So I got a new Dell system with the Intel Dual Core 3Ghz chip. First I expected this to be *better* than the Dell I purchased a month ago that was a 3ghz Pentium 4 with HyperThreading. In that aspect I wasn't completely wrong, it did outperform the P4 in almost every benchmark, but nowhere near what I expected it to.

Most people look at numbers on the benchmark and be happy, but I thought I would put the processor to practical use, doing normal activities and seeing if it performs better. Unfortunately there wasn't a single application that performed better with the Dual Core over the Hyperthreading boxes that I could tell.

My friend got an AMD X2 processor, which is the AMD 64bit Dual Core processor. When he first booted his system, it booted about 3 seconds slower than my Pentium. When we put the system to the actual test though, He was able to play Games, WHILE burning a DVD with no latency flooding over into the game.

Conclusion: My next system is going to be an AMD X2 based system.