Pentium D and Core 2 Duo--which is better for trading pc?

Buy C2D. You get a lot more bang for your $. It's a no brainer.

BTW, Intel's price cut is just around the corner (Apr 11?). C2D will get much cheaper.

 

I've got an HP laptop, AMD Turion HL34 chip, 1GB Ram. Cost £700 a year ago.

I also run a intel dual core 6300 with 2GB of very high quality RAM.

So guess which one is the fastest?

One would think the dual core but no it's the laptop.

PS. Hotmail was 10 years old last month. So why does it still take over 10 secs for things to load on my PC. That's about the same time it took when it first started.

Haven't come very far have we?

 

Even if your app is single-threaded keep in mind there are always a host of other things going on that can be run on the other processor (OS processes) so its not like it will sit there idle.

Dual core systems also tend to feel more responsive because of this (tasks dont get cpu starved)

Go for the core 2 duo.

Edit: You may find this article useful: http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/03/26/the_gigahertz_battle/page13.html

 

If you want something cheaper, just buy AMD x2. I'll pick x2 over Pentium D anyday.

 

Thanks for all the responses--very helpful.

 

Why don't they compare a core 2 duo with a good pentium D 165 overclocked @ 4 Ghz? You will have 2 cores running at 4 Ghz and why don't use the affinity feature on Task Manager to assign specific applications to the 2 CPUs?

 

Why don't they compare a core 2 duo with a good pentium D 945 overclocked @ 4 Ghz? You will have 2 cores running at 4 Ghz and why don't use the affinity feature on Task Manager to assign specific applications to the 2 CPUs?

 

I just did that, there is one small drawback I will educate on. If you don't download the dual core optimizer software from AMD, I found this out by accident, then you may not get the most of your dual core. I have 2 dells, older with Pent. 4. 3.2 ghz HT, and new with AMD 64x 2 2.0 ghz dual, at first the dual was running slower than the older dell. Now with the download from AMD, it seems atleast 30% quicker. You can get the download from amd.com.

 

I didnt write the article but imo no serious trader should be using an overclocked PC so your question is moot in this context.

PS: You can edit your post (instead of posting twice)

 

Not to mention it is next to impossible to overclock a Dell, Gateway, HP, etc because of prop. MOBO's.