What is A Dual Core Processor?

When I was buying a computer, I had stayed away from the computer scene for a long time. The last time I really knew what was going on was Pentium 4 and those quick. I had expected that by now we would have much faster clockspeeds. Instead, I find these "multi-cores" and wondered what they were.

A multi-core processor means that the die, or the thing that holds the processor together, has not one processor as they often did before but usually two or four. What does this mean? Imagine having two horses pull a chariot as opposed to one.

Let's get to some specifics:

Clockspeeds:
This is often referred to as the "megahertz" or "gigahertz". It is used primarily as a speed comparison among processors; for example, a processor of 500 mhz (megahertz) will run half as fast when compared to a processor of 1000 mhz or 1 ghz (gigahertz). Remember that all it does is refer to how many calculations the processor can handle and does not necessarily reflect the speed overall as other considerations need to be taken (RAM, for example).

In a multi-core processor, measuring clockspeeds differ radically. Although a dual core processor of 2.4 ghz is better than a single core processor of 2.4 ghz, it's not exactly twice as fast. In fact, if you boot up two identical computers with only these differing processors, they'll boot up at almost the exact same speed. So why is having a multi-core better? Going back to the horse pulling chariot example, imagine two horses running at 20 mph pulling a single chariot and another horse also running at 20 mph pulling another chariot. The two chariots would be going exactly the same speed but what's the difference? Obviously, the two horse chariot has to do less work as each only has to put in 50% of its power. This leaves power for other things; on a computer, this means a multi-core is excellent for multi-tasking. Having a single core running ten programs will not make your computer happy while running it on a dual core will only make your computer slightly unhappy.

Tip: If you're not much of a multi-tasker, you'll be fine with a single core running at higher clockspeeds. This is especially true of gamers; a game running on a multi-core of 2.4 ghz will not be able to take advantage of two cores and a computer with a single core of 3 ghz will actually run faster! Some companies have been trying to make games to take advantage of multi-cores so watch for those.

Power:
If we compare directly a single core and a dual core of the same clockspeeds, the dual core will use more power. However, it will not necessarily use double the power; in fact, it is usually much lower. However, if you're worried about power, then you probably will be looking at the video card more than the processor.

Some advantageous to have a dual core is that because it is on the same die, it will have less delay between transfer which means less power usage than if you tried to hook up another processor on to what you already have. Of course, if you knew all about that, you probably wouldn't be reading this.

CPU Cache:
Not much to know except that the higher the level, the faster you can access the data and thus, the faster it is for the computer to run applications. Dual cores usually have a higher cache level.

Overview:
Obviously, the most important part was the clockspeed but some other factors may have been important. Note that the main point of having a multi-core is better multi-tasking. This may be great for someone who knows they multi-task a lot but for the average user, it may also help tremendously. As most people know, computers run other things in the background which means anytime you open up a program, you're running that along with several hundred threads (things the computer needs to do) in the background. Although most of these threads do not use much processing power, you will definitely get an advantage in using a dual core over a single core.