BleepingComputer.com: Intel Core 2 Duo 45nm

I have recently installed a new 3GHz processor E8400. Intel claim blistering responsiveness & multi tasking. I am somewhat underwhelmed. It will surf the net when running a virus scan, but slowly. When moving "My Documents" to another partition both cores show up as very little activity as low as 2-3%, but invoking Firefox from the quick launch is anything but speedy. Does this sound familiar?

Some things are quicker like at start up all the items load very fast into the system tray. I guess it's reality versus Intel's hype, but I'd hate to run Vista on this computer.

Computer speed is often very dependent on the amount of RAM you have, as well as the processor speed.

Running virus scans and moving documents is probably very dependent on the performance of your hard drive.

While I was at it I also installed 4GB of OCZ DDR2 667 running in dual channel mode. Oh for a solid state drive!

That was going to be my observation, well, as far as a faster drive. I can't tell the difference in system "responsiveness" from a lowly 2.5ghz C2D to a 3.6ghz C2D. Gaming/encoding is a different matter.

As I understand it...multi-core systems are faster...in situations where they are asked to do more in the same amount of time...as a non-multicore system would.

If the system is not multitasked, it seems improbable that a typical user will truly experience much gain over using earlier processors/systems.

The fact of having two or more cores to do mundane, routine tasks...will probably not be perceptible to any but engineers and programmers or those running benchmarks.

I think we sometimes forget how relative all of these "speed increases" are and that they are not likely to be perceptible without tools not normally used by consumers.

I know that my modest dual-core system is more effective/faster at rendering than my old system...but part of that is accounted for by the fact that I have more RAM installed/employed.

Louis

hi,,,, just another point,,, surfing the net is all about the speed of your internet connection rather than your processor,,,, the larger the connection speeds the more data is transferd and the faster pages are loaded,,, if your downloading at say at 6336 kbps like mine, then this will be the same if your using a 3Ghz processor or a 1.8Ghz one,, the bottle neck is the internet connection as both processors can handle a lot more than 6336 kbps.

Yeh only have 10/100 connection, seems adequate, no need to reinstall XP to recognise the 2nd core then? Read something in Micro Mart. I guess not as can see two windows in CPU usage history under task manager. Actually I could, ah this is a different computer! Lol thought one core had switched of then!