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