Intel Core Duo and Core 2 Duo

[underdog]

Could someone expain the difference between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo for me? Simply please..Walt

[Gregg]

Yeah, Tacit can. Or Paddy, or krissel, or a host of others.

I can't. Just wanted to say "Hi". Good to see your post here, Walt.  

[()]

Tacit is the man for explaining this stuff to people.  

When I was at a Best Buy over the weekend, a young Toshiba man was telling me that the Centrino wasn't a processor, but instead, it doubled your internet connection and gives you more access and speed over the internet. WHAT-EVER!

I thought the guy was a moron, but I suppose that the Toshiba would rather have young and dumb promoting their products like the rest of the companies.

I often wonder when will companies will start hiring more mature 30 plus people as sales people, instead of all these teens and 21 year olds that aren't even potty-trained yet.

 

[Xairbusdriver]

I'd suggest the Intel PR group since they are the ones selling those brands. It simply another way of labeling multiple CPUs in a single chip and/or multi-core CPU chips in one computer. <Intel>
<More technical explanations>
<Google> Amazing what you can find here...
Then there is Wikipedia...

[Paddy]

From Wikipedia:

QUOTE

Intel Core Duo (product code 80539) consists of two cores on one die, a 2 MiB L2 cache shared by both cores, and an arbiter bus that controls both L2 cache and FSB access. Upcoming steppings of Core Duo processors will also include the ability to disable one core to conserve power.
Intel Core Solo (product code 80538) uses the same two-core die as the Core Duo, but features only one active core. This allows Intel to sell dies that have a manufacturing defect in one but not both of the cores. Depending on demand, Intel may also simply disable one of the cores to sell the chip at the Core Solo price -- this requires less effort than launching and maintaining a separate line of CPUs that physically only have one core. Intel used the same strategy previously with the 486 CPU in which early 486SX CPUs were in fact manufactured as 486DX CPUs but the FPU failed quality control and the connection was physically severed.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core

Wikipedia on Core 2 Duo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_2

Here are some tests which show the difference:

http://www.barefeats.com/mbcd6.html

More test results:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Core-D...Duo.2404.0.html

Intel's sales pitch:

Core Duo

Core2 Duo

Basically, you've got a single processor with two cores. The more recent one is smaller, faster and cooler from what I can tell.

[kelly]

Walt. The Core 2 Duo is newer and faster.

Get a computer with that if you can.

Or if you don't care about cutting edge. Get the earlier version and save a few dollars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_2

[Epaminondas]

Core 2 Duo vs. Core Duo:

QUOTE

General application performance can improve a bit by switching to Core 2 Duo, but the biggest performance gains are associated with 3D rendering and media encoding tasks. Considering the nature of the improvements to Intel's Core 2 processor, the areas in which it succeeds are not surprising. If you use your notebook as a professional rendering or encoding workstation with no desktop in sight, then you'll probably consider Core 2 Duo a lot more carefully than most

One of the items that clearly stands out is that discussing gaming performance on laptops is largely an academic endeavor, as the vast majority of shipping laptops are going to be completely GPU limited. We will hopefully have some results from a high-end gaming laptop in the near future, at which time we can detmine how much of an advantage Core 2 Duo really has over Core Duo. The designs are similar enough that we don't expect a huge difference, and the lower FSB bandwidth will certainly limit performance potential more than on the desktop. However, we would expect a difference somewhere in the range of 5-15% in most games if we can remove the GPU bottleneck as is evidenced by the Oblivion results.

While Core 2 Duo does look nice, as long as you've got a good notebook today you'll probably want to wait until Santa Rosa before upgrading (at the earliest). With Santa Rosa, clock speeds will go up slightly but more importantly we'll get access to a faster FSB. Unfortunately a side-effect of keeping Core 2 Duo fed with a faster FSB is that while performance may go up, battery life may go down. It'll be interesting to see what Intel can pull off with the new platform; one of the funny things about performance and battery life is that if you can complete a task quickly enough thus returning your CPU to an idle state faster, battery life will grow even though instantaneous power consumption may be higher.

For Apple users this means that early adopters of the new MacBook or MacBook Pro won't be too pressured to upgrade again by the end of this year. Of course Apple has this way of making incremental changes irresistible.

Overall, Merom may not be as big of an upgrade to Yonah as Conroe was to NetBurst, but the bottom line is that you get equal or better performance in every test without increasing cost or decreasing battery life. Owners of Core Duo laptops really have no reason to worry about upgrading for now, and waiting for the Santa Rosa platform before your next laptop upgrade seems reasonable. Those looking to purchase a new notebook on the other hand have no reason to avoid Core 2 Duo models, assuming pricing is consistent with what Intel is promising. There will be a delay of at least a few more weeks as we await availability, and testing and validation by laptop manufacturers may delay things a bit more, but within the next month or so you should be able to get a Core 2 laptop.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showd...?i=2808&p=1


Core 2 Vs. Core Duo benchmarking:

QUOTE

On our MobileMark05 productivity-suite benchmark, the Core 2 Duo machine delivered a score of 279-the best score we've seen yet from a mainstream-class laptop, and 22 percent better than the Core Duo system's 229 score. Battery life, while not identical, still fell within the margin of error for us to agree with Intel's power-savings claims: 3 hours 30 minutes for the new Core 2 Duo, versus 3 hours 42 minutes for the older Core Duo.

http://laptopmag.com/Features/Intel-Core-2...-Test-Drive.htm


Core 2 Duo vs. Core Duo:

QUOTE

Perhaps we expected too much of this new processor from Intel, and although it is slightly faster than the Core Duo, it doesn't offer the kind of speed increase that's immediately noticeable. But that's okay, because these brand-new chips are indeed somewhat faster than their predecessors, while at the same time, they cost about the same. More speed, same price? Sounds like a great value.

http://videoediting.digitalmedianet.com/ar....jsp?id=61730-0

[tacit]

The simplest, most straightforward difference: The Core Duo chip is a 32-bit processor, like the PowerPC G4. The Core 2 Duo chip is a 64-bit processor, like the PowerPC G5.

Each "Duo" chip means that there are actually two separate processors built into the same package. A computer with a Core Duo or a Core 2 Duo is a multiprocessor compter with two processors. The Mac Pro systems which have two Core 2 Duo Xeon chips, have a total of 4 processors.

The "2" means second version. The Intel Core was the first processor built around this chip design; the Core 2 is the second, just like the Intel Pentium was the first prrocessor built around that design, and the Pentium 2 was the second.

Core 2 processors are faster and more efficient than Core processors, can process more data at the same clock speed, and are 64-bit processors rather than 32-bit processors.

If you are considering a purchase and can afford to go either way, go with Core 2 rather than Core. Buying a computer with an Intel Core processor is like buying an original Pentium after the Pentium 2 came out; you're getting an older processor design that is not as fast.

[underdog]

My thanks to all. You are all great in helping me to make a decision. Tacit, an understandable explanation for an old man.(Me not you)  Again many thanks.

[Gregg]

See, I told ya.

Don't be (a) stranger now....