Which is the best dual core processor?

quad core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 overclocked from 3.0GHz to 3.33GHz

AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core ( which would be my choice)

 

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Indeed. I've been dual-CPU since about 2000, and it makes a huge difference in responsiveness under load.

 

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it sounds like you need some extra ram. not a better processor

 

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That's definitely true, since I wrote a very cheap javascript method of creating possible answers for anagrams. If run and the number of characters used in the base and number of character positions is high the process actually causes the browser to come up with a 'Not responding' error.

In the background it goes about it's business trying to finish off the long list of possible outputs. It slowly increases in RAM and Harddrive usage and if on a single processor machine would cause 100% CPU load (Basically the system would become unresponsive).

On my Core 2 Duo however only one of the two cores reaches 100% CPU load (Meaning I only reach about 53% Load total between the two). I can still run other programs (RAM permitting) and deal with the task manager to shut the labour intensive process down. (of course I have to flush the browser's cache and the swap drive afterwards too.)

There cool in that respects however this does have a draw back if you aren't computer literate. Usually if a person gets a Zombie server on their system that 'locks the system up', a user will notice it and have to reboot because of the inability to do any thing else other than that. With Multicores it's possible that a person would only notice a degrade in performance since they can still utilise the other core to do tasks.

In a nutshell things could run that originally wouldn't have been able to on a single core.