How do I compare CPU speed versus number of cores for performance?

On 30/01/2014 5:07 AM, Ant wrote:
On 1/29/2014 5:45 AM PT, Yousuf Khan typed:
Most modern web browsers are multi-threaded, they'll spread themselves
out to whatever number of cores or hardware threads there are available.
The real advantage of having more than two cores are demonstrated the
moment one of your web browser windows or tabs gets stuck on a page, and
you have to kill it or wait it out. It's good to have other cores
available to be able to keep doing other work.

I wished Mozilla would hurry up with multi-core feature in their web
browsers. They only hog one CPU core.

I am referring to Mozilla, Firefox. The fact that one core gets hogged
means that it's working. Other cores are free. You'll find usually that
it's one particular window or tab in Firefox that's hung, and the
remaining may still keep working. That's because for whatever reason the
content on that tab has gone bad, but the rest of Firefox continues to work.

Yousuf Khan

On 30/01/2014 3:54 PM, Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
On 2014-01-29 9:36 AM, Danny D'Amico wrote:
On Tue, 28 Jan 2014 12:54:46 +0000, Darklight wrote:

Does she intend to run multiple apps at once or run one app at a time.

She's a typical user.
Nothing special.
She sometimes has multiple browser windows up.
And, she might have an Excel spreadsheet or Word document up.
That's pretty much it.
Very basic user.

For most consumer-level software, the number of cores makes no
discernible difference. It's like townies buying a 4WD truck with a
tow-package but they have no trailer to hitch up to it, nor do they ever
go into the back country where 4WD might help them get out of a swampy
hole in what some years ago passed for a road.... ;=) I would choose the
fastest CPU your friend can afford within her budget. But other factors
may be as or ev en more important, such as screen resolution, keyboard
feel, display size, HDMI connectivity, etc. You need a list of her
"druthers" (as in "I druther have a large screen").

Don't know which "townie" you live in, but up here in Canada, 4WD is
actually useful inside the town. Snow, ice, freezing rain, etc.

Yousuf Khan

Given that the sites are so untrustworthy, about
all we can hope for is a battery life test. Where
the same test suite is run on competing units.

Paul

Concerning to above i remember the gadget show on channel five done such a
test. And come to think of it, it is a very important point.

Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 30/01/2014 3:54 PM, Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
On 2014-01-29 9:36 AM, Danny D'Amico wrote:
On Tue, 28 Jan 2014 12:54:46 +0000, Darklight wrote:

Does she intend to run multiple apps at once or run one app at a time.

She's a typical user.
Nothing special.
She sometimes has multiple browser windows up.
And, she might have an Excel spreadsheet or Word document up.
That's pretty much it.
Very basic user.

For most consumer-level software, the number of cores makes no
discernible difference. It's like townies buying a 4WD truck with a
tow-package but they have no trailer to hitch up to it, nor do they ever
go into the back country where 4WD might help them get out of a swampy
hole in what some years ago passed for a road.... ;=) I would choose the
fastest CPU your friend can afford within her budget. But other factors
may be as or ev en more important, such as screen resolution, keyboard
feel, display size, HDMI connectivity, etc. You need a list of her
"druthers" (as in "I druther have a large screen").

Don't know which "townie" you live in, but up here in Canada, 4WD is
actually useful inside the town. Snow, ice, freezing rain, etc.

Yousuf Khan


Actually, tires are useful. I'd slightly prefer excellent
winter tires, to 4WD and crappy tires. The problem is
finding just the right kind of tires.

I think it's interesting, that you can make tires, where
they have what looks like a winter tire tread, and it
doesn't *work* like a winter tire tread. Probably has
something to do with stepping on someone's patent. Only
my Michelin winter tires were good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siping_(rubber)

Paul

On 31/01/2014 9:27 AM, Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
I live in mid-Northern Ontario, drive an AWD Escape, V6, no tow package.
With _winter_ tires at present, not "snow tires" (their deep aggressive
tread is for running on unplowed roads, has low traction on ice and
hard-pack). And never "all season" tires, which should be outlawed (as
they are Quebec).

Yeah, I'm in Ottawa, myself. Not too different than Northern Ontario,
except a couple of degrees warmer (still cold though), and the snow
plowing is pretty good. I do have 4WD too, last two cars were Subarus
for me.

Earlier this winter, I got caught up in a major snowstorm while driving
through NY and Pennsylvania mountains, and I hadn't yet changed into
winter tires yet. I only had the all-seasons on, but to my surprise,
they were extremely competent in the drifts that I was experiencing.
Obviously I slowed down considerably, but I was still slightly faster
than everybody else on the road, without taking any stupid chances. So
the all-seasons redeemed themselves well alongside the AWD. Of course,
the all-seasons were relatively new, just slightly over a year old, so
they still had a considerable amount of tread left on them. I think the
deeper the treads available, the better it is for snow,
all-season/winter/whatever it is. I did wish I had my winter tires on,
but the all-seasons were pretty good.

Of course, I'm completely changed into winters now. The real big
difference I see between all-seasons and winters is braking is much
better on the winters.

Yousuf Khan

On 1/31/2014, Yousuf Khan posted:
Don't know which "townie" you live in, but up here in Canada, 4WD is
actually useful inside the town. Snow, ice, freezing rain, etc.

