are duo cores a think of the past?

[Bee_Sting]

buying a high end duo core(2.8 or higher) is it a thing of the past? comments!

[mig29]

Hmmmm. A lot depends on the programming of the application that will run on the system. If the application is not designed to take full advantage of all the cores available then duo core will be just enough.

[EtherealN]

Depends entirely on the application. For gaming I'd say it's a dead concept - but mainly due to the fact that the price and wattage differences is tight enough now that you "might as well", especially given the conveniences of not having to worry as much about background processes.

 

Don't stare too much on the frequency though. There's far too large architectural differences between various processors on the market to use the clock rate properly for comparison.

[shadowze]

Depends entirely on the application. For gaming I'd say it's a dead concept - but mainly due to the fact that the price and wattage differences is tight enough now that you "might as well", especially given the conveniences of not having to worry as much about background processes.

 

Don't stare too much on the frequency though. There's far too large architectural differences between various processors on the market to use the clock rate properly for comparison.

 

Architectural differences between generations is interesting

I did some benchies when I had a Q6600 and then when I got an i7 920

 

Q6600 @ 3.42Gig (overclocked) was about the same performance as

i7 920 @ 2.66 (default speed)

[EtherealN]

Yeah, there's a LOT of differences that happen when you change architecture: each core gets different amounts and types of ALU's, instruction pipelines change, branch prediction changes, in-line/out-of-order execution, and tonnes more. If we go from the old C2 chips and hop to Sandy Bridge there's pretty much literally nothing left of the old C2's. :P