[ALUG] PC World TV Advert

[Ian bell]

Wayne Stallwood wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-08-21 at 17:58 +0100, Ian bell wrote:
> 
> 
>>My view too because of all the possible ways to answer the question 
>>'What's dual core?' they chose not 'it goes twice as fast as a single 
>>core' nor 'you get the same computing power for less electrical power' 
>>both of which are pretty much unique properties of dual core, they 
>>gave an answer which a) is not unique to dual core b) implies it does 
>>something new all of which seems to me to persuade the customer to buy 
>>it for erroneous reasons which makes it misleading in my book.
>>
> 
> 
> Ahh but this highlights the problem with bringing down technical facts
> to a level that anybody can understand, they are then two easy to
> misinterpret.
> 
> Both of the alternatives you provide can be misleading and in some ways
> they could be interpreted are as (if not more) factually incorrect.
> 
> 'it goes twice as fast as a single core'
> 
> It doesn't if you are running one task that doesn't thread very
> well..even if it did you are sharing common I/O and resources so overall
> performance will not be twice as fast.
> 
> 'you get the same computing power for less electrical power'
> 
> This is sort of tied in to the first statement and fails for the same
> reasons. A single faster core will give you more computing power in some
> instances. Theoretically two slower cores could be better than one
> single core that is twice as fast, in reality it rarely actually works
> out that way. A dual core CPU draws more power than a single of the same
> clock speed and maybe more than one of higher performance.
> 
> A better was PC World could have put it would be to change "it allows"
> to "it Helps". 
> 

Which simply illustrates how carefull you need to be in describing 
such new technology - care which I feel PC World did not take.

Ian