I just talked toa tech re my concerns with my new computer and he is going to install xp pro for me. However, he said my quad core will now run as a dual core, as the quad core doesn't support xp pro? Anyone heard of this? I am now thinking of returning it and just getting a dual core with 3.0 hrz instead of 2.4 . I think this would be better ???
Even a Core 2 Duo runs mostly like a "single core with an extra idle core"... not much software ready to take advantage of multi-cores yet. However, I checked an eBay auction site offering a high-end Dual Quad Core Xeon... "choice of XP or Vista, 32bit or 64bit"... It's likely you were given bum info.
gnome is right as usual. Also XPSP3 (service pack 3) is coming out very soon and improves multicore support apparently speeding up XP 10% on office apps.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2178787,00.asp Article is a few months old but the comparisons between a dual core and quad core were both done on machines with XP, so there seems to be no basis in thinking XP does not work with quad core. But that is far from answering the question of which you should get. This article clearly shows that the quad is better in some instances, and not much help in others. If you will be keeping the machine for awhile, do a lot of multitasking, and arenât trying to save money then a quad would be the way to go. Otherwise you will most likely be fine with a dual.
Separate apps should be able to utilize separate cores. 2 cores should allow 2 apps to realize much better performance than if there was only one core. Same with a 4 core cpu. Some of the comments seem to imply multi-core are not useful which is not the case.
Depends on the apps, perhaps. When my trading rig is fully loaded and running all apps, my CPU usage is usually running 0%.
Same here now on low CPU. I had too many problems in the past, and even freezing up when recording camtasia on the trading day. I built a new computer recently and installed an Intel core 2 quad q6600, and when running all cpu is at 0 to 1 % most of the time. I am now able to run Multicharts so easily,which I could not do well before as it was on the slow side.