[Gllug] Duo Core processor 4Gb Ram laptop

[John Winters]

Anthony Newman wrote:
[snip]
> 
> I'm hoping I'm not the only one failing to be surprised at that 
> "revelation". We've been temporarily diverted from the business of 
> pursuing increasing clock speeds by using multiple cores, because of the 
> phenomenal financial investment the clock speed war would be likely to 
> require; let's hope that it gets back on track soon. Bring on 22nm :P

Whilst there are some applications which will always want more clock
speed, I can't help feeling that there is nowadays far less point in
pushing the speed up for the sake of it.

Not very long ago, ordinary desktop users could gain significant
improvements in their experience each time the next generation of
processor came out.  Of late however this has disappeared.  Your average
user is not going to see any difference between a 1.6GHz processor and a
3.2 GHz one - both are amply fast enough for anything they will want to
do.  Likewise the difference between a dual core machine and a single
core one is hard to see unless you are running particular applications.
 My son and I both have Lenovo laptops.  His has a Pentium M processor
and 2G of RAM, whilst mine has a Core 2 Duo with 4G (and runs 64 bit
Lenny).  The only time you notice a difference is when you're doing
something like compiling a kernel, which oddly enough happens in about
half the time on mine.

Far more significant at the moment is the speed of the HDD.  It's very
noticeable that for the first 10-15 seconds after booting and logging on
there's fairly solid disc access.  Once the system has cached all it
once however the system just flies.

CPU manufacturers seem to have recognised that CPU speed is no longer
the issue - power is far more important, which is why we're seeing
things like the Intel Atom.  I find these far more interesting than
endless increases in CPU speed.

John

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