So plz some one whos a technician or with knowledge of this , tell me a clock speed of a dual core when dealing *with* multi threading applicatios.
Its quiet easy to understand...
A dual core CPU running at 2.0Ghz is running 2.0Ghz per CORE. I currently have a 2.5 Ghz Dual core CPU.
Applications are written with instructions sets that can be divided per core, hence dual core / quad core support.
Sins is currently a single core game. 1.8 Ghz I believe is the minimum for Sins to run, it has been shown to run on systems that are much less than that minimum.
Dual core CAN mean twice the speed if an application is set to support it hence (multi-threading). It would run certain parts of its code on each Core, effectively making it execute twice as fast. (Or finish in half the amount of time on a single core). Take that with a grain of salt as the code for 1:1 distribution across cores is difficult to implement perfectly.
Also , as I've seen it , running a game that is supported for dual core, say COH, runs closer to your 1.7x example. as there are other things in the background running, and its hard to optimize any code perfectly to run on both cores equally.
What you must understand is even a new Dual core CPU running at say 1.5 (your core duo example) IS FASTER than a single core CPU running at say 2.0Ghz. This is due to the new architecture of the CPU. Integrated memory controllers are new, faster hyper-tansport buses, memory buses, L1 and L2 cache amounts, 40 bit address spaces, SSE 1,2,3 registers and new MMX instruction, all affect the CPU cycle time, in new chips, both single, dual, and quad core.
So umm I hope I answered your question...
Oh and also take into consideration, that when you are running SINS on a dual core vs a single core, even though it is not going to use both cores, your operating system will be. So SINS will have 100% of one of the cores, while everything else on your PC will run on the other.
You can if you want, even set the CPU affinity for one core to focus only on running Sins. Otherwise it might bounce back and forth between Cores, ( I have yet to see it ever bounce ). And I believe AMD and Intel both put CPU patches out over the last year or two to prevent this from happening.
