix to the situation at hand :)

    skunkbuster

    Remember that Banias and Dothan are designed with clock speed limitations in mind, they need smaller manufacturing processes to actually reach higher clock speeds as they natively have very short ramping abilities. For more information take a look at my Banias or Dothan reviews.

    GhandiInstinct

    In a single threaded application, no they will not be any faster. In a game for example, two 3.2GHz cores will not be faster than a single 3.2GHz core.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • klah - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    These will still be using 1.385V? If so, 200W+ power consumption?

  • GhandiInstinct - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    "The vast majority of applications on the desktop are still single threaded, thus garnering no real performance benefit from moving to dual core"

    Anand,

    So two 3.2ghz cores will not be faster than one 3.2ghz core?
  • skunkbuster - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    "Given that Dothan will ramp to 2.26GHz by the end of 2005"
    isn't it already at 2.1ghz now? and if so, then it seems odd to me why it would take them a year to raise the speed by 160mhz...
    or am i missing something?
  • Falloutboy - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    damn those dual core p4s are going to be hot. even though the thermal denseties the same the heat has to go somewhere. Its still double the heat

    I'm forseing a stock heatsink resembling the XP-120
  • ksherman - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    I like the fact that speeds arent going to be changing very much... they dont really need to. Im glad to see the two companies focusing on new technologies versus higher speeds. I like intels concept for their mobile processor, sounds cool. Im starting to get the feeling that (at least with Intel) that they should base their desktop processors off their mobile version. They seem to be so much more efficient. Intel makes it sound as if effiency is not a big concern with d-top processors...
  • Marsumane - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Amd doesnt seem to have come to a grinding halt on clockseed. I think they will have to supply us with our speed upgrades for the next year and a half. If i were them, id build more fabs.
  • supertyler - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    The article mentions several times that most desktop applications are single threaded. Is that really true? I thought most of desktop applications with a GUI are multi-threaded, with one thread performing the task the program is designed to, and another processing user events (mouse clicks, key presses...). It's arguable that the thread that does this processing is mostly inactive and thus the benefits of a dual core chip are reduced, but they are in fact multi-threaded. I think most of us have seen little programs with a poor design that perform a given task and, once you send it to the background, they are responseless and not repainted until that task is completed.
  • Jeff7181 - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Nice article, but isn't there a 2.4 GHz Prescott based Pentium 4 available? It has a 533 MHz FSB and HT disabled, but it's still Prescott based is it not?
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Toastedlightly

    For each individual processor.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • Toastedlightly - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Is the 3.2 ghz for each individual processor or for the combined total?
  • Regs - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Ohh wow, another frying pan CPU by Intel.

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