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3ghz quad core is 12Ghz in theory?

cjph said:
When talking to the technically challenged I like to use the example of cars - does owning four, four seater saloon cars each capable of 100mph mean you can drive at 400mph ?

But having four cars will mean transporting twelve people may be a lot easier (drivers permitting, if you excuse the pun) than with a 400mph supercar.

cjph
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it's relative, depends how you look at at. remove the car analogue, its rubbish. But what we have is one cpu that is (in a perfect world) capable of doing 4x as much for any given command. Now whether this means it can do one thing 4x faster (perfect multi threading) or 4 of those things at the same time (4x single threads) there is still 4x the processing power available (again, in a perfect world. in reality this isnt true because of overheads ect)


Now, the reason the car analogue is rubbish is that 1) it only works if you stick to single threaded apps and 2) you didnt mention that all twelve passengers would get to the destination in 1/4 (just saying it's 'a lot easier' doesnt count!) of the time it would take one supercar @ 400mph. when these 'technically challenged', as you put it, double or quadruple the speed on mhz, they are only thinking in terms of processing power so while they arent right with what they say, they arent entirely wrong about what they are trying to say either :)

let's make it easier for the technically challanged:

car A travels at 100mph and can transport 4 people to the destination in 1x hour
car B travels at 400mph and can transport 1 person to the destination in 0.25 hours

how long would it take each car to transport 16 passengers?
 
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I always use the old work bench analagy for explaining to people that more RAM doesn't = more speed.

You are the processor, working on something. The RAM is the work bench. If you have a massive work bench, you can lay everything out and work at your maximum speed, if you run out of work bench space, you have to start putting things on the floor, which slows you down.

Having work bench far bigger than you need won't make you work faster, but having a work bench any smaller than you need, and you'll work a lot slower.
 
guys can you clarify one noob issue for me please?

I keep hearing core and thread being used interchangeably. What is the difference between them? My E6600 has 2 cores and two threads. What does that mean in practical terms?
 
WingZero30 said:
guys can you clarify one noob issue for me please?

I keep hearing core and thread being used interchangeably. What is the difference between them? My E6600 has 2 cores and two threads. What does that mean in practical terms?
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The cores are physical. The threads are virtual (in a sense).

An i7-920 has 4 cores, but each core can run two threads (one physical one, and one virtual). Someone else will be able to describe it better for sure.
 
My E6600 is overclocked to 3.2Ghz. If I am running a multithreaded program would that mean the cores will be processing data at 1.6Ghz each? So cpu speed is halved?
 
WingZero30 said:
My E6600 is overclocked to 3.2Ghz. If I am running a multithreaded program would that mean the cores will be processing data at 1.6Ghz each? So cpu speed is halved?
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no. if your running a multithreaded program , both cores still process data at 3.2ghz. e.g core0 3.2ghz, core1 3.2ghz.
 
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A thread is program execution.

You have the main program thread which can create other threads to handle / process different things. Think of multiple programs running in parallel.
 
so its only server boards that run dual processors that you can claim to run at 2x the ghz then ?

or even then is it the same ghz throughout.

for example - the dearest board on overclockers the sr2 or something can house 2 xeons, lets say they were both running at 3.2ghz can you then say that you were running the pc at 6.4ghz ? or is it just 3.2 ghz because yes theres 2 but you only count 1, or 3.2 ghz because thats the rated speed all cores run at, like lets say, a wireless xbox controller running at 2.4ghz ? the controllers a poor example, i dont mean speed with tat i mean the frequency, so yeah actually, its a good example, cos frequency is what the processors use. ?
 
3Ghz quad is equivalent to a 12Ghz single core (ideal world) in a multi-threaded app such as 3ds max for example where ALL cores can and are being used. It's simply a case of 4 versus 1 core to get equal performance.

Unfortunately in the real world not everything is multi threaded meaning it's usually a case of being able to run 4 things at 3Ghz :rolleyes:

garyfi - number of cores and number of sockets don't make any difference to the rated clock speed of a processor. A dual socket 3.2ghz will just be 2x 3.2ghz cpu's as they work no different to single socket multicore cpu's, it's just spread over more than one socket.
 
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Colbaker said:
A friend of mine has stated that because he has got himself a quad core processor running at 3 Ghz he now in theory has a 12 ghz o processing power, Is this correct?
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Hello Colbaker,

In "theory" a 3GHz QuadCore should process data as quickly as a 12GHz MonoCore if the software being used is coded properly!

james.miller said:
remove the car analogue, its rubbish
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Book him danno! :p
 
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