Redmond Magazine has come through again with an rather enlightening article on why dual-core processors and Windows aren't what they are advertised to be. In the final analysis, the fact is that Windows operating systems - both XP and Vista - are built with a single-core processor in mind. Whereas any one core of a dual-core processor is generally slower in processing speed than previous singe core processors, many have noticed that the operating systems and applications (also built for single core processors) are in fact slower on a dual core.
In this article they provided excerpts of letters (from readers?) pertaining to issues they have had with dual-core processors. Every letter was a complaint except two. The first was written by an obvious computer guru, as he had built his own system and was constantly keeping tabs that the systems and applications were making efficient use of the quad core. How he managed to get Vista to properly exploit the 2 dual cores, however, was not explained. The other letter was from some happy-go-lucky user who said how wonderful everything was working with her dual-core machine. Oh, and she added at the end that she was using Mac OSX Leopard. Yes, apparently the latest systems by Apple have a built in mechanism for fully exploiting a dual core.
The article also refers to products released by third-party companies, which help XP and Vista use a dual-core processor more efficiently. In fact, Microsoft is apparently working closely with one of these companies to improve Vista's functionality in this area.
I would like to hear from some Linux gurus to know how Linux racks up on this score. As for myself I can say that I have converted my dual-core MacBook over to Ubuntu Linux and it runs great. However, I recently installed the 64-bit version of Ubuntu Linux on an AMD64 laptop (that's a single-core processor that instead of being built to process 32 bits of data processes 64 bits) and that system is screaming fast. Very impressive.
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