Duo Processors; What's the Difference?

Question

I have a laptop with a Core Duo processor. When I right click My Computer and look at properties it says T2050 @ 1.60 GHz 1.60 GHz. What does this mean? Does it mean the processor is essentially running at 3.6 GHz? If no, then what? What is the T2050? Also I have two laptops, one with Core Duo and one with Centrino Duo. Which of these is better technically speaking?

Answer 1

The T2050 is the CPU's model number. The actual processor chip you have is has 2MB Cache, 1.60Ghz, 533Mhz front side bus.

The actual die of the processor (the physical chunk of silicon) has two processors on it that share the workload. Contrary to what the name sounds like, It does NOT give you 2x the speed of a single 1.6G ghz chip. The real world speed differences are about 20-30% faster than a single core 1.6Ghz chip.

The real power comes when you're running more than one CPU intensive task - then you're going to have both cores chugging away (again at 1.6Ghz - not 3.6Ghz).

The biggest advantage of this is that a duo core processor uses far less energy to do the same work as a single core processor that's running much faster.

The Centrino name is Intel's badging for a laptop that uses an Intel motherboard, processor, and wireless card. That's all.

Answer 2

The T2050 @ 1.60Ghz is the name of the processor, the second 1.60 Ghz is the speed it is running at. I know that sounds repetitive, but some people overclock there processors so it runs faster than it is supposed to. So for example, if you overclocked it to 2.0Ghz it would say T2050 @ 1.60Ghz 2.0Ghz. You have two cores, each of which run at 1.60Ghz, but you cannot just add the two numbers up. T2050 is the model number.

Core Duo and Centrino Duo are basically the same thing, Centrino is just a branding name that refers to a laptop with a certain type of processor, chipset, and wireless. They both have the same processor, the Core Duo.

Answer 3

It means you have 2 processors working to make your computer multitask easier.

I believe the person above me is talking about a dual core, not duo core. A dual core is kind of like have a "virtual" 2 processors, not actually having 2.

Answer 4

Duo refers to the fact that while your computer has a single processor, that processor has two cores that can work in parallel, essentially working with two threads simultaneously if your software supports it.

centrino is intel's mobile platform processor. it's essentially supposed to be more efficient than the normal 'core duo' processor.