CPU-boundedness of the video system Part II – Effect of the CPU cache memory and memory speed
We already tried comparing various platforms although related to one and the same manufacturer and being close relatives. Let's complicate the task a bit and try to produce the results using the same methodology, but this time for a dual-core processor. For that, we took Athlon 64 X2 4000 Socket AM2 whose nominal clock speed was 2000 MHz. Let's produce "the line of maximum results" for it in the same was as we did that before.
Here we see a very interesting picture! Look - on the dual-core processor the "line of maximum results" precisely coincides with the straight line and precisely runs though the zero! There is no wonder - the system services are executed on the first core, whereas the application (in our case - DOOM3) is executed on the vacant, that is, the second core. The results have gone up substantially, although we did not change the tests of conditions, in the sense of graphics settings. We even did not try looking for any patches to the game which could make efficient use of the dual-core architecture of the CPU. It turns out that on this graph we see a performance boost due to the second core, but without any optimization of games for the second CPU core. Now we can answer the question "what will the performance boost be like due to the dual-core architecture in graphic applications not optimized for multitasking?" The answer is evident from the graph. Under the same CPU clock speed, the performance boost in the case of a system with the dual-core CPU amounts to 20-40% as compared to a system based on the single-core processor. And that - without any optimizations!
Certainly, in our review we are not going to confine the study to AMD processors only. In the nearest time, we'll present you the results of tests run following our methodology regarding the Intel Celeron, Pentium 4, Pentium D, and of course the Intel Core Duo platforms. But we'll dwell on that in the third part of the review. Stay with us.
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