Core 2 Duo is 64 bit and So is the AMD 64 X2. Both are the same while AMD is cheaper. The performance is unnoticeable. Also, Quad cores are very new and not many games and applications are capable of using 4 cores, forget that, most are not capable of spreading over 2 cores! If you do get quad core, go for AMD because Intel is fairly new to quad core and their technology (quad) is not that advanced as AMD's. I would still pick Core 2 Duo over anything in the market today.
AMD X2 smokes the Core 2 Duo's IMO...easily overclocked, can handle faster DDR2, and runs smoother than you can imagine.
90% of what? 40% of what? Those statements make no sense. Dual core always means that there are two processor cores on a single chip. The term you are looking for (as was already pointed out) is dual processor. AMD chips are cheaper. This is because Intel holds enough of the market share that they can set the price as they see fit. AMD must struggle to maintain its smaller market share and thus must have lower prices to make their product more attractive. I don't even kow what this means. The Itanium is not a replcament for standard desktop chips. I hope this post was a joke. There have been a few examples where very bad coding made running a program on a dual core/proc system slowed it down. Generally though, you may not see full improvement from a non-multithreaded app you would see some improvement over a single proc. The reason is that even if the program is only running on a single processor (though this is not really the case) the program can run on one while the OS (or parts of) can operate on the other.
True. I have both a 2ghz Pentium M laptop and a 1.2ghz Core 2 Duo notebook. The older laptop outperforms the notebook any day, even though the notebook should, technically, be faster.
Not really. Dual core/;proc systems are not equivalent to twice the processor speed. Your original laptop has a 2GHz processor. That is much faster than a 1.2GHz. Having a 1.2GHz dual core is not the same as having a 2.4GHz machine. The difference is speed would mean the older machine should be faster in most uses. Where you might notice a difference is when you are doing multiple things at once (burning a DVD and redering images at the same time). And the two things would both need to be processor intensive (loading a video game is, playing a video game is not - mostly video card). You might not even notice much difference when doing just two things as Intel chips have hyper-threading which allows them to handle multiple tasks more efficiently than processors that don't have it. In most common uses and applications, you should only see a slight boost in performance from having a dual core/proc. That would make your processor equivalent to about a 1.4GHz (give or take a little) single processor. Even when the system is running several highly taxing applications a 1.2GHz would probably be equivalent to a 1.8GHz, maybe 2.0GHz. To really see the benefits of a dual core/proc you need to compare it to a chip of similar speed.
That's one of the things I think is ridiculous about dual core. They are now selling slower dual core processors than the did single core ones, effectively negating the advantage.
There are several reasons for this. First, sometimes the difference in GHz has little to do with actual speed difference. The Pentium M came out with considerably less GHz than the P4s that were being sold at the time. But the Pentium M was actually faster than a P4 with a higher rating. This is because the architechture changed so dramatically that they were able to get more actual work from slower speeds. This is not the case here as the Core2Duo cores are not very different from Pentium M cores. The second reason that this happens is to give the chip manufacturer more time to develop before the next big change. If the Pentium M had been at, or very near, the end of its product cycle then it would make sense to release dual cores that were slower per core than the single core chips. To an end user, this seems ridiculous. To a business, it just makes sense. How? Let's say that Intel knows that the next breakthrough is three-four years out. Their current processor is close to the end of its life cycle (meaning that they have gotten all the speed they can out of it). They need a new product every six months or less. By making a dual core, they get one more round. But by dropping the speed enough, they will get several more rounds before they need to have a new chip developed. But that's not really the case here either. The third reason is that they do not develop a one-size fits all chip. They develop chips for a range of uses and prices. The processor that you got is slow because it is an Ultra-Low-Voltage mobile processor. Using less juice conserves battery life, but reduces speed.
The xeon core 2 runs better for me than the Core 2 Duo I have both. The xeons have scsi drives so that may be the difference. The xeons run really hot and has a really big box.