AMD Dual Core CPU's

[Billy Verreynne (JW)]

Ed Fletcher wrote:

> I'm looking at a new motherboard/cpu combination and I'm
> looking for info on how well the dual core cpu's from AMD
> work with Ubuntu Breezy.

What do you expect from a dual core CPU Ed? Faster performance? That
is not really what multiple CPUs provide.

My often used truck analogy to explain this.

A CPU is like a truck. It can move a certain amount of cargo at a
certain speed. An additional truck allows you to move more cargo - but
the speed at which that total cargo is being moved remains the same.

Additional CPUs increases processing capacity. Not processing speed.
Thus with 2 CPUs you can run more active processes. But no process
will run faster as the raw CPU speed is the same.

Where there are performance improvements if your existing CPU cannot
handle the capacity thrown its way. A truck carrying more than it max
cargo goes a lot slower than what is it capable of. A second truck
will alleviate this, take on some the load itself, allowing the 1st
truck to run at its proper speed again.

If you want to have faster processing, a faster CPU is needed. Not
additional CPU capacity.

As a very general rule of thumb:

Desktop software are usually designed and written as single threaded
processes. Increasing CPU capacity does not really help. A faster CPU
is needed to make them go faster.

Most server-side software are written as multi-threaded processes.
E.g. instead of 1 process doing all the work, the work is broken up
into pieces that can be done in parallel. Additional CPU capacity
allows more parallel processing and thus an increase in performance.

IMO for normal desktop use a dual-core CPU has no obvious benefits. If
you are a gamer.. well, more and more games are making use of a
multi-threaded design. Also on Windows, any DirectX game will by
default be creating and using several DirectX threads (doing graphics,
sounds, etc). In this case a dual-core CPU can increase game
performance (the CPU is usually the bottleneck and not the VPU).

If you use Ubuntu more in a server/service like fashion (running a web
server, sendmail, RSS feeds, ripping music, burning DVDs, etc, all at
the same time), then additional CPU capacity likely is needed.

--
Billy

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