"Townie" is slang for town dwellers, so he presumably means people who
live where there's no real reason to have 4WD.

Quoting Wolf:
"It's like townies buying a 4WD truck with a tow-package but they have
no trailer to hitch up to it, nor do they ever go into the back country
where 4WD might help them get out of a swampy hole in what some years
ago passed for a road.... ;=)"

The young son across the street has such a thing, a big diesel-powered
truck with super-size tires, and never a splatter of mud on it. It's so
large and loud that I gave it a name, even though I am not a car namer.
I call it Grendel.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On 31/01/2014 2:36 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On 1/31/2014, Yousuf Khan posted:
Don't know which "townie" you live in, but up here in Canada, 4WD is
actually useful inside the town. Snow, ice, freezing rain, etc.

"Townie" is slang for town dwellers, so he presumably means people who
live where there's no real reason to have 4WD.

Yeah, I know, I was being sarcastic.

Quoting Wolf:
"It's like townies buying a 4WD truck with a tow-package but they have
no trailer to hitch up to it, nor do they ever go into the back country
where 4WD might help them get out of a swampy hole in what some years
ago passed for a road.... ;=)"

The young son across the street has such a thing, a big diesel-powered
truck with super-size tires, and never a splatter of mud on it. It's so
large and loud that I gave it a name, even though I am not a car namer.
I call it Grendel.

Up here in the North (includes Canada and the northern US states), they
use so much salt on the highways, even expensive luxury cars become
"mudders", or at least "salties".

On that trip through the US I was just talking about, we were going to
Washington DC, and somewhere around Harrisburg PA, the climate changes
from mainly snow to mainly rain. Having driven all night in salty snow,
my blue car was almost white with salt. When I got to DC, my car was by
far the dirtiest thing on the road around there. Had to find a car wash
quickly to avoid the embarrassment or getting any more salt on our
clothes. It seems DC's automatic car washes are pretty rare, as it
rarely gets dirty enough over there to justify having them. The only car
wash we found, was half-broken, entry door worked but not its exit door,
so I had to back out of the entry door. Here in Canada, pretty much
every gas station has an automated car wash attached.

Yousuf Khan

On Sat, 01 Feb 2014 09:21:20 -0500, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

On 31/01/2014 2:36 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

On 1/31/2014, Yousuf Khan posted:
Don't know which "townie" you live in, but up here in Canada, 4WD is
actually useful inside the town. Snow, ice, freezing rain, etc.

"Townie" is slang for town dwellers, so he presumably means people who
live where there's no real reason to have 4WD.

Yeah, I know, I was being sarcastic.


Considering the quotation marks around "townie," I thought you might
have been, but to tell the truth I wasn't sure.

On 2/01/2014, Yousuf Khan posted:
On 31/01/2014 2:36 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On 1/31/2014, Yousuf Khan posted:
Don't know which "townie" you live in, but up here in Canada, 4WD
is
actually useful inside the town. Snow, ice, freezing rain, etc.

"Townie" is slang for town dwellers, so he presumably means people
who
live where there's no real reason to have 4WD.

Yeah, I know, I was being sarcastic.

OK, you get at *least* 12 points for fooling me :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On 2/01/2014, Ken Blake posted:
On Sat, 01 Feb 2014 09:21:20 -0500, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

On 31/01/2014 2:36 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

On 1/31/2014, Yousuf Khan posted:
Don't know which "townie" you live in, but up here in Canada, 4WD
is actually useful inside the town. Snow, ice, freezing rain, etc.

"Townie" is slang for town dwellers, so he presumably means people
who live where there's no real reason to have 4WD.

Yeah, I know, I was being sarcastic.

Considering the quotation marks around "townie," I thought you might
have been, but to tell the truth I wasn't sure.

That's part of Yousuf's 12 point bonus. I thought he meant he wasn't
sure what Wolf meant by the word :-)


--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On 2/6/2014 7:38 PM, G. Morgan wrote:
Danny D'Amico wrote:

How would you compare dual-core 1.5GHz versus quad-core 1.0GHz for performance?
(Windows 8, touchscreen)

My sister asked me whether it's better to get the ASUS X200CA-HCL12050 or the
Dell Inspiron i3135-3750slv inexpensive $300 laptops.

Looking at the specs, the main difference seems to be:
Asus: dual core, 1.5GHz
Dell: quad core, 1.0GHz

Which helps in performance more, additional cores? Or faster speeds?
Note: I realize both help - but which is MORE important, cores or speeds?


For multitasking, I would go for more cores. The 500MHz difference in
clock cycles would be barely noticeable in speed, but if you have
multiple programs running you can take advantage of the load balancing
across 4 CPU's instead of two. It will be "faster" overall if you have
more cores, even if the individual cores do not have the higher amount of
clock cycles in the two-core configuration.

It boils down to what you mostly do with the computer. For gaming, I'd
rather have two cores (if the game is able to use both at the same time)
running at 3GHz than four running at 2GHz.

For general purpose use, I'd take the four cores so a media center (for
instance) can get it's own core and office applications will not bog-down
(steal CPU cycles) from the media center that you may want to run 24/7.






Any difference either way is going to be software dependent.
To determine a useful preference, testing would be needed,
and some sort of benchmarks used, as well as the actual applications.