Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part II: A Deeper Look

Final Words

The point of this article was to present you with the choice that you'll be making, should you decide to upgrade to a new system in the coming months; the choice between very fast single task performance (and to some extent, light multitasking performance) or more responsive, heavy multitasking performance.  No one is really exempt from this decision and you'll have to come to the decision based on your own needs. 

We've shown the Athlon 64 to have extremely solid single threaded performance. With the exception of our encoding tests, the Athlon 64 really can't be beat when it comes to running a single application.

The tables are turned as soon as multitasking is introduced, where you can't beat the fact that the Pentium D is able to fulfill the needs of more applications running in the background. 

So, the question quickly becomes, how heavy of a multitasker are you?  If you're primarily a gamer and you find your gaming performance gets bogged down at all by the tasks you're running in the background, then dual core will most likely outweigh the benefits of a strong single core CPU.  If not, then your answer is clear: go for the faster single core.

For encoding performance, you still can't beat the Pentium D.  Even a dual core Athlon 64 isn't going to help enough in that area. 

To characterize all other non-gaming, non-encoding performance is extremely difficult.  For the most part, if you're doing a lot of things at the same time or if you have a lot of applications eating up CPU time - you're better off with the Pentium D.  If you are a much cleaner operator and don't have all that much going on, then a single core CPU will still be your best bet; and what better single core to have than the Athlon 64.  

The surprise here is the impact of NCQ on multitasking performance. The difference in two of our tests was not only measurable, but also quite noticeable in real world usage.  Given that NCQ is quickly becoming a "free" feature of new hard drives, it's a feature that we'd strongly recommend to have in your next system.  It doesn't improve performance across the board, but it doesn't hurt things and when it does work, it works extremely well. 

With all this excitement, we still have to keep ourselves grounded in the thought that dual core isn't here yet; it's still as much as two months away.  For AMD, as we've known all along, the wait is going to be a bit longer on the desktop.  The workstation and server markets will be serviced by AMD first, and we will have a look at workstation/server dual core performance as soon as AMD launches those parts.  It's looking like, at least on the desktop, if you want dual core at a reasonable price point, your only option will be Intel.  But the prospect of more affordable dual core chips out of AMD in 2006 is quite exciting as well.

A dual core Athlon 64 solves a lot of our dilemmas simply because you get stronger single threaded performance than the Pentium D (in everything but encoding) while also getting the multitasking benefits of dual core. 

For Intel, the Pentium D is a saving grace - it's the first time that we've been interested in any processor based on the Prescott core.  It's also perfect timing; if it weren't for the Pentium D, we'd have no interest in the Intel 945 and 955 chipsets, and definitely not in NVIDIA's new nForce4 SLI Intel Edition product.  With that said, it should be pretty clear what our next article in this series will be...