There has been a lot of development in the hardware sector related to processors especially.?

Question

There were two new one in quick succession i.e. Dual core and core 2 Duo.

Compare these two in all aspects technical and non technically.

Answer 1

Dual core is simply a generic term referring to any processor package with two physical CPUs in one. The Pentium D, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo and Athlon X2 are all current CPUs that have dual cores in one package.

The Pentium D is simply two Pentium 4 Prescott cpus inefficiently paired together and ran as dual core.

The Core Duo is Intel's first generation dual core processor based upon the Pentium M (a Pentium III-4 hybrid) made mostly for laptops (though a few motherboard manufacturers have released desktop boards supporting the Core Duo CPU), and is much more efficiently than Pentium D.

The Core 2 Duo is Intel's second generation (hence, Core 2) processor made for desktops and laptops designed from the ground up to be fast while not consuming nearly as much power as previous CPUs.


Note - Intel has dropped the Pentium name in favor of the Core architecture as Intel is restructuring and refocusing it's efforts to become number one again.

The only difference between a Core 2 Duo and a Core 2 Extreme is that the Core 2 Duo's have a locked multiplier and the Core 2 Extreme's have a range of multipliers, which seems to be the first time Intel is encouraging overclocking since the original Pentium Classic days.

Actually, the Core 2 Extremes do not have HT and it's unsure whether Intel will keep using this or not.

According to user reports, a Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.66GHz, 1066MHz FSB) is much faster than a Pentium D running at about 3.4GHz due to it's ability to process more Instructions Per Second (IPC) and it's shorter pipeline (doesn't take as many stages to decode the same instruction) and it's more efficient L2 cache. Not to mention it consumes LOTS less power than a Pentium D at a higher clock speed.

Comparitively, the E6300 should be about as fast as a Pentium D 3GHz (roughly).

Actually, with the Core 2's, the L2 cache is no longer on a "per core" basis. The L2 cache is now shared between both cores, futher improving efficiency (so as to not duplicate data in each cache, or when a write is done to same data in either L2 cache, they don't have to update each other's cache just to stay on the same page like with seperate L2 caches).


All Core 2 Duos are currently Conroes. Conroe is simply the code name for it, as all CPU manufacturers give their CPUs codenames before they're released.

Such as the Pentium 4 had Willamette, Northwood and Prescott. The Pentium III had Katmai and Coppermine. Not all codenames are as creative, for instance, the original Pentium MMX was codenamed P55C.

Future Core 2 revisions might have a different code name.

PS - just a side note, but the correct term is Core 2 Duo. The only reason why I point this out is due to the fact that it's the second generation Core processor, so the 2 comes after the Core. "Duo" simply means it's dual core. Intel may later release Core 2 Solo processors that are single core based (or have the second core disabled to fill cheaper bins, or to bypass a defective core but still make money on the good one).

This is the case with the first generation Core processors - you can purchase a Core Duo or a Core Solo (distant cousin of Han Solo).
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So the E6300 and E6400 have a full 2MB L2 cache, even if you were to disable one of the cores. Likewise for the faster models with 4MB L2 cache.
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