Dual Core vs Dual Processor

It's is clear that a Quad is very close to the performance of 4 individual processors. A DP, Dual Core IS a four processor machine. Two processors share a package.

But the cores share the same Front side bus and the cooling has to be kept down as two processors share a chip together.

Tests have already been done and the Dual core isn't mch faster, in some tests like the CPU is actually slower than two seperate processsors.

So we will see when the tests are done, but I know it has to be in Apple's interest not to give us the performance of four processors. I wouldn't have to upgrade for 10 years. 😀

There are four processors, but the performance has to be hobbled, why not 200% performance inrease in the tests?

Ahh well, we will see eventually. I'm chomping at the bit.

Why not 200%.

Well the first thing is the high end was a DP 2.7 GHz machine so if we extrapolate. You get an aggregate of 5.4 GHz in the old machine and 10 GHz in the new machine. That means they are only 85% faster. Now take into account limited bandwidth on the main memory bus and as a worst case they will both want to do line fills to the cache at the same time on that bus. A 60% increase give or take seams reasonable to me.