Multi-processor code or single processor ?

Our company is busy looking at going for one of two options:

* Intel single core Pentium 4 @ 3.60 GHz
* Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.40GHz

for an industrial application.

On paper the latter sounds like the fastest, but I'm not so sure. Our
application is the only one that the user needs to interact with and its
performs tens to hundreds of millions of (mostly numerical) calculations per
second.

I'm not too confident I understand how the thread scheduler will work to
give us the optimum performance.

My feelings:
* The dual core sounds good but its probably going to be good for consumer
desktops where you run lots of small-ish application like internet browser,
word processor and listen to music
* The single core will allow our application to hog the processor more
effectively. If we set the the process priority very high, I get the
impression this is the way to go.

Is my understanding correct? For the application described, should I
recommend a dual core or a single core?

Thanks,
Alain

"Alain Dekker" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:ibbqm2$rgq$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Our company is busy looking at going for one of two options:
>
> * Intel single core Pentium 4 @ 3.60 GHz
> * Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.40GHz
>
> for an industrial application.
>
> On paper the latter sounds like the fastest, but I'm not so sure. Our application
> is the only one that the user needs to interact with and its performs tens to
> hundreds of millions of (mostly numerical) calculations per second.
>
> I'm not too confident I understand how the thread scheduler will work to give us
> the optimum performance.
>
> My feelings:
> * The dual core sounds good but its probably going to be good for consumer
> desktops where you run lots of small-ish application like internet browser, word
> processor and listen to music
> * The single core will allow our application to hog the processor more
> effectively. If we set the the process priority very high, I get the impression
> this is the way to go.
>
> Is my understanding correct? For the application described, should I recommend a
> dual core or a single core?


Alain

I would go with the Intel single core Pentium 4 @ 3.60 GHz for your usage as you
describe. My opinion is that it will do the job more efficiently that that new
Intel Core 2 Duo

Just my opinion. I am using an P4 Intel 3.60 Xeon and it outperforms according to my
benchmarks the Intel Core 2 Duo

--
Peter
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