Pentium D, Intel Centrino, Pentium XYZ??

[Neal-UK]

I'm becoming really confused these days with processors and PC's. What do all the different letters mean? Just what is the difference?

Pentium E, Pentium D, Pentium Core 2 Duo.....???

It was easier before: Pentium, Celeron or AMD. Always chose Pentium and AMD!

[Scott MacVicar]

They have different amount of cores, cache and fsb speed.

I'm running Intel Core 2 Duo which is their latest and greatest. Its a Dual Core 64bit processor which is super fast

[Neal-UK]

I'm running a Compaq with an AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+

That any good at all? I thought it was, had the computer a few years now.

[Floris]

Centrino is for laptops.

Go for core2duo for a single cpu with 2 cores, performing really well.

Pentium D stands for duo, meaning the first generation dualcore chips. Later they introduced the core duo and core 2 duo. The next one is core 2 quad, a single cpu with 4 cores. But they're pricey and not really needed for average consumer.

Perhaps the E in pentium E stands for extreme. Which is just more money you throw away. Not needed.

[DirectPixel]

I'm running a Compaq with an AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+

That any good at all? I thought it was, had the computer a few years now.

It's not bad. Can still run Vista with no problems.

I have that same processor at home and it's been pretty good, even after all these years.

[AWS]

I'm running a Compaq with an AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+

That any good at all? I thought it was, had the computer a few years now.

You can upgrade to a dual core athlon 64 with your current motherboard and a bios update. I just did it on one of my old boxes. Went from 3500+ to 4800+ x2 dual core. This was a socket 939 board. You can also update to an Opteron dual core if you want a larger cache. going this way will give you a couple more years with your current system.
I also have a core 2 duo. If you want to go new then I would suggest an e6400. The e6400 is the best over clocker and the price is right compared to the others.

[Bob Isaac]

Does dual core need the appropriate software apps to get the most out of it?

Bob

[Zachery]

Yes and no, software designed to take advantage of multiple processors will get more of a boost than software that doesnt. At the same time your computer can make use of it by sending differnt processes to differnt processors.

Winamp on 0
IE on 1
Word on 0
Bit Torrent on 1 etc

[Greps]

most programs can take advantage of dual core processors. quad core is quite useless, as I have found out myself (running QX6800 atm), not a lot of performance difference

[Cromulent]

most programs can take advantage of dual core processors. quad core is quite useless, as I have found out myself (running QX6800 atm), not a lot of performance difference

It depends which apps you run. I have a Mac Pro (2x Duel Core Intel Xeons) and it is blazingly fast with 3D rendering and Film editing. It is not quite so good for gaming though so you have to decide what you want to do with your machine.

[Zachery]

It depends which apps you run. I have a Mac Pro (2x Duel Core Intel Xeons) and it is blazingly fast with 3D rendering and Film editing. It is not quite so good for gaming though so you have to decide what you want to do with your machine.

Set the game to a single processor, you should notice a slight improvement.

[Greps]

he's got a mac. mac != gaming. macs are simply not compatible with gaming. a shame, though. if macs were supported by both game and hardware developers as much as they support Windows, I'd be using a mac right now.

[Zachery]

he's got a mac. mac != gaming. macs are simply not compatible with gaming. a shame, though. if macs were supported by both game and hardware developers as much as they support Windows, I'd be using a mac right now.

Uh, you get this information where? While yes there is not horribly wide support for macs and gaming, there are plenty of games out there that do run on OSX, and infact he can dual boot to XP

[Floris]

he's got a mac. mac != gaming. macs are simply not compatible with gaming. a shame, though. if macs were supported by both game and hardware developers as much as they support Windows, I'd be using a mac right now.

Not true, half life 2 performs better on my dual core mac pro with 7300 256mb card on pci-x then on the pentium 2,4 ghz with x800 card. Better quality images and more fps fullscreen. I am impressed.

[AWS]

Not true, half life 2 performs better on my dual core mac pro with 7300 256mb card on pci-x then on the pentium 2,4 ghz with x800 card. Better quality images and more fps fullscreen. I am impressed.

I'd like to see 3dmark scores to back that up. I find it hard to believe that a 7300 will out perform an x800. I have a dual G5 and I could never make a statement that it is better for gaming than any of my PC's including an older P4 D 2.6 Ghz with a 7600 agp card.