Dual-core Systems Necessary for Business Users?

Lam1969 writes "Hygeia CIO Rod Hamilton doubts that most business users really need dual-core processors: 'Though we are getting a couple to try out, the need to acquire this new technology for legitimate business purposes is grey at best. The lower power consumption which improves battery life is persuasive for regular travelers, but for the average user there seems no need to make the change. In fact, with the steady increase in browser based applications it might even be possible to argue that prevailing technology is excessive.' Alex Scoble disagrees: 'Multiple core systems are a boon for anyone who runs multiple processes simultaneously and/or have a lot of services, background processes and other apps running at once. Are they worth it at $1000? No, but when you have a choice to get a single core CPU at $250 or a slightly slower multi-core CPU for the same price, you are better off getting the multi-core system and that's where we are in the marketplace right now.' An old timer chimes in: 'I can still remember arguing with a sales person that the standard 20 Mg hardrive offered plenty of capacity and the 40 Mg option was only for people too lazy to clean up their systems now and then. The feeling of smug satisfaction lasted perhaps a week.'"

Comments

Overkill Dragging Customers Along

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, few (if any) business users need anything more than a Pentium III running at 500 MHz. That processor is perfectly acceptable for business applications like OpenOffice.

Unfortunately, ultimately, most business users will be forced to upgrade to new systems simply because there will no longer be replacement parts for the old systems.

Consider the case of memory modules. 5 years ago, 64MB PC100 SODIMMs were plentiful. Now, they are virtually extinct. By 2010, you will not be able to find any replacement memory modules for your 1999 desktop PC because it requires PC100 non-DDR SDRAM, and no one will sell the stuff. In 2010, the only thing that you can buy is DDR2 SDRAM, Rambus DRAM, or newer-technology DRAM.

In short, by 2010, you will be forced to upgrade for lack of spare parts.

Memory bound, not CPU bound ...

[gstoddart]

In my experience, and I'm a software developer so take that with a grain of salt, the vast majority of people will get more performance from more memory than more CPU speed.

I'm almost never CPU bound if I have enough memory. If I don't have enough memory, I get to watch the maching thrash, and it crawls to a halt. But then I'm I/O bound on my hard-drive.

Dual-CPU/dual-core machines might be useful for scientific applications, graphics, and other things which legitimately require processor speed. But for Word, IM, e-mail, a browser, and whatever else most business users are doing? Not a chance.

Like I said, in my experience, if most people would buy machines with obscene amounts of RAM, and not really worry about their raw CPU speed, they would get far more longeivity out of their machines.

There just aren't that many tasks for which you meaningfully need faster than even the slowest modern CPUs. If you're doing them, you probably know it; go ahead, buy the big-dog.

Repeat after me ... huge whacking gobs of RAM solve more problems than raw compute power. Always has.