Speed increase for dual core processores?

[Storm Crow]

YES! Read this thread:

https://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=399447&Replies=20

Good friend, around these hearth stones, speak no evil of any creature

[Gus Little]

I have some results from a lowly Pentium D 820 dual core processor. It’s priced at around $350. I was duly impressed in the render tests that I did with it. I was comparing it to my main system which is a Pentium 4 3.0 ghz single processor/hyperthreading box. The dualcore P4 always outdid the hyperthreaded p4 by 50 to 100 percent. That surprised me. Both machines are comparable, 3.0 ghz processor, 2 gigs of ram (although the dualcore had 533 mhz ram compared to 400 mhz on the older p4) both rendering from internal sata hard drives.

The dualcore wasn’t mine, so I did the tests as thoroughly as I could in the time I had, but they were very consistant, hdv project to mpeg2 project to wmv project, 50 to 100 percent faster across the board.

I was building the system for an Avid Xpress Pro user and unfortunately, the Avid software does not take the same advantage that Vegas does of multiple processors, but overall performance of the machine was very smooth and nice.

I know it doesn’t compete with those dual core dual processor opteron machines, but they are way, way cheaper. Intel put their 3 dualcore chips right at the same price point that their single core chips are at. Their fastest dualcore is only a 3.2 so far, and you do need a new dualcore supporting motherboard, but I was very pleasantly surprised at the improved render times of that chip